Time away from home in Aust Army Aviation
Sorry for the delayed response. I'm not certain where the crews spend their time away but the advice was to expect a fair bit of time away from your home basing. Australia has a pretty small fleet of choppers by comparison to other armed forces, we have only about 36 Blackhawks in total, (USA has about 1600), and we are retiring our loyal old hueys as we speak.
Considering the fact that a percentage of those aircraft are used for training, others are off line duties for maintenance, the remaining fleet must be used ( stretched) to cover our peacekeping duties in Timor and over in the Solomons as well as working with the training of special forces guys, odd trips to PNG, working on regular army training ops all over the place and so on, I guess it works out that crews are away a lot. With Australia's current devotion to playing peacekeeper for the whole pacific rim region, time away might be about to increase. I spoke in detail with four pilots from different backgrounds and the average amount of flying was about 200-300 hours per year. To be honest, I'm confused as to how you can be away so much and flying so little but I could be wrong. Different types also have different demands placed on them. Mabe the new Tigers will be operated out of Darwin only and fly less...... or more...... I can't say other than what I was told. Good luck anyway if you decide to look into it.
cheers
Vic