Pictures From the Other Side of the Fence

Yesterday I got to go out for a little training up North. We were going up there to give the British medical folks a chance to play with our helicopter and figure out how our litter management system works. Of course we turned it into a big photo op. So here are some of the pictures that we took while we were up there.

In one of my earlier posts I made reference to all the stuff we have to carry with us whenever we cross the border. Well, here I am carrying it all out to the bird before we launched. I've got my CamelBack backpack with a bunch of stuff in it, the kevlar helmet (which we usually don't carry but I needed it because we were going to be walking around at the base we were visiting), my M16 and M9, my night vision goggles, and my flight helmet with my knee-board, pocket checklist, gloves, chart, and navigation book in it. I'm also wearing my body armor with the removable ceramic chest plate and my survival vest.

On deck in Iraq. Unfortunately, for security reasons I can't tell you exactly where we were. Just kidding. (If you don't get it, click on the picture for the full size version).We were a bit surprised to see an Iraqi Airlines plane there. Actually I was kind of surprised that there is an Iraqi airlines. See how small it is compared to my helicopter?

One of the British ambulances. They use this for transporting patients inside the compound. No, there's not really any reason that I'm holding my M16 like that. It spent the rest of the day strapped to my back.
Now this wicked looking piece of machinery behind me, despite looking like it could wreak havoc on a small town, is actually another ambulance. This is what the Brits use for patient care outside the wires. It is one seriously tough vehicle. Again, no real reason for holding the weapon. Actually, in this case it's an M4. You can see the barrel of my M16 sticking out from behind my leg. I guess we like to hold our weapons during photos because then it makes us look tough. Maybe it just answers that age-old question of what to do with your hands during a picture. Plus when you turn it sepia it looks like a real "war photograph":
See what I mean? Without the rifle, it could just be a picture of a guy with a bullet-proof vest standing in front of his seriously up-armored family car.
We got both of the flight crews together to show our colors before we left. The one on the left is the Guam flag (which is pretty convenient because it says "Guam" in the middle of it). The British Captains that had played host to us all day were kind enough to take this photo for us.
After the previous photo, we took the time to properly fold the flag. We like having fun and a lot of the things we do are crazy and at times even silly, but we take great pride in our flag and never forget that too many men and women have paid with their blood to keep her flying.
Ahhh...the flight back home. I took this self-portrait as we were cruising over the deserts of Southern Iraq. I especially like it because of the Matrix-esque reflection in my Maui Jims. If you look closely, you can even see the other pilot.

Cool Stuff

I titled this blog "Cool Stuff" because that's pretty much how I feel right now. I don't know why, but I feel pretty good about things tonight. Maybe it's because I was able to call and talk to Tricia and Michenna today (it was Michenna's birthday so I had to hide in an empty office lest someone hear me singing "Happy Birthday" to her). It may be because I got to fly on two medevacs today (the second one turned into one of the scarier flights I've ever had, but more on that later). Whatever the reason, I think that life is pretty good right now. I really can't complain. I'm married to the most beautiful woman I know, I'm doing the job I've dreamed of having since I was in junior high school, and I'm serving in a warzone saving lives on a regular basis. It's awesome! I really feel blessed. I guess it's true that God watches out for drunks and fools, and while I've never qualified as the former I have more than made up for it with my extreme proficiency at the latter.

Anyway, on to the medevacs. The weather this last week has been absolutely horrible. On a good day, we've had between 1/2 mile and 2 miles of visibility. That sound's pretty good, but it really isn't flying weather. We really like to be able to see where we're going. Things like towers and power lines can sneak up on you really fast when your doing 170 knots ground speed at 300 feet or lower. That and the fact that helicopter pilots in general really dislike flying on instruments. You see, an airplane, if left to its own devices, will continue to fly. In fact, the T-34C that I flew back at the begining of flight school was so stable that you could be in an out of control spin and let go of the controls and the bird would right itself and re-stabilize on its own. Helicopters are a different beast entirely. They do not want to fly, and without constant control inputs (thankfully in the MH-60S a computer makes most of those inputs for us) they will stop flying. That means that it's really easy in bad visibility to literally lose track of which way is up and fly a perfectly good helicopter into the ground. Not a good thing.

Anyway, the point to that happy little flying lesson was that we haven't been flying much at all this week. Generally 2 miles visibility is the minimum at which we will launch, even on a medevac except in the most serious of cases. Well, this morning the visibility was just about there when we got a call for an Army Warrant Officer with serious back problems. They needed us to pick him up from one hospital and take him to an air force base so he could be evac'd to Germany. The visibility was pretty crappy, but it was daylight and actually quite an enjoyable flight. I even got to fly backwards for a little bit coming off the hospital pad (because of the winds) which is something that no airplane can do. Anyway, we got him to the AFB safely and made it home without incident.

