You can reduce your Raw Value by 15 points. That puts in a low yellow slip. Yes that gets you out on your first day(Maybe). It also allows scheduling to use you before 1200 on your first day of reserve. Sometimes it gets you short call if the reduction does not get you low enough to get a trip. I have done it and gotten a 0530 report. Now with more than four days of avail. you will probably sit short call for the last two days. I did that this week and it irked me. I had 28:52 of block and I could have only done a one way to SAV, or JAX if I was lucky, but I got to sit short call for two days. It was legal and there was nothing I could do about it.
Now you can request to be first for short call. With six periods a month you can try to get the pain out quickly, but if they put you on a four day on the first short call day, you can not get to six until the second or third week of the month. I normally do not request it. Hence the suggestion for a crash pad. We tend to fly on reserve here.
The trips are assigned at 0800 the prior day. Whatever is in the open time pot at that time now becomes avail for scheduling to assign to reserves. They normally will do this within an hr or two. Now "silos" as you call them is what we call days of avail. Four being the most and one the least. They will assign trips to people who have High yellows in first( Off day fly that you do not get back), low yellows and then to people in RAW value order. Lowest is the first to go out. A four day goes to the guys with four days avail. A three day to guys with three, unless there are no three day guys avail, or someone has put in a High Yellow for it. Now I know this is clear as mud. Get burnt by it once and you will learn. Personally I only put in a low yellow if I know I am going to get a trip. This way I have minimal control over what they give me, but it is not a guarantee, only a request that they do not have to honor. I am not in to give up off days, unless it is for a green slip.
RAW value is a complicated formula that should be in the JPWA copy that you have but what it basically equates to is two points to every hr credit unless you have sick days or pay back days that take your total number of reserve days down. Then it goes up a bit.
Hope that this does not give you NWA guys a head ache.