Paulwall wrote in message
om...
Hello everyone.. I'm new to this newsgroup and im sure glad I found
it.. there seems to be a ton of good information here.. My question is
to anyone who is a pilot or knows about this field and can help me go
in the right direction. My father was in the military as a crewcheif
on the C17 and many other cargo planes until he retired.. All my life
I have wanted to be a pilot, but after I graduated highschool I lost
sight of what I wanted to do and been working fulltime and havn't went
into the direction I wanted to be in.. My question to everyone is I
want to know if it is possible to still have a future being a Aviator
for the Air Force or even Air National Guard? I am 22 years old (I
dont think thats to old, but maybe its pushing it just getting
started?) I only have 1 semester of college. From my understanding I
need a bachelor degree.. which I could probally get done in a few
years. I need some advice on what I should start doing right now to
get going where I need to be. thanks in advance!
Paul

Your first step might be to get a First Class FAA Physical Exam to see
if there is some medically disqualifying condition. Or if you are in
good shape, you might just opt for a very good eye exam, not just a
glance at a wall chart and guess at the letters. When I was in the Navy
Club in college we heard many stories about what was called the "NAMI
Whammy". That meant prospective aviators meeting the basic entry
requirements only to find that the strict physical exam found something
that prevented them getting a flight slot or limited what kind of slot
they could get, say not as a pilot but as a Non-Flying Officer, (WSO or
guy in back). Often the story was a candidate that had been told he had
20/20 by slack civilian doctors only to find that it was almost 20/20 or
however NAMI measures it. If you have some sort of disqualifying
medical condition, better to know that now than after you go on the hook
for a bunch of college debt and have skipped over some civilian flying
opportunities, if there are any these days. I've heard that the vision
requirements have been eased ever so slightly since the days when you
needed vision better than Chuck Yeager to be admitted into the
recruiters office, but since I'm past all that I haven't paid strict
attention.

As for age, I think you have to be able to be admitted and complete OCS
or some part of your training before your 27th birthday. I know when I
was very interested in the early 1990s I was 4 or 5 years older than you
are now and was very close to being able to meet that deadline. I do
remember that the cutoff is being a certain age before some milestone
like graduating OCS or such. They don't set the limit as "must be less
than X years to apply." What may or may not be a problem is finishing
college and getting through the milestone event in time. But nothing is
better than real life motivation to keep you from squeezing 4 years of
college into 6 years of life.

--
Scott
--------
"If after four years of careful planning, al Qaedists hit the Olympics
in August, the terrorists know better than we do that most Europeans
will do nothing - but quickly point to the U.S. and scream "Iraq!" And
they know that the upscale crowds in Athens are far more likely to boo a
democratic America than they are a fascist Syria or theocratic Iran.
Just watch." Victor Davis Hanson