The second medevac was a little different. It got called just after sunset and we were going into Iraq to pick up the patient. The visibility was almost as bad as it had been earlier, but at night it was just accentuated. Right after takeoff we started having problems with our navigation systems. Thankfully we were in a formation flight and able to navigate off of our wingman. The biggest concern was that our vertical speed indicator (the gauge that tells us how fast we're climbing or descending) is attached to our nav instruments so it was giving us erroneous readings. It was a practice in crew coordination to keep ourselves aware of our surroundings and keep an eye on the rapidly fading horizon to make sure we were flying safely. We picked up the patient and still could not get our instruments to work properly. The decision was made between the two aircraft that we would both land back at base and have them ground-ambulance the patient the rest of the way. On the way home the visibility became almost non-existant and if not for the fact that we were on night-vision goggles and our wingman was lit up like a Christmas tree it would have been extremely difficult to see anything. There have been very few times when I've been happier to be back on deck safely. Now I know why we spend so long training to do this mission.

Anyway, now that I've probably scared the snot out of Tricia and my mom, I should again emphasize that I am safe and that the Navy has spent a lot of money ensuring that I and those I fly with are prepared to face scary situations and know what to do in them. Maybe that's why I'm in such a good mood. Anyway, now it's time to try to translate my euphoria into some good dreams.

Always on Alert

Well, again due to network issues I have been unable to get into my blog for nearly a week. It's been a very busy week, though. On Monday, I was scheduled to do an instrument flight with the Commanding Officer. Normally instrument flights are about as exciting as waching paint dry. Fate had something entirely different in mind for us that particular afternoon. We were just finishing up our startup checks when base called us over the radio. There was a car accident along one of the highways just outside of the base. They wanted us to go fly overhead and take a look at it. Ironically, the flight surgeon was scheduled to fly with us that day. Anyway, we took off and got coordinates to the crash scene. We flew over it once and didn't see anything too dramatic, but they called us and told us to land and pick up one soldier to medevac to the hospital. We landed in the desert next to the crash sight and then realized how bad it had been. The soldier we picked up had some minor injuries, but the other soldier in the car was DOA. It really stuck in my mind the entire flight down to the hospital. I had to really concentrate on keeping my head in the task at hand. The soldier who died was stationed at the same base I am and there will be a memorial service on Saturday for him.

The next day I was actually on the alert and we got launched twice. The first one was a soldier being evac'd from up north. He was transferred from the other medevac helicopters into ours here and then we took him down south. I don't know what he had, but he was walking. The other call came at 0445. My dreams were interrupted so that we could fly as wing to go up north and pick up a soldier heading south. Thankfully, we only had to tag along for the first portion of the flight so I was back in bed by 0600. Then yesterday I got to fly a very chill training flight out over the desert. Good times were had by all.

Bikes, Corned Beef, and TV Junkies.

Well, it's been a pretty slow week for me. About the most exciting thing that happened to me this week is that I finally got myself a bike. Now, having to walk isn't the end of the world, but it's a lot nicer out here to have some wheeled transportation. Thankfully, since the Navy has been doing this "Air Ambulance" thing for over 4 years now, we've built up quite a collection of abandoned bicycles around the compound from which to choose. Unfortunately, most of them are broken down to varying degrees and so it can be tough to get one that works. Anyway, for the last couple of weeks I've had my eye on a bike that's been sitting on the rack with what appeared to be two flat tires. I'm not much on repairing bicycles and replacement parts are very limited here (the wheels are 26" but the BX sells only 25" and 27" tubes) so I was reluctant to grab it. Finally I decided to take it back to the trailer and see if I couldn't monkey my way through some simple repairs. As it turns out, the tubes didn't need replacing since they were merely low and not actually flat. So I filled them up and now she's mine. She's a beauty, too. I realize that I described the bike I used to have here as too gay for Liberace, but that had nothing on my current ride. It's a metallic lime-green girls beach cruiser complete with flames painted on the frame. I assure you, I will post a pic once I get one. Try to imagine me in my flight suit (don't be overwhelmed by the sheer manliness of that mental image, just flow with it). Now imagine me on a rediculously girly bike riding past about 300 Marines with a dumb smile on my face and singing showtunes. OK, I made up the showtunes part (although, for some reason I think "Meet Me in St. Louis" would be most appropriate), but you can imagine how well that goes.

Tonight's dinner was corned beef. As some of you are already aware, that is very high on my list of favorite things, just after snowflakes that melt on my nose and eyelashes. Anyway, the stuff they make here isn't half bad. It's certainly not like the stuff I have at home, but it's edible. Sadly, they don't serve it with cabbage, the savages. Anyway, today it was considerably better than the first time I had corned beef here last summer when they saw the word "brisquet" on it and decided to smother it in barbecue sauce. Yes, that is as gross as it sounds.

