Whoa! I didn't realize that a week has gone by since I wrote last. Honestly it was a pretty dull week until the last couple of days when it turned eventful (and very cool) out here.
Sunday I was on the AM watch so I was stuck behind the desk in the squadron for twelve hours again. This time it wasn't at night, but the same general idea still applies. Around 10 in the morning we had a visitor to the squadron. He was an Australian firefighter who works for the fire department out here on base. One of our crews had flown him down to the hospital several weeks back when he had a kidney stone. He came back to personally thank the squadron for the help we gave him. He gave T-Shirts to the crew of the bird that flew him and wrote a very nice letter to everyone involved in his medevac. The letter also said that he planned to present a plague to the medical clinic here, but I sincerely hope that that was a typo and he meant plaque.
Then yesterday I was on the 2nd up crew. It was an uneventful day so I went to bed early. I'm glad I did because at 0630 I was woken up by the radio blaring "Medevac, Medevac, Medevac". Luckily it was just for the 1st up crew so I rolled over and began to go back to sleep. About 5 minutes later our enlisted watch-stander came into the room to announce that we needed both birds for this one. A Humvee had rolled over injuring all three soldiers inside. Since head and neck injuries were involved they wanted to split the three patients between two helos. Within 30 seconds of him walking into the room I was lacing up my boots and sprinting for the squadron spaces to grab my helmet. 2 minutes later I was running down the flight line to my awaiting chariot. I beat the aircraft commander out there so it was up to me to throw on my gear and get the helicopter spinning up. Then the aircraft commander came out and we took off for the site of the accident. Since there are no landing pads out there we landed in the dirt about 150 feet from the vehicles. On takeoff our crewchief had noticed oil pouring down the side of our helicopter. The gauges read normal so we decided that trouble-shooting could wait until we had the patient safely to the hospital. 45 minutes later they carried him out to the helo and to the waiting doctors. We then repositioned off the hospital pad and shut down to have a look at the bird. It was absolutely amazing. Her entire left side was coated in oil. It looked like we had been painting with it. I've never seen anything like it. The crewchief climbed on top and checked the engines and transmission, but the source of the bleeding was not immediately apparent. Since our gauges were still showing normal we decided as a crew to take her home for some TLC. It turns out once we got home that a rubber gasket in the transmission was destroyed and that she was spewing transmission fluid out the whole time we were flying. They estimate that we left approximately 2 to 2.5 gallons in various places around Kuwait. She's been fixed now, but she got us home just fine. The tank holds 7.5 gallons and the manufacturer claims that the transmission can run dry for 60 minutes. I don't want to test it.
Tonight I flew a training flight and it was great. We flew day into night and there is nothing that compares to flying in the evening. Gorgeous!
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sounds like a blast.... I'm glad you're ok, you almost got an epic email (to come later, I promise!) wondering what you were up to. I do have one question... how bad to the injuries have to be to split 3 people into equal parts for 2 flights out..... Mr Duncan says the physics are... intriguing.
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