29 Nov

Back on the night cycle again – it’s supposed to be the test pilot’s chance for a break but so far that hasn’t happened. My first night back I flew a mission and was reminded for the 20^th time why I don’t like flying nights. It was a beautiful night – cold but the moon was almost full and there was no haze at all. Still, having all the extra weight strapped on my head for over five hours makes for a long night. For the past two nights I have been at work for over 12 hours trying to get acft up. That lull in maintenance is over. I had my first engine try to seize up. It was just out of overhaul from the states but something got knocked around inside because when I started it up it made an angry grinding noise and shook the whole acft. It is a little frustrating because of all the man-hours involved just to have to do it all over again on a component that was supposedly just repaired. The internet has been down the last couple of days – not good timing since I just started pushing people for the next quarter’s payment. It does make me realize how much I rely on having it. I watched some of the Republican debate last night on TV – I could only handle small does. I understand the concept behind having average (whatever that means) people ask the questions but after watching the YouTube format I couldn’t help but be saddened by the loss of dignity in the whole process. We have reduced serious debate to a reality game show. Not to mention the fact there is a reason exports should ask the questions – they actually understand the details. Sometimes a little elitism is a good thing.

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A view looking into Syria. Right at the border everything gets a lot greener and just looks more prosperous. It's a stark reminder of how much the basic infrastructure of Iraq has suffered.

This is Walls up in Al Asad hauling a passenger's gear out to the aircraft. We have a great reputation for hauling whatever they give us and it is all due to the hard work of the guys in the back. As pilots all we do is coordinate it but they get to do all the heavy lifting. It is amazing the stuff that gets brought out to us but somehow they fit it all in.

This is me sitting on the roof, listening to music and reading my paper. I was actually waiting for the day flights to get home. They ran into delays and didn't get back until well after dark.

The last couple of days have been beautiful. This is sunset over the base as seen from on top one of the buildings on the flight line.

25 Nov

Thanksgiving felt pretty much like any other day – I flew (pre-phase test flight) and ate. The only thing that really distinguished it was the crowds and decorations at the chow hall. Actually the last few days have been pretty packed – for the first time since we have been here I have had to wait to get inside. The increase isn’t military (no units are switching out at the moment) it is all civilians. All the security and checkpoints inside the base are manned by Ugandans (yet another duty we have managed to contract out). The rumor has it that we are having a changing of the guard so to speak. One company is taking over from another or at least their uniforms are all different. So until the swap is complete we will have crowded meal times. This new group is rather interesting – all the women have really short hair (crew cut short) and there are some guys that don’t look a day over 14. I would like to find out more about them but their English is pretty much limited to greetings and “Thank you Sir”. I flew my last day flight yesterday – I switch to nights tomorrow. It was a long one (7.9 hours) but one of my most enjoyable. I was flying with my favorite crew and I actually got to see some new country. We landed at a base right on the Syrian border – you could throw a water bottle out of the acft and it would land in Syria. I was a little surprised at what a marked difference there was between the countries. We were able to do some other interesting things but those pictures and stories will have to wait for a different time and format.

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19 Nov

The last week has been pretty slow – we actually started and finished a phase since the last time I wrote. It was five days from the time it went in until the test flight was complete and it was back doing missions. We haven’t even had any big breaks – acft have come back broken but it has all been quick fixes and they are back up before the next mission. I don’t know if our acft are adapting to the environment and getting all the bugs worked out of if it is just the calm before the storm. Speaking of storms – it still hasn’t rained here. We are seeing more clouds but so far it hasn’t amounted to more than a few drops. It is going to be an ugly mess when it happens – there is a two inch layer of powder that turns to goop when water is added. I keep forgetting Thanksgiving is this week. The only way we keep track of the holidays around here is by the changing decorations in the chow hall. They go all out with stuff hanging from the ceilings, different table cloths and these big 3-D Styrofoam cutouts to mark the occasion – Statue of Liberty (4^th of July), witch (Halloween), ship and tank (Marine Corp birthday), turkey (Thanksgiving) ect. The company that runs the place is out of Kuwait and I can only imagine how strange this must appear to the workers. However, as anther example of how much our culture has spread, most of the workers I talked to know about our holidays (at least the ones who speak some English do). I would like to wish a Happy Birthday to the parents, Alice, and Steve. I am always reluctant to mention names since that means I am sure to leave someone out but those are the ones I remember – love you guys.

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This is a little oasis out in the western desert that I think used to be a military base. It always amazes me to see how many resources in this country were focused towards war. As I fly over I can see miles of defensive positions dug into the sand. They are all across the country and pretty much useless without air power. It reminds me a lot of Albania - another country ruled by a paranoid dictator. It's not hard to believe this country has been fighting someone since the early 80's.

You may be sick of the Euphrates river but here is another shot of it winding across the desert.