Finally, a bunch of pilots were sitting around the other night when we realized that this place really has turned us into TV junkies. I know that you look forward with eager, almost child-like anticipation to seeing what TV series I'm currently watching and I try not to disappoint, but I'm not the only one out here with that problem. Currently overtaking the squadron like wildfire are copies of all of the seasons of "Lost", "House", "Battlestar Gallactica" (season three comes out on March 18 which is 4 days after my birthday...just a thought), "24", "The Office", "Prison Break", and several other shows. It truly is crazy to see.

Oh yeah, one more thing that the CO wanted me to announce on my blog, though now that I think about it, I'm not sure how he knows about my blog...hmmm....anyway, when people find out I'm a pilot one of the first things they always want to know is "What's your call sign?" I've always been able to say I didn't have one, but there has been a resurgence in call signs here at the 2515th and I finally "drank the Kool-Aid" (if you don't get the historical reference, Google it) and put my callsign on my nametag. I tried to fight it, but it refused to die so here it is: Ike. However, the reasoning behind that call sign is on a need-to-know basis only. Sorry.

A While Between Blogs

Well, it's been over a week since my last blog entry. This time, however, I can't take all the discredit for leaving you hanging. Actually, that honor goes to some ship's captain in the Mediterranean who, if the news is accurate, was lazily dragging his anchor along the sea floor when he severed a couple of fiber-optic cables and cut off a huge swath of Southwest Asia from the internet. It's amazing how quickly you begin to miss such things when they're no longer available. The squadron was going nuts. It happened at the worst possible time. The internet went down on January 31. One day before payday. Thankfully, Tricia is back home paying all our bills, but there were guys who are paying their bills online from here that were really in a panic. Thankfully everything has been restored and now you can once again be treated to my rantings. Aren't you lucky?

It was certainly anything but an uneventful week for me. Since my last entry, I flew three medevacs. Two of them were flying wing for the aircraft that carried the patient into iraq. The other was taking a navy corpsman (not one of ours) who somehow got an air embolism while teaching a bunch of Marines how to hook up an IV. I just can't imagine how that could have happened. He was OK and we got him down to the military hospital without incident. Unfortunately, I can't really say the same for the guy we got called for on Saturday night. We were the wing aircraft flying up to a camp just north of the Iraqi border. The other bird picked up the patient and we started the 45 minute, 100-mile-plus trip to pass him over to another set of medevac copters (Army) who would then take him up to a burn specialist near Baghdad. Unfortunately, shortly after takeoff the guy started sucking down oxygen like it was going out of style and the other bird was running out of O2 bottles. We had some in the back of our helicopter, but the idea of landing two very tempting targets in the middle of Iraq at 2300 didn't really appeal to anyone so we pushed the birds to their performance limits to try to cut down the time as much as possible. They ran out of oxygen on short final into the field to make the switch to the Army birds and the man went into cardiac arrest during the transfer. The Army guys took off and we went to get fuel. As we were fueling up, we heard the Army call back to the tower that they were returning. There was nothing more that could be done for the guy. We fly so much and 99.9% of the flights that we do are relatively uneventful. We start to take for granted the idea that we can save everyone. It's a pretty sad moment when you realize that even with the best technology and intentions, sometimes it's out of your hands.

Anyway, on a happier note, I finally took some photos out here that I can post. I know you're a aquiver with anticipation!

Here I am with my beautiful piece of machinery. No. I'm not referening to AW3 Carathers in the background (though he, too is beautiful). I actually don't remember exactly what day this was, but we were getting ready to fly on one of last weeks training hops. Looking in my logbook, it looks like I flew 05 on the 30th.

This is what happens when a sand storm rolls through. The bright spots are where the flash caught the grains of sand in the air. The photo doesn't really do it justice, but visibility was less than 100 meters and the sky was about the same shade of orange as Mars in that old "Total Recall" movie. Thus we decided to go snap some pictures. Obviously, we had our pick of helicopters to pose with since nobody flies when it gets like this.

Last week I also got a package from Tricia and Michenna which was nice. Packages are always fun to get. Michenna drew this beautiful family portrait on her card to me. As far as I can tell, we're all going to church. Tricia is wearing her red shirt and denim skirt. Michenna has on her favorite pretty pink dress, both nicely accessorized with mathching shoes. Apparently I'm wearing my best pair of shorts and a clip-on tie. I also realize that that's a shoe-lace and not a high-heeled shoe I'm wearing. I hope. Anyway, this picture is now hanging on the fridge in my trailer because I thought that it was really cool.