Tag: reserves

  • How much do IMA reservists make?

    It is not easy to quickly decipher military pay tables for us IMAs. In order to do some recent financial planning, I had to calculate my pay. I’m an O-4 with between 14 and 16 years of service. Here is what I did. IDTs You can find the official military pay tables from the DoD…

  • Training Short Codes for USAF IMA Reservists

    One of the more frustrating things about the reserves: obscure codes like those above. I find it incredible how poor reserve support is, and unnecessary obscurity shouldn’t be tolerated. For those who wonder what these codes actually mean: Readiness Codes Full course title DOD IA DoD IAA CyberAwareness Challenge V2.0 (ZZ133098) FP Force Protection (ZZ133079)…

  • Busy IMA preparing for a Lt Col Board

    Hello fellow IMA. My apologies to you. Life is not easy. In the civilian world, you work hard, play office politics and with a little luck you might get promoted. Not so in the reserves. Here your promotion depends heavily on your ability to decode a bunch of Air Force personnel jargon and to make…

  • IMA equations

    Here are some of the questions I had when starting as an IMA. How do you schedule IDTs? You have to be on a .mil domain or else you need to use arrows-r. utaps Who pays? IDTs and the 2-week annual tour are centrally funded. What are my work requirements? I am cat A with…

  • UTAPS: Mark an IDT as complete

    UTAPS is terrible software. I wasted a half hour today going through the source code to figure out how to mark an IDT as complete. I have no idea how folks who don’t understand web codes can navigate this system. Why not include a button? Really?

  • My start as an IMA in the Air Force

    This article has become incredibly popular. It was written six years ago at the start of my reserve career. Since then, I’ve had an amazing fun, rewarding and high-impact career. First, I’ve had amazing bosses, Shawn Barnes and Tim Kelly, who are both amazing leaders but understood the difficulty of balancing my day job with…