Although old, this post and a few others have helped me immensely.
It is almost time for me to chose my preferences for posting for my 4s. As I have waited almost a year between my POET and 3s doing OJE, I finally got to experience many facets of the trade. I found that I quite enjoy almost everything an ATIS tech does except for help desk. I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions on how to avoid ending up with a posting that will have me often based in such a position (I realize I cannot avoid it entirely as it is a required part of my 4s).
I am also not a big fan of the PC maintenance area but it is better than help desk work. I am neutral on net ops stuff. Everything tech maintenance, radar, coms, telecom (kinda defunct it seems), AV and airfield is great. Let me connect something, physically troubleshoot it, or open it up and I am a happy man.
Typically, so far I have found that as long as I do a really good job, I am asked to stay where I am but the tricky part seems to be getting initially placed somewhere to make that reputation for myself (I have to be careful too. For example, I was really good with ACIMS/SharePoint and had to fight tooth and nail to avoid constantly getting tasked to working on it).
Based on what I read here and info given to me by others in the trade, it seems that I should request to go to a base with an airfield like, Comox, Cold Lake or Trenton. I can also request specific unit if that can perhaps help me avoid the dreaded help desk. I can find information about what each squadron does (
http://www.rcaf-arc.forces.gc.ca/en/wings-squadrons.page), but I am having trouble finding what specific and/or unique roles that ATIS techs do within different squadrons (I found browsing available postings for ATIS techs on the DWAN to be the most informative so far).
Any tips, tricks, useful DWAN links or advise I should keep in mind before I pick my posting preferences would be greatly appreciated.