Steve,
I respectfully suggest you look at the forums outside of Introductions and sample all that this great site has to offer. For starters, besides the Q&A denders suggested, check out Tutorials here, and Hardware and Software here. There you'll find extensive info, are likely to get more responses, and what's posted there will be more readily available for others looking for info similar to what you are asking (rather than being somewhat "obscured" here in Introductions) .
Also search YouTube for Cameo and Silhouette mask tutorials - plenty of good ones there, for example this.
As for your wanting to do some simple USN text masks: Go here to learn about (and get) the USN Long Beach font, load it into Windows, and it will then be available for you to use in Silhouette. USAF Font is Amarillo.
Gene K