22 Aug

It looks like I am done with night flying for awhile. It really helps to have two test pilots during the day – especially when we are rolling out phases every eight days. Getting an aircraft out of phase keeps you busy all day and even though I have done it many times it is not a good idea to jump from one aircraft to another doing test flight. You don’t have the time to research all the work that has been done so you end up missing things. So I am pulling out of the mission work to focus on maintenance, at least until we get another test pilot up. Brian and I split the day up which allows me to come in at lunch time and work until midnight. That way I am around when the missions launch to answer maintenance questions and do any test flights that need to be done prior to the mission. I just flew 174 back this evening from Al Asad. It has been up there for the past two weeks getting all the #2 flight control hydraulic components replaced. We hopped on one of our aircraft at midnight last night for the flight up there. They had multiple stops to make prior to Al Asad and the whole mission was a mess (two of our aircraft broke right before launch and I ended up doing a test flight right before heading north but that is another story) so we ended up not getting up there until 3:30 (it is only a 1/2 hour flight away). We got to bed around 5 and headed out to the aircraft at noon. The test flight itself went pretty smooth except for the normal pain of doing checks in the traffic pattern with strong winds. We linked up with a couple of UH-60s for the flight home and got here at 7:30 PM. It is going to be a great help having that other aircraft here. The guys did a great job getting it put back together.

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