Select "Drop All" with your vacation preferences.

Then bid east coast weekend AMs ... haha, those suck as a west coast PMer.

There are a couple pay to play bidding programs around, you'll find them pretty quick. Use them, drop 2 x 4-day trips per vacation week. A Single week easily is about 2 weeks off (nominally, about 12~13 days). When you are bidding vacation drop, work the stuff outside the vacation week, not max block inside, long winded reason why ... but that's the way to do it to maximize pay per time off.

When you get 2 or more vaca weeks, trade with someone else to separate your weeks (e.g., week 1 & 3 in a month, vice touching weeks 2&3, etc...). Now those 2 weeks will drops "about" the entire month (your pay will blow, but you will have a ton of time off). 2 weeks spread across a month with 4x4-day trips, can easily drop the entire month; often, the lower "vacation drop" lines leave a little something somewhere, like a missed overlap trip (lead in / lead out), 5 x 3-day lines, ...

Don't be afraid of the Blank lines here. Blanks are not filled with just sick / mil pull pilots, but the vacation guys senior to you! Then you get to reap the rewards of the senior guy bidding vacation pull.

3 weeks separated across a month will get you "P" status ("P"aper bidder, or "P"ay only, doesn't matter, results are the same); now, sort your lines for the highest pay (make sure they touch the weekends). I did this years ago. 3 vacation weeks was 6 (or 7) weeks off, full months of "p"ay (off June 24th - August 7th, if memory is correct). Got lost on a self guided safari tour throughout Africa when the kids were younger.

The only thing wrong with our vacation, is we don't have 6, 7, 8 or more weeks off per year, or get them more junior!

Yut!

I'm just waiting for ELITT to open in an hour and half ... then the fun begins!