From: "Kevin Brooks"


"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message


By contrast, the flying ANG units contained large numbers of full-time
specialists,

Ahh! The old, "you gotta be full time to be a real specialist" or to have a
good unit bit, huh? Ed, I have service time in the active component, the
reserve components as a part-timer, and one reserve component as a
full-timer, and from where I sit your argument does not carry much water.

A maintainer who only does his monthlies
and 2 weeks is nowhere near as skilled as one who does it full time. When the
ANG flies aircraft during the week the part timers are not there to fix them.
Just what would you do with an aircraft flown on Saturday that has a
malfunction that will take 4 days to fix? That's why the full timers are there.
I have seen 3 day repairs turn into 5 day repairs because they kept changing
the persons doing the job.

This is not an attempt to slam the Guard's maintainers, but 64 days a year is
not enough to keep your skills up.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired