I flew eight out of the last nine days. And I got my first Air Medal (every 20combat sorties...I'm at 22 right now)! And I've flown almost 100 total combat hours also.....that's cool. And, Uncle jack, the weather DID get better. It's crazy how beautiful the sunrise over desert and mountains can be.... but it is!
I flew three times with a Lt. Col. who has been around planes for a while. He's an Air Force instructor pilot at the instructor pilot school and he's a United pilot also. So I was pretty pumped up about flying and learning from him. It was a good three days....I soaked it all in.
I just started getting into a regular gym routine which has me SORE! I found a vet clinic on base for the service dogs that I can volunteer at on my days off so I'm excited about that. It's not guaranteed that they'll have dogs there everyday but they told me just to come by and check.
I got a package from my godchild and cousin. They sent me a "Swamp People" t-shirt which was pretty funny. And I divided the large bag of roasted and salted almonds into smaller bags to eat during our flights. And saying that let me share a little routine that we go though every flight. It's called "halftime soda time". Haha. It's at the halfway point of our flight. We make an announcement in the plane and pop open a cold soda to keep us alert. It's a fun thing we do. It's also usually the point where you snack during the flight. So the almonds have been my snack the past few days.....
It's Fathers Day today so "Happy Fathers Day to all the daddys out there! I sent mine a tech themed cookie bouquet...Haha. It may be a little weird.....but....it's the thought that counts anyway....Haha.
Before
Before
This pas week Kristen went and picked up my old dresser from my moms house. She has dreams and asperations of refinishing it. And by that I mean sanding the whole thing and re-painting it! That's a lot of work. I told her..... but she's doing it anyway. I think it's going to come out awesome!
During (stupid picture wouldn't turn right side up)
During
I still am P-42 this week. Two more dudes, at least, are leaving this week so next blog I'll be lower. Well, that's all for this week. Till next week......
Dallas is so freakin cute (she lost her ball under the tool box)!
Last weekend I went to the bazaar (it like a flea market type of thing). The base invites the locals to come on base and sell their goods. It's pretty cool. I didn't buy anything this time because I didn't want to hold on to it for 5 months in my tent. But I saw some good stuff there!
My buddy, Chris and me went to a climbing gym here. Its pretty cool..., the Canadians hollowed out a conex box and made it into a rock climbing gym. There's usually a few people there. Some people are serious about climbing here. They've even brought their own climbing shoes and personal chalk... Haha. I usually fall down every 10 seconds so I'm not that serious. And then of course we had to unwind with a cigar and near beer....
Here is a few photos of "stuff" that good folks from the ol' U S of A sent us just this week......we get a lot of stuff here!!!
Other than that I've been flying...a lot. Which is a good thing. I had three days off in a row and now I'm on my fourth day flying in a row. I'm flying all night lines right now so that means I'm sleeping in the day time.....which is weird, and hot. And I've also finally got in a workout routine which is awesome! But I have been so tired. My regular day has been wake up, workout, take bus to work, eat, fly, take bus home, shower, sleep, repeat. I flew in bad weather twice this week here. This plane gets TOSSED around in the air = no fun. I had my barf bag out just in case a few times. That sucked.....
Sunrise on my way home from work...pretty
I'm doing this blog in a hurry so it's probably not going to be as long as usual.
My high school 10 year reunion was two nights ago. I missed it and that sucks. It has been fun looking at the pictures online from it so see how everyone has changed and grown up!
Kristen is doing great. We Skype almost everyday. I also sent her a patriotic cookie bouquet this week.
Ohhh. I was just talking to my mom on the phone and she reminded me that I didn't tell yall what my pilot number is now....it's P-42!!! I'm a little closer to P-1 every few days!
OK, so there is too many pilots here right now officially. There are a bunch of new Mission Commander dudes that all have to get 20 rides to be qualified as an MC. I am a co-pilot, it only took me three rides to get qualified. Getting qualified is the most important thing around here because they need as many pilots fully qualified as possible. Which means that the 15 or so new MC dudes always fly. Which leaves the 17 co-pilots over here SOL for the time being. So in the last eight days I've flown three of them.