This was taken yesterday as we were debriefing our mission. It was a good day :)

12 Nov

I have managed to weasel my way onto a couple of missions over the last few days. More guys are starting to give up their flights. It’s a lot more work flying but it sure makes the time go by faster. There are a couple of guys who promise their wives they won’t volunteer for flights – I know Wendi doesn’t like it when I do but she knows how much I enjoy it. My first flight was a pretty typical one out west but the one yesterday was a lot of fun. It was hauling sling loads out of Al Asad. The weather started out marginal but by the time we had landed and organized the loads the dust had blown through and it stayed clear the rest of the day. We ended up moving close to 70,000lbs of cargo both internally and by sling load. We actually hauled more than they expected and did it in less than 5 hours. It’s always a good feeling to be able to work at your full capability and know you are making a difference. The Marine Corp celebrated its birthday on the 10^th by giving everyone two beers. As you can imagine it was very tightly controlled and you had to drink them in the chow hall right after they gave them to you. I don’t even like beer but I decided to take one and it was actually pretty good. The first guys started going on leave over the past week. It’s good to see them go – one more milestone. No one really wanted to leave this early but they had to be spaced out because we can’t have more than a certain percentage gone at any given time. We now fall under the Germany unit out of Balad for administrative things like awards and other paperwork which includes assignments of leave dates. We figured they would take care of their own but they didn’t have to be so blatant about it. They gave our five guys the first five days of December and kept all the Christmas dates for themselves. They could at least pretend to be nice.

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This is on the landing pad on another base. We just finished dropping off sling loads and had landed to unload some mail containers.

During our mission yesterday the loading ramp at Al Asad was packed. There were five civilian planes, a C-130 and a C-17. We had to park out on the taxiway to get our cargo loaded. I couldn't get a good shot that showed the whole scene this one captures the atmosphere.

This is a mosque that sits just outside one of the little bases we land in.

I took this yesterday on our way to Al Asad. That white line was really distinct across the horizon. It took us awhile to realize it was sunlight reflecting off the wave of dust heading our direction.

This is a small lake we fly by on our way out to the bases out west. It always fascinates me - just the contrast between the blue water and the nothing surrounding it.

We are loading 155MM rounds. We learned pretty quick that those wooden pallets are just about worthless with that much weight on them. Each round weighs 90lbs and a pallet of them is over 2300lbs. As soon as they set the pallet on the rollers it collapsed. Now we put them all on metal Air Force pallets but that was a painful learning experience.

7 Nov

I haven’t been doing much of anything except a few maintenance flights the last couple of days. I did the pre-phase test flight on 168 on 1 Nov and started the post-phase flights on 5 Nov. Our maintenance guys are getting really good – our goal is to do a phase in 7 days and these guys are pushing them out in 4-5 days. I was really hoping to get the entire post-phase completed in one flight but one of the engines failed its checks and the autorotation was out of limits. I finished the test flight today and now we are just waiting for the next one. The day missions are starting back up but now that we moved more pilots to days I am only on the schedule about once a week. Some of the other PCs are getting tired of flying so I may be able to take some of their flights. Things have been a little less mundane on the night side. A few days ago we had a big mission to pick up troops after they had completed a raid. Right as the first acft was touching down there was an explosion off the front side that damaged some of the cockpit windows and pushed out all of the side windows. It turns out explosives one of the soldiers was carrying detonated in his backpack. They put all the injured on the acft and flew them to the hospital in Baghdad. The next night we sent parts and maintainers over to fix the damaged acft. Everyone is back now but it shook the crew up pretty good. I really feel for the infantry unit – they are only a few weeks away from going home.

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2 Nov

Staying up for 36 hours to reverse out worked out about as well as I could expect. My sleep schedule was whacked and I kept waking up at 2 AM for the first couple of mornings. I would be good until about 3 PM at which point my body said enough. I was scheduled to fly my first day back on days but Christl took my flight which was probably a good idea even though I wanted to do the mission. The 31^st was my next mission and that morning it went from beautiful to less than ½ miles visibility as the dust rolled in. It finally cleared up enough for us to fly around 1PM. It was scheduled to be a long mission so we knew we were going to have to drop some legs even before we took off but things got worse when we landed at Al Asad. Our mission was to haul ammo out to a FOB. None of the Marine helicopters can fit 463L pallets (metal Air Force pallets that lock into a roller system we use) so they haul stuff on wooden pallets which are really hard to slide across our floors. Communications got mixed up and the ammo guys were told we didn’t want 463Ls so they showed up with 16 wooden pallets that weighed over 2200lbs apiece ( by the way, I found out 155mm rounds weigh 90lbs apiece). We knew it was going to be ugly when the forklift placed the first pallet on the rollers and the pallet broke in three places. We worked out a better system but by that time we were rapidly running out of daylight. We were only able to load 4 pallets before we had to call it quits if we were going to get anything out to the FOB. As it was we didn’t get back to Al Asad until after sunset, so we had to put goggles on to fly back to TQ. It was a good learning experience but frustrating. I hate being the weal link in the chain and even though we had a lot of factors against us it’s embarrassing not to be able to complete our mission. We are never able to just finish it the next day because they always have something else for us. So the supported unit has to figure out another way to get what they needed or get back in line to request us again. We had a rough night last night and all 4 of the aircraft that flew came back broke but it gave me an interesting day. It was a beautiful morning – clear with a light breeze and 58 degrees! It was such a nice day that I was wishing the test flights would last a little longer – one of those days when there is not much I would rather be doing than flying. It’s not often that I think I am overpaid (at least not over here) but the thought did cross my mind this morning :).

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