This is a series of pictures of what we do on slow afternoons in the maintenance world. You might think Friend is hard at work but he is actually trying to kill the computer's tank before it kills his (which when I tried it it was actually a lot like work).

This is the table in PC where we keep all the logbooks (record of the maintenance status of the aircraft, plus much more). All the work done on the aircraft is recorded on these computers so it is the first thing we check to determine the status of the aircraft. We are required to always fly with the logbook on board so we added all the maintenance manuals to the computers. It has helped us on many occasions when we find ourselves with a broken aircraft away from home. For some reason Steve designed the table as a stop sign with the Arabic work for stop on it. It is an octagon so each aircraft had an edge but as you can see now we are down to only seven.

A baseball game some of the guys in the unit organized a few days ago. Most of them are on the night shift so they were pretty much dead by the end. We probably won't see much more of these. The last couple of days it has been in the 90s by 10 in the morning.

This is a rare picture of the two guys actually running PC (at least for now). L-R Friend (he is taking Steve's job until he gets back from leave), Brian (who just went is getting ready to go on leave) and J.R. who is hanging out looking for test flights (or not).

This is taken inside the maintenance office a few days ago. Some of the crew members were enjoying a cup of coffee and some conversation before heading out to work (L-R Jeff, Tim, Brian)

Here is Steve hard at work with all his gear on. We had some sort of threat on base so everyone had to get dressed up. It was a regular occurrence on our last deployment but thankfully rare this time around.

I had to post one more picture of dust, hopefully this was our last dust storm of the season (we haven't had one in almost a week). It almost looks like aircraft in a fog bank.

15 May

I am back at it – at least on a limited scale. On April 29^th I went running and after a mile I thought I was going to pass out – it was like running at 8000’. I then tried biking with the same effect. I felt perfectly fine except I had no energy and I started being unable to sleep for more than a few hours a night. On May 1^st I flew a mission and about halfway through I started feeling really bad with a fever and my whole body aching. I didn’t realize how bad I was until I got out of the seat at the end of the flight and had a hard time walking. At first I figured it was the flu but the only symptom I had was constant fevers. They would come and go day and night and medication had no effect on them. After a week of IVs and feeling sorry for myself, the Doc diagnosed it as Q fever and started me on antibiotics which stopped the fevers right away. Q fever is an interesting illness – I won’t go into details but you might want to look it up (the pictures I posted earlier of the dust have a direct bearing on this). It has been a week since then and I am doing much better. My appetite is back and I am trying to eat every meal to get my strength back. I am up to about five hours a day of being on my feet before I have to lie down. I will probably be another week before I can fly. It should have been a good time to catch up on my reading but mostly I have sat in my chair staring at the TV. I don’t know what sick people did before TV. As far as the unit goes things appear to be running as normal. 081 got shipped off to the crusher and they tried to take 174 (they need more parts for the F model) but we convinced them we could fix it so that is still moving along. There is other news – the promotion list came out May 1^st and I am on the list for CW4. I won’t actually pin on the rank until March of next year but it’s nice to know I made it. Also, it looks like my next assignment is going to be in Egypt working with the Egyptian Chinooks. It’s a one year assignment and right now I am working on the details to make sure Wendi is able to travel with me. So prayers that it will be a smooth process – we have had more than enough of living apart.

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Everyone checking out the damage. You can't really see from this angle but there is a layer of tires on top of the metal pallets that acted as shock absorbers in an attempt to replicate the missing struts.

This is right after they landed on the pallet. The guy running is Ocasio - they came to a hover and threw a mic cord out so he could plug in and talk the pilots down. The trick is to get it centered on the pallet. The aircraft is stable with the rotors turning at 100% but the concern is that when the engines are shut down and the rotors slow the aircraft can start rocking if it isn't centered. It shook a little on shut down but overall it went really smooth.

This is 174 coming in to land back at home base. It was strange looking flying with the aft landing gear removed.

This is Brian showing how high the front of the aircraft was with no back end. The tubes his hands are below should be about head high. He said it was quite a struggle to get in the cabin door.

This is a better view of the damage. The aircraft ended up resting on its landing gear - they just weren't in the proper position. It is designed to collapse like the one on the left. The right one broke away the housing which is going to cause the most problems to repair.

174 sitting a little low in the back end. From a distance it actually looks almost normal.

27 Apr

This seems to be somewhat of a routine. Once again I was supposed to fly and once again we have what is now the worst dust storm of the year. It’s too bad because it would have been a good mission with good crews flying it. I was able to get a test flight in before the dust rolled in around noon. I ended up coming back to the room after lunch since nothing was moving at work and as this is supposed to last for several days I have decided to take tomorrow off. It has been a couple of weeks so it will be nice to sleep in. Aircraft 174 is the other big happening around here in the last week. They managed to land a few feet short of the pad at a FOB near here. Everyone was fine but they hit just right to collapse both aft landing gear. It took a few days to get everything together and come up with a plan. Four days ago they got a crane on site to lift the back end up, remove the damaged landing gear and set it on pallets. Then Brian and J.R. flew it back here and landed on another set of pallets (we are getting way too much practice at that). It is going to be down for a little bit but there wasn’t any major structural damage so it will be back flying. In other news we got three new pilots in from Alaska a couple of days ago. They are replacements that were requested back in September after 171 crashed and CPT Pyun left. At least they made it before the end.
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These pictures look a lot like the ones from Mars. The only difference is that for some reason people live here.