What did I do the other five days you ask? Well, I was a scheduler at the squadron for two of them. Then I took it upon myself to become a sort of MWR (Morale Wellness and Recreation) Officer for my squadron because I realized there are a lot of things to do around here this week, non military related. So for one of those days I went to all of the countries MWR rooms, if they had one, and got info of any events they have coming up. There is a lot of fun stuff (95% of the stuff to do is the Americans pulling the weight for the rest of the NATO countries). In looking high and low on base for all this info I came across an Army officer who asked me to be on the MWR board. I said yes, and now I'm a representative for our country on the NATO MWR board. Funny stuff. I just wanted to know about stuff to do and now I have a bunch of extra duties. Oh well, it'll make the time go by faster.
There is some sort of race usually once or twice a week..., with bibs and t-shirts given out! How freekin' cool! In combat....a road race! They also have poker four nights a week with a $50 prize given every night. They have a chess tournament every Friday. Karaoke, bingo, table tennis, basketball leagues, guitar lessons and all sorts of stuff like that to do. Not to mention the USO has free internet and phones, and occasionally brings in "talent" (celebrities). So..., there's a lot to do.
In the past seven days I've ran a 3K, 5K and a 10K. Pretty cool. Yesterday I went to a cigar club meeting (because that's what you do when you're deployed, smoke cigars and grow mustaches), smoked a cigar donated by some business in the USA (thanks America for being so damn cool), drank a near beer (non-alcoholic) then walked to a chess tournament, which I lost out of in two games....very fast. Speaking of that..., Romania has some smart chess players. they were like calling "chess plays" to each other through body signals. Like in baseball....., it was scary. They were good. One dude beat me in three moves.....seriously...., these dudes were pros. I'll be back next Friday to avenge my country (if I'm off).
OK, now lets get back to flying. Last Sunday I flew..., sort of. We were stepping to a jet with a known TCAS problem. TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) is the electronic system that lets other planes know where youu are and lets you know where they are so even if you can't see them with your eyes you can pick them up on TCAS and avoid them. Now, just that system alone would be bad to have over here because then someone on the ground could buy something like it and point it up and see and the planes above him and we don't want that. So we have to incript our TCAS so that just people we want can "see" us. TCAS is on our MEL (Minimum Equipment List) so its a needed item for flight over here. Wheewww... There's your aircraft lesson for the week. Anyway, we tested ours on the ground and it worked fine. Just as we rotated we got a TCAS FAIL warning. Darn! So we had to get a quick vector and come back home. That flight lasted .3 (13-17 minutes).
We stepped to a spare jet once back on the ground. Did all the preflight again and took off. Everything was fine until 10,000 feet. At which a bright red Master Warning light started flashing in my face. Now there is a difference between a Master Caution and a Master Warning light. Warnings are red and cautions are amber. A red one is a BAD one! This particular one said L BLEED FAIL which means that the exhaust off of the left engine, which is used to keep our jet pressurized and heated/cooled, which is above 700 degrees Celsius has a leak. Not good. We shut our firewall door so that if here was a fire it would either be contained in the engine or out side of it, but theoretically not in both. So that was good, but now we had no idea where the 700 degree air was going. No idea. It could be someplace bad and start a fire, or someplace OK like vented outside. But since we had no idea we made a quick return back to the field again. landed safely and I saved the Air Force $20,000,000.00 worth of an airplane. You're welcome taxpayers. That was my real EP (Emergency Procedure) so far. We train and go in simulators all the time just waiting for the day like this and my first one came. It was fun. And it was over bad people land which makes it even cooler! This sortie was a .5 (30-35 minutes).
So I flew two combat sorties in one day which was cool. But at the same time I really didn't do anything but ground two jets for a while. Oh and I got me and my three crew members pink butts back to mother Earth safely but that's besides the point. Haha.
If you want a laugh you have to check out my buddies blog. He just started it, just two posts, but he has a way with words and is so funny explaining things. His blog is called slowflyingelephant. If you click on the title of his blog on the sentence prior to this one it will link you to it. It's funny. It'll give a little more insight as to what's going on over here, living conditions and funny random stuff.
There was a dust "tornado" here this week. This is not something all that special because they have they all the time. And you don't want to get caught in one because the dust actually hurts your face and it gets everywhere. But this one was special. It was really bug and was sucking objects into it (like cardboard and water bottles). People were just stopped on the boardwalk watching it so I filmed it.
