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When I retired 35 months ago, I went straight into an Executive Director position, with the expectation that if I did well, I'd be CEO in ~3 years. The position got me access to CEO's, millionaires, entrepreneurs, and a host of other highly successful... and famous... people. The social events were off the chart. However, after 18 months, I resigned. Entirely too much work, no free time, and high stress led to this. I appreciated the organization bringing me on, but in the end, it wasn't the right fit. It did scratch the itch I'd had for a long time in doing this type of job. Glad I got to go to that side of the business world.. and maybe I'll go back some day. But for now, the airline lifestyle and benefits are a better fit.

I'm a little late to this party, but man, keep chugging on. I turned 29 in April, took my AFOQT and TBAS in May, had my first interview for a fighter unit in June, and got selected by that unit in July. No prior service. I knew my chances were slim too, but put in the work and show them that you're worth the paperwork. You'll have to be extra competitive but it's not impossible.

Study more and retake the AFOQT. I mean, why not? I would say your age doesn't give you the luxury of time to go through all the not-so-timely hoops involved in the application/interview/notification processes. If you want this, do anything and everything you can to give yourself the best chance.

Pilot score ain't bad, but the rest of your scores are some of the lowest I've seen. GPA isn't great either. That's ok, though. It's all about the whole person concept. Once you get the TBAS done, start rushing units. If you don't get any interviews in the time it takes for you to become eligible to retake the AFOQT, retake it. Study harder. Don't give up.

No, it's in a suburb of Atlanta. Thanks for the support though!

Spot on! EAA is a great deal, we have guys flying RVs, light sport homebuilts and classics such as a beautiful 1947 Howard DGA (looks brand new) and another guy with, I kid thee not, a 450 Stearman, the only flying Boeing 40 in the world and just finished restoring and now flying a 1943 Grumman Goose. I have been very active with my local EAA Young Eagle program in the last four or so years. In the time I've been involved, our chapter has flown just over 431 kids. Sent one kid the EAA Air Academy in Oshkosh, he went on to college for an Aviation Business degree with a minor in flight and just learned another kid who we gave an Eagle ride to years ago just earned the gold wings of a Coast Guard aviator. Good times inspiring the next generation of recreational and professional aviators. Just for the record, I work as a "crewchief" escorting the kid, mom/dad out to the plane and back. Being retired MX guy I don't miss the BS of active duty, but miss being around the airplanes. I however, am spending the elephant dollars to earn my PPL so maybe next season I can do some flying as well. Fun being back on the ramp even if the environment is completely different.

Hasn't been my experience. My wife has wanted to start a bar/restaurant forever and so we decided to go ahead and do it concurrent with my retirement. In preparation, I read a couple "how-to" start a business books and attended a Boots 2 Business course on base. Now I understand why many entrepreneurs say you have to fail a couple of times before you become successful. Running this business has been the steepest learning curve I've every experienced. I've also been floored about the amount of red tape and expense involved in getting business licenses, meeting code, etc. from the local government. For example, we rented a place that already kitchen equipment installed and when we went through the initial health inspection we were told the code had changed the previous year and we ended up spending an un-budgeted $20K on getting it up to code. I mean, FFS, the science in restaurant health and safety is so immature that such big code changes are necessary year to year!?! We also had delays getting licenses due to the slow pace of the city in processing them. I've also seen some unexpected things like the cops showing up repeatedly saying there was a report of a fight at our establishment. Probably our competitors trying to scare customers away.... Also, everything for business costs twice or three times what it would if you bought it for yourself. For example, deposit for electrical service for a business was $2000 and the monthly bill is $500 (1500 sq ft restaurant) and water is $450/month. It's also disheartening when you run into all of the rent seeking and rigging that goes on. We had to spend $500 for an alcohol survey to a surveying company to prove the restaurant/bar isn't within 500' of a school or a church. It probably took that surveying company all of five minutes to figure that out using a geographic information system (my undergrad degree incidentally) and I'm 90% sure they used GIS data from the city or county. Sweet deal for them... Also, only being allowed to serve alcohol bought through select alcohol wholesalers (was a real pain to get any of them to call us back to set up an account) doesn't help the bottomline either. Granted my wife picked the riskiest kind of business to start, but it's been 95% stress and 5% reward and we aren't even remotely close to breaking even after 9 months either. From my experience, if I was to do it again, I'd buy an existing business or I'd go into a business that catered only to other businesses as that seems like where the real money is.

