The days are just clicking by. It still seems like a long time before we go home but the days aren’t long. Everything is going very smooth at work. The weather is still causing us problems but the aircraft are doing great. It is rare that an aircraft comes back with anything more than a minor problem that is fixed within hours. It’s a combination of getting the problems worked out of the aircraft and the maintenance guys being good at what they do. Yesterday we finally got 174 back up from the collapsed aft landing gear but for the last month and a half we have been flying the same mission load with six aircraft (usually five because one was in phase) as we were doing with eight. As I have said before maintenance usually goes in cycles but I hope this up cycle lasts until we leave. I did the first flight on 170 out of phase today and after it is done we only have two more. We should be all done with phases around the first of July. I’m not back to doing a lot of exercising yet but I am back flying missions. Yesterday was a fun mission – we flew a group of the Philadelphia Eagles cheerleaders around to different bases out west. They had a lot of fun flying with us and it was nice to talk with someone over here that isn’t associated with the military. It was a long day but anything a little different is always nice. The last group of people went on leave today – another milestone on the road. More and more pilots are getting their follow on assignments and it looks like a lot of us will be leaving within a couple of months of our return.
Dusty H 101 L 78
4 comments:
Would any of them end up deployed say to Afganistan or do all of you get a non-combat assignment first?ART
These days there is really no non-combat assignments unless you are teaching at flight school or find some niche slot like Egypt :). Our career manager will try to send you somewhere that isn't just leaving for a deployment but since all the units are deploying every couple of years it doesn't really matter. The best place to be is in a unit that is just getting back from over here. Then you will have the most time home which is why a lot of people try to extend and stay with the unit they just deployed with.
Do you suppose the easy maintenance is coming with time on the job? Familarity with conditions and the craft? Or, put another way, when you all get really good at what you are doing, you leave? (: Glad the days are zipping by. In an odd way, being sick probably helped. (:
It's a combination of getting good at what we do and the aircraft. We have a good system in place and people are very familiar with their jobs so when an aircraft returns with something broke there isn't any delay on starting the repairs. Also, as long as you have a good preventive maintenance program (which we do) then the more the aircraft fly the better they do. Every time we have an aircraft down for an extended period of time it takes a few missions to get the problems worked out and flying smooth again. Our aircraft fly almost every day or at least every other day so the problems tend to show up early on (like they did the first few months of the deployment).
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