Dallas is the cutest dog ever
Here is her face when she knows that she is not supposed to be on the couch
I recieved a package from my my mom, sister and a card from Kristen so over all it was a good week. Now if I can start doing more of what the Air Force spent millions for me to do.....fly. It'll be alright. Till next week.
So what's been happening over here?.......not much. The internet went down for 36 hours and you would have thought that the world was going to end. Haha. I/we rely on the internet for EVERYTHING! I can see now that I don't care if I sleep in a five star hotel or a sleeping bag under a poncho hung from a tree during this deployment, if I have a good internet connection then my deployment will be good. It's sad but true. That's the world that I live in right now.
This clip is a RPA (Remotely Piloted Airplane) landing right over my bus.
I've flown nine ten times now. I've been here for 26 days now. That ratio (my flying to days here) sucks! Which means I've only flown 39% of the days I've been here.....which sucks. To be fair, my first flight wasn't until day 10 (once all of my in-processing was done). So since then I've flown 63% of the time.....which is better. I want to fly 100% of the time!!! That's just a pipe dream. The AF always has some sort of qweepy stuff to fill in useless time. AAAgghhh.
It's hot here. It doesn't say dusty....but it is
I'm still new here so I'm not too experienced just yet. Once I get into the regular rotation I expect to have my flying to not flying ratio way up......hopefully.
When I got here I was P-57, which means that I was Pilot number 57. We needed 63 here before we could start sending the older guys home. Since then we've got two shipments of dudes in and my number has gone down. My first drop was to number P-51. The my next drop was to P-47. That's where I'm at right now. I think the next drop for me will be on 3 Jun when some more dudes show up and some leave. Once my number gets down to P-01 I'll be next! So it actually seems like I'm dropping numbers fast!
Here's a video of a small group of MRAPs passing us by at nighttime. They are menacingly HUGE when they roll past you...
I started doing my second duties over here (scheduler). Ha. It's funny. I'm still learning Excel that's on my Windows XP laptop and now I'm expected to be an expert on Excel 2013 or something. Haha. And the spreadsheet is really complicated! We fly 24 hours a day. I need to watch everyone's crew rest (12 hours), turn times, consecutive work days, experience level..., etc... It's pretty difficult. I'm confident that if the schedule were left to me for more than two days......, the world would explode. Seriously.
The "plan" is for me to fly for seven days and then schedule for two, rinse, repeat. So hopefully that'll be what happens. That might be OK. Someone told me today that a bad day flying is always better that a good day behind a desk......And that checks! I made a goal of flying 160 total combat sorties and 750 combat hours....., but this goal is looking harder and harder everyday. Maybe I'll step back, re asses, re plan, and then re attack my new goal. Stand by for new goal.
My flying has been so much fun lately. My first two or three flights I still felt like I was being judged or graded, like in pilot training. But my third flight was with my friend, Dynomite. Yes, people with calls signs go by call signs out here. Ever since that flight its felt like I'm just flying with my buddies. It's been really nice. I'm really enjoying flying out here. Oh, and BTW, we're doing the mission at the same time......, catching bad guys and bringing them to justice. Sweet!
Saying that, I flew through my first icing in this plane. I thought that it was cool, but the other pilot didn't think it was. OK, education time. There are two different ways that aircraft manufactures can choose to get rid of ice on wings. First off.... Ice on wings = No lift = 15,000lb of metal in the sky with my pink butt in it plummeting towards mother earth. So ice is bad. You can have anti-ice or de-ice. Most planes have anti-ice which means that hot bleed air from the engines exhaust is piped trough the wing and tail leading edges and melts any ice that is trying to form. The bad part about that is that it degrades the engine performance once its on. De-ice is rubber boots on the leading edges of wings and tails that inflate and knock off ice once it has formed. This is the cheaper method. And this is the first plane that I've flown with de-ice. I had ice forming on my wings and I had to "pop my boots" (that's an industry term..., you're welcome). It was so awesome! It made a reasonably loud sound and I saw the ice burst off. Cool stuff. But I can see how this could be kinda scary at night, in a storm. Next weeks lesson will be thermals, and how they affect lift on your first segment of a climb....haha.
