Maintenance Check Flight

Yesterday was a very long, busy day for me. I was on the "Functional Check Flight" crew. Basically what that means is that after maintenance is performed on one of our helicopters, they assign a crew to go and fly it and make sure that it's safe to fly. OK, that's a very simplified version of it, but you get the general idea. Anyway, I got into work at 0500 and proceeded to spend the next 13 hours flying the helicopter and taking various readings. To add to the joy, it was about 48 degrees outside. I was soaked with sweat within the first 5 minutes. After we finished getting the bird back up I gave the plane captain a high five and as soon as I raised my arm, small birds fell from the sky dead from the fumes. It was very gross.

I went home and collapsed to watch a movie. Ended up watching "Cinderella Man" starring Russel Crowe. Far and away it was one of the best movies I have seen in a long, long time. Unfortunately, it also has the distinction of having one of the worst titles of any movie in a long, long time. The title makes sense with regards to the movie, but I think that if they had named it anything else it would have done much better than it did in the theaters. I highly recommend checking it out. Even if you don't like boxing (which I don't).

Today I am standing the 2nd up alert. Yesterday the 1st and 2nd up crews launched to medevac a 3 year-old Iraqi child. Everyone who wasn't involved in that was jealous. That's what we all want to do -- save babies.