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.