The Good
Ok.. so I went on a tirade and whined for an hour. So there must be some good. Well there is.
We have some good aircraft:
AS-350: Dual FADEC, A/C, XM Weather, great helo
UH-60 L/M: full glass, painted black, lots of power and just a baddaxx helo. Good missions.
MEA/King Air 350/C-12: Well good and bad.
Good: ProLine 21, new aircraft, good sensors
Bad: poor performance (slow, underpowered)
Bad aircraft:
PC12: good plane, only have 2 or 3 nationwide
C-206: junk
EC-120: cool looking, underpowered, no FLIR
The mission: tricky topic. There is definitely a mission. Plenty of bad guys on the land border, on boats and even planes. We have some cool programs that pilots can volunteer for. Comm stuff, airborne snipers, tactics stuff. Mostly underutilized but once a year you may support the Superbowl, or some other high visibility event. TDYs as I mentioned before can be a lot of fun. Stay in a good hotel, catch bad guys, eat good food, fly over new terrain, repeat for 10 days.
Guns: if you like guns, we have guns and plenty of ammo and range time. We go to the range 4 times a year, and the shooting is decent. Its not the military style of robotic shooting. Fairly tactical and usually fun.
VFR flying: one of the best parts. We rarely fly IFR. The job is VFR looking for stuff. This is not the airlines, with the autopilot on, talking to ATC and grandma in the back. This is often NVGs, or at night. Looking. Doesn't always pay off, but when it does, it feels good. A good car chase, or drug bust. Flash bangs, car wrecks, or chasing something or someone. The flying can be very good.
People: we do have some good people. Lots of different backgrounds and some really good pilots. Fighter guys, helo guys, freight guys, or guys who learned in BP. Most of us fly two different aircraft. You may fly the helo in the morning, and get a call out to fly the C-12 that evening.
So the flying part is good. But that only about 15 hours of the week. Its the 30-40 hours in the office that frustrates most of us.
But there is a dark side to the flying too.....