This is what it looked like when I arrived at work this morning. A good day to stay on the ground or as Brian said when he first looked outside this morning -"It's a snow day" and went back to bed.

17 Apr

So much for the end of the dust - the worst one of the year so far rolled in last night. I can tell if the dust is back when I wake up because my throat will be dry and I can taste the dust (not to mention the fact it is all over my pillow). It was that way this morning plus the wind was rattling the windows so I knew it was a good one. Right now I can’t see more than bout 50 yards. I was supposed to fly today but the decision not to was pretty easy. Instead I took the opportunity to finish up fixing the cooling systems in the aircraft. They now work in all the cockpits. The guys in the back have the same setup but they think it is too much of a pain to get it running and not worth the effort. They might change their minds once the 120F days hit and we are staying cool up front. Between the dust and lack of missions there hasn’t been much going on. 081 is all packaged up and ready for shipping so the maintainers are all waiting for us to fly some more hours and drop the next aircraft into phase. The newest fad over here is horseshoes. We have two sets over here (the one that I brought is holding up quite well – thanks parents). Whenever the weather is even halfway decent you can hear them clanking away in the back. The dust does keep the temperature down – yesterday was 106.

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Palmer and Joice are pulling equipment out of the avionics closet. Just about anything that isn't used on a F model and that we can use here is coming off. We figure it is a whole lot better than just crushing it all.

The aft pylon has already been removed (you have to do this to get it inside an airplane) and Donovan is taking off the missile warning equipment.

Here is Askwig removing the chaff and flare buckets off the aircraft.

These next few are some pictures I took of 081. We received word yesterday that it was headed for the new F model line (they aren't going to repair the cracks). Which means it is going to be shipped back to the states, have all the main components removed and crushed into a cube. So of course the first question we asked is -What can we take? They gave us a list and within hours everything was stripped off. It was like watching kids in a candy store.

Back by request - this is a battlefield update. It might be a little hard to see but if you enlarge it it will become clear. Steve went with an insurgents v. army motif. The insurgents are on the left as you can tell by their mis-matched uniforms, use of vehicles and giant animals. They are basically throwing everything they have at us. The environment has definitely been a factor in this battle as we seem to lose men during every dust storm.

This is Rieck heading in to drop off the M-4s after a mission. For those of you who don't know, M-4s are the rifles slung across his back. They are a shorter version of the M-16. All the pilot's are issued one and we carry them with us on missions - something to give us a little more reach than our pistols in case we end up on the ground somewhere we aren't supposed to be.

This is a classic example of the difference between people who know how to grow plants and those who don't. These are three of the trees we received at Christmas. Mine is the one on the right and the other two are being raised by SSG Hunt. She finally decided to rescue mine from in front of my door. I assumed it was too far gone but she thinks she can revive it. I understand water helps these things - who knew?

The one native plant with flowers that I have seen close enough to photograph. It is in one of the dirt filled barricades next to our office. The flowers only open up in the morning and close soon after the sun hits them.

5 Apr

We are pretty much just going through the motions over here. Our flying has developed a pattern with dust storms rolling in every three or four days. The last couple have only lasted for a day so we may be approaching the end. Yesterday was the ninth month mark in our deployment. I read with some amusement that later this summer the Pentagon is hoping to reduce deployments to 12 months followed by 12 months at home. The concern is that the current situation is unsustainable but I don’t see how a year deployed for a year at home is sustainable either. Who would want to make a career of the military when you are going to spend half of it deployed? You are not going to get the best and brightest that’s for sure. I find it just a tad ironic that this is all under the same administration that vowed to not become engaged in nation building like the previous one did in Kosovo. Looking back on my three deployments to that country I can safely say that they kept their promise – this is nothing like Kosovo. These days Kosovo would hardly even qualify as a training exercise. Ah – the innocence of youth – if we only knew what was in store.

Nothing much to report on the flying side. I have done a few long day missions but nothing out of the ordinary. Maintenance is going well and yesterday Brian gave me my MTP check ride, his first as a ME. We were worried about weather rolling in so we did the whole test flight backwards (flight checks, hover checks, and then ground checks). It made it interesting and we figured if I could do it backwards then I must know it well enough :) The test flight was on 081 which we are dropping into phase early because of sheet metal problems. For some reason it is developing a lot of cracks up by the aft rotor head. Rivets are popping out and a couple of stringers cracked in half. All that was repaired and I flew it a couple of days ago on a seven hour mission. After landing we inspected it and the stringers had new cracks, so there is a bigger problem. Rather than limp it along to phase we decided to just drop it now which will give us a few extra days to work on it.

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I caught Jackson mid-way through his breakfast - he looks a little surprised. Speaking of breakfast - I found that these croissants that are wrapped in plastic are a great thing to take on early morning flights. After a couple of hours on the dash they are nice and warm and just like out of the oven.

These Ospreys just beat us into the base so we had to set down and wait until all their passengers offloaded and they departed until we could move onto the main pads, offload our paxs and get refuel. The refuelers at this base are a little out of control with their paranoia about safety but that is a story for another time. It was fun watching the Ospreys depart - they don't look quite right but they work.

Another picture of Marines milling around the back of the aircraft waiting until their bags get loaded so they can load. A couple of months ago they would stand behind the engines to get warm but now they are all packed into the center trying to stay out of the way of the blast. The exhaust is around 1200F so you can imagine it isn't real pleasant on a hot summer day or even a warm spring day for that matter.