Whirly- I was kind of thinking of you as I wrote my brief earlier post...wondering if you'd agree or disagree. After rereading it a couple of times (which is tough, because I even bore myself, believe it or not) I realized that I may have come off as too negative and not as objective as I'd intended.
What I was trying to emphasize was that going from Ground Zero to working helicopter pilot is not a quick thing. Nor is it an easy thing. Or even a sure thing. And whatever the job prospects are today, they will surely change one way or the other by the time "mrgogetter" gets there. Better? Worse? Who knows. The helicopter industry is relatively tiny. And if the U.S. military burped a hundred or two-"qualified" pilots out into the market, the impact could be enormous.
Those of us who are in aviation tend to give overly optimistic answers when questioned by hopeful outsiders. I think that in a way we kind of delude ourselves about how wonderful aviation is. We enthusiastically urge them to "Come on in!" It's not that we're being deliberately deceptive, it's just that it's hard for us to be totally objective. We love to fly. We wouldn't have done it any other way. And we assume that everyone else will love it as much as we do.
"Sure man, it's great!" we say. "It beats *working* for a living any day! Get your ratings, there'll be PLENTY of jobs you can do!" And we might honestly believe that...until we stopped for a moment and thought about it. Then we might be inclined to add, "But it might take much longer than you expected...and there's absolutely zero money in it for the first five or ten years or so...oh yeah, and nobody'll hire you unless you have 1,000 hours."
So I was trying to walk a line between being overly pessimistic and overly optimistic. If I came down a little too hard on the negative side, I can't help that. As Watchoutbelow said, "It's a horrible thing, having to rely on luck." But in the end, that's what you have to do to make it in this industry. Maybe "mrgogetter" will go get lucky. Heck, I consider myself so. But maybe he won't. He needs to know what he's really in for.
There are plenty of people who'll blow smoke and tell you only the good side. Especially flight schools! I think it was hilico who pointed out in another thread that the first "P" in PPRuNe stands for professionals. Thus, the advice you get here come from guys who've all been around the block once or thrice. Don't take this the wrong way, but it's one thing to go out and get your ratings; it's another to take the plunge and carve a career out of this business.
But since you brought it up, Whirly...let me ask you: Where are you at right now and how long has it taken you to get there? It seems like you pursued it pretty aggressively, and you might be a good example of how quickly getting to CPL can be done.