This is our mail center in my squadron
We (my squadron) get at least one of these type of boxes a week since I've been here.
I got my first care packages. Kristen sent me a large package with a rug, some flip flops and plug-in smell good stuff. All stuff that I asked for. I say that because I'm getting a lot of people asking me what to send. And I really don't need anything. I'm doing fine. There's electricity here and they feed me everyday (for free). They can't change my SSN and so far no one has shot at me. So anything else is just extra. My mom sent me some water flavorings, gum, chocolate, snacks and candy. That was good.
I talk to Kristen almost everyday. She's doing great. She stays busy hanging out with neighbors, friends and family, working out, sleeping, cleaning and cooking. She started looking for a job to stay busy also. She went to the vet the other day and held a dog that someone left at the doorstep. NO KRISTEN. Haha.
A wreath Kristen and her mom made.
Oh, it takes 20 combat flights to get an Air Medal. I have 10, so I'm halfway there.
Haha. I say the title as a joke but it's true so that's pretty cool. I've flown six combat sorties now. Your first 20 combat sorties get an air medal. Every 20 after that you get an additional little pin on your medal. The people who leave here are averaging seven air medals. So I'll make my goal to leave here with eight. That's 160 flights..... That's a lot.
I've done some pretty cool stuff so far here. Unfortunately there's not too much I can talk about. I can tell you that while I'm in the plane it's awesome. Afghanistan looks eerily like Southern Texas. Which I'm not sure sounds bad for Texas or bad for Afghanistan. But either way it's mostly flat, in the southern region, and dry. The five hour blocks that I'm in the plane are basically dust free! Which is AWESOME! Clean air is great. Also, the sunrises are beautiful. I said the word "pretty" the other morning in the plane to the crew describing the sunrise and got flak, but it was.....pretty. I've been flying the midnightish lines so my days have been completely backwards. I'm awake every night and sleep during every day.....it's weird being tired at 8am
My first camel spider.....it's not that big
I have been assigned an additional duty over here. I'm now also the Assistant to the Chief of Scheduling. Which is basically just me helping out the scheduler. Scheduling is a tough job. The Chief of Scheduling right now for our squadron is a pilot, but he's not one of our pilots. He is on a non-flying deployment where his whole job is to make the schedule. Which may sound easy but we're flying 24 hours a day here. And we're always upgrading people and keeping currencies with different flying tasks and techniques so it's a TOUGH job. Everyone is always asking for their PFA (Personal Flying (subsitute word "flying" as you see fit) Agenda) to be looked after and such so there's a lot of qweep (Air Force word for paperwork) to do. So anyway..., I'm slowly being trained and tasked with different things with the job. I'm basically going to be the scheduler for about 3-6 days a month to let him have some days off (he hasn't had one in three months).
Which reminds me to tell you that I'm on a day off right now. Which may sound good but I don't want it. I want to fly everyday! Once I get my hands into the scheduling biz some more I'll make sure my PFA is taken care of.
We wear pencil pocket patches over here when we're not flying. It's the small patch that covers our pencil pocket on our left arm. The squadron made some number patches. Numbered 1-69. Each pilot gets one that corresponds to the number of who the next one is to go home. I showed up here and got number 57. I just got moved to number 51 so the countdown has started! Haha.
I also got some pencil pocket patches made for the Lieutenants out here. There are only three of us pilot Lieutenant types here right now. And we have to stick together. It's called the LPA (Lieutenant Protection Agency). Every squadron has one. It's just to help us stick together since we're the young/new guys. And in this squadron we need it since we're outnumbered 20-1 over here. The rest of our squadron is comprised of half Captains and the rest crusty Majors and Lieutenant Colonels. We're really all cool with each other so it's just kind of a fun thing to do. I'm picking up the patches today. They are brown and sand colored and say "MFLPA" which stands for Mother Freakin' Lieutenant Protection Agency. Haha. Everyone is going to get a kick out of it over here.
This is why I'm glad I'm aircrew
A few buddies and myself also made a music video. I can't say too many more details on it because it's still in the works but it's pretty funny.