Surprised no one has mentioned starting / buying a business. Military aviation is actually a very good training ground for entrepreneurial activity - whether you realize it or not, all of us have acquired skills in calculated risk taking, assessing the enemy (competition), solving problems on the fly, task prioritization, time management, etc. Pick something you're passionate about and be your own boss. I'll bet anyone posting on this board would do much better than they imagine.

Yea, and with the news that we're making another push in afghanistan, there's no flipping way that deployed billets or ops tempo will go away.. I imagine all those suggestions we made for reducing deployments just got flushed. On a different and likely highly unpopular note, I know this forum is largely full of disgruntled types and we all come here to b1tch about what's wrong.. but some of you guys may need to step back and think about something positive in your life. :D We all just got an unscheduled pay bump and anyone but the most deluded dunce would know it wasn't going to be significant.. There's really no reason to piss and moan about it, IMO. The NDAA was signed.. even if CSAF wanted to give us a million each, he's still tied by the budget. Given the facts, I would say the only change I think I'd have made is to give earlier guys a larger bump (i.e., 6 yr guys would be much closer to 1k/mo) since those are the ones coming close to a decision point of get out/continue at 10 years. Otherwise, each of us with a decent flying record is still basically set for life, barring any long term economic meltdown, and we're doing what we love. I say all this as a guy who recently left one of the best flying locations in the AF for a "staff" job (in hopes of better promotion potential) that is quite pointless and borders on fraud, waste, and abuse and my 3yr old son lost one of his feet a few months ago.. Be thankful for the small things, they don't come often enough. Ok.. back to complaining about coffee that isn't strong enough, a/c isn't cold enough, and hotel housekeeping didn't leave a mint in the right spot on our pillows. :D

Had my FC1 at Wright Patt in June. Quick background: I was a competitive cyclist from age like 14 to 20, riding like 8-10 hours a week for years (a lot). I also played soccer year round from 5th grade through high school. I continued to do intramural sports year round at college and stated fairly active. As far as I've read, PVCs can become common in subjects with histories of endurance sports or high volumes of cardio/pulmonary stress like sports. In the months leading up, I joked with my family about how I knew I'd pass my FC1 unless they found "some heart condition I don't know about." I had never heard of PVCs and had no signs of arrythmia. Sure enough, I fail my EKG on the first day with no history of any cardio problems. I ended up staying 2 extra days. They said it was like I was a daily monster drinker who continued to drink them at my FC1... and I've never had any of that gross shit. Basically, I failed my EKG, and they had me come back in later that day to fit me with a Halter monitor - it's like a 24hr EKG harness you wear. They try to find the percentage of PVCs you had in a normal day. 24hrs later, they analyzed the data and ordered an echocardiogram for me. My echocardiogram took like 50 minutes because I had so many PVCs they could not get clean 7-8 second clips of each compartment of my heart without trying over and over and over again in each area. I put that up to stress. I eventually could see on the machine's monitor what PVCs looked like and couldn't help but fixate and get freaked out at the frequency, it was hard to stay composed at first because I thought my pilot dreams were slipping away. I continued to have a good attitude and treat the whole process like the doctors, assistants, and techs and I were working as a team to get to a goal of having me waived. I really think this is a key. Finally, after the echo - they had me do a treadmill stress test. You basically walk at a brisk pace as the treadmill inclines every 60-90 seconds, with a live EKG on a big screen next to you while a Lt. Col pulmonologist looks on and an assistant takes your blood pressure/pulse manually off your arm before each incline interval. After all this - they put me in for a waiver, and I passed. I'm not certain about the conditions of my waiver yet, but I know that I passed from my recruiter. My PVCs must have settled down on the treadmill test. The biggest bummer about my FC1 experience is that they weren't able to take the time to teach me about my potential condition. I didn't get updates day to day on my cardio health in general as it pertains to my day to day life. It makes sense - they are trying not to disclose anything so you don't become a center of attention among your peers or add to the stress of an already stressful process while dealing with 20+ patients. So now I have to go see a specialist on the civilian side to learn about what I can do to ensure I continue to pass waiver tests over the next few years as I begin my career. Again, as far as I know, in order to issue a waiver the docs and techs meet to discuss each case round table style before submitting a waiver to the AFRC SG. Your attitude has to play some kind of role in making yourself memorable as a candidate that would be able to roll with the punches of future health hurdles in your flying career. Sorry for the long post - feel free to PM me for more details.