Kristen sent me a picture of Dallas "playing" frisbee
I talk to Kristen over the phone just about everyday, thanks to the internet, and email. I talked to my dad one via phone and some emails. And I kinda talked to my mom once on the phone (she's not up with this computer thing just yet). So overall it's not that bad over here. I'll take more pictures next blog. Peace!
Wow. So much I want to talk about. So much I want to tell. There are so many stories. But some of them I can't tell, and I have a crappy internet connection so far so this won't be as detailed as I'd like it.
My bags on deployment day 0.
Navy SEALS kicks some ASS!!!
Everyone in the terminal listening to the news of Osama Bin Laden
I left Virginia Beach, VA at 0200 from a Navy instilation on my way here. While waiting to board the plane the news hit of Osama Bin Laden being killed. Wahoo! But really..., they couldn't wait till I was over here so I could of at least maybe had a hand in it....? Geeez. It was a funny joke that the plane/deployment was cancelled because of the situation. We won! Haha. Not a shot....I'm still over here.
Land after crossing the ocean!
My plane over there
This is the "hotel" on base in Ramstein AB, Germany. Kristen and I definitely need to go!
Me in front of my tent
Beer #1
Beer#2
I landed from VA in Germany. We were allowed to get off for two hours (but not leave the airport/base) so that sucked. From there we flew somewhere else. That's where we were allowed off and told to wait for the next flight to my location. It ended up taking 36 hours there. But it was OK. They gave me a bunk bed in a tent. And they had a two beer limit per 20 hours...... So I max performed that limit while I was there. The beers there are giant (probably 32oz..., I couldn't tell because they were in another language). And there's no alcohol on base here so everyone tries to make the best of it. The food wasn't bad there either.
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View from the cockpit looking back during flight
From there I rode on a C-17 to my location. It was so cool to fly into a war zone. We all had to put on our flak vests (bullet resistant) and helmets.......cool. I asked the crew if I could ride in the front and they allowed me to. So that was AWESOME! We flew about 20 Americans and 70 foreigners (I'm at a NATO base). They smelled. Haha. We landed in the middle of a lightning storm so that was fun. We waited to de-plane till it stopped. My commander met me at "baggage claim", helped me with my bags and took me to dinner. It was pretty cool. Then he showed me to my room (it's a tent). It was about 1130pm local time and everyone was sleeping in there already. He told me the measure of a man is how quiet you can be. Haha. Yeah, try to be quiet with three HUGE bags and trying to find sheets and stuff in the dark...... it was quite an experience.
Here's my room. It's hard to see because there's no lights
The next morning I got up and caught the bus to the squadron (it's a 25 minute bus ride to our squadron). This base is so big! There are 30 different nations here and about 30,000 personnel. The U.S. only makes up about 1/4 of it. That makes it good and bad I'm finding out.
I started my in processing on day one and that pretty much took up the whole first day. For the next eight days it was more of the same. I've been on the schedule to work twice since then doing squadron stuff...like driving the crew bus (crews to and from the flight line). It's kinda cool. But not what I'm here to do ya know....... It's so funny that we're at war here but I still have to go through all of the usual in processing stuff that you would go through in the states. Our military is the best! So I'm all done with my in processing now and I fly for the first time tomorrow (Friday). I can't wait!
Me driving for the first time out here
Me in front of an MRAP-ATV...Think 4x4, diesel and bomb resistant...yeah. BA!
Let me tell you about or squardon bus. It runs once an hour. It makes three stops. Once at the squadron, once at one camp site, and once at another. It takes one hour to make the complete circle. We don't have official drivers. Whoever has been riding on the bus the longest, for that particular trip, becomes the driver. I drove on day two. Haha. I didn't know where I was going. Traffic here is crazy (tanks, MRAPS, civilians, foreigners, locals) and the drivers side is on the right. Haha. Too funny! It was a blast.
Me in the C-5
View from on top the mighty Galaxy (five stories up)
A C-5 from Dover came here yesterday morning. I got one of our crew buses and went out there to meet them. The pilot was my flight commander. I took a few of the guys to the DFAC (dining facility) and picked up food for the whole crew. C-5's don't spend the night here.....must be nice.
Well, I've been talking to Kristen as much as possible. Usually once a day. We run 24 hour ops over here so my internal clock is always messed up and I end up calling Kristen at weird hours. We're 9 1/2 hours ahead of central standard time.
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