I’m heading back home tonight, finally, but I almost got stuck out here for another 4 days.
Last night we took off on a normal resupply mission up a particular river valley, but roughly halfway into the flight, we received a radio call that an American soldier had fallen into the river during a training exercise, and we were asked to assist search and rescue activities. We immediately put our routine mission on hold and began flying up and down the river looking for the lost soldier. After three grueling hours of searching (in the dark, with no moonlight, and storms approaching) we were relieved by a pair of Army aircraft with much better equipment, so we stopped to refuel. We ended up getting stuck at the refuel point for several hours as thunderstorms rolled through. We normally never fly during the day, for safety reasons, so the concern was that we would have to spend the night at the remote location, meaning that I would probably miss this evening’s flight home. The weather broke around 4am, and so we took off and were able to make our way back to base, although over an hour of the flight back was spent in broad daylight. In total, were were out for 10 hours and flew for 6.6 hours.
None of the aircraft or ground personnel involved were able to locate the lost soldier in the dark. His body was recovered a few hours after sunrise, about 5 miles downriver from where he fell in, meaning we must have flown over him at least 6 times and not seen him. What a crappy way to end my trip. 
Just two more weeks and then I head back home. I miss home. I have a Twitter account now, but it’s hard for me to use with such spotty Internet access. But that’s not the point of this update.
Today was a fun day at work. We have an old beater helicopter that is on its last legs (only 15 flight hours until it has to go back to the factory to get rebuilt) and we used it to do some training. The highlight was before the training, when two pilots and I took it out for a spin during the day to make sure it still works. After about 3 minutes of hovering, one of the pilots suggested, “Hey, we should let Darrell fly this thing.” So they put me up in the front seat and let me hover and fly around the pattern for 30 minutes or so. At first the other pilot just gave me the cyclic, but after I seemed to hover fine, he also gave me the collective. After hovering and sliding left and right and doing a few landings and takeoffs from a hover, the pilot taxied out to the runway and let me takeoff and fly around the pattern a couple of times. I never did get control of the pedals, I had my hands full with just the cyclic and collective. It was a lot of fun.
Later that evening, we went over to one of our customer sites (with me safely back in my crew chief seat) and did some insertion/extraction training, with about 15 dust landings, so I got a lot of good training as well as our customers.
All in all, it was a fun day. We don’t get to do training as often as I’d like, as we spend most of our time doing logistics runs, so it’s a real treat when we get to go out and “play in the sand.”
I’m back on the road. Every couple of days we get a new cargo plane to come in with supplies. Usually, it’s an Air Force C-17, but every now and then we get planes in from Volga-Dnepr, a Russian air transport contractor. Usually, the aircraft is one of their An-124 cargo planes, roughly equivalent to an a C-5 Galaxy. When we transport our helicopters overseas (not often) we use these aircraft, since they won’t fit in any American cargo planes.
I’ve been overseas now for three weeks. The temperature is not so bad… it’s gets up to about 85 during the days and down to the low 40’s at night when we fly. At least I’m not wearing 4 layers of clothes this time, so it’s much nicer. I have not had a chance to take many pictures, mostly because the only thing of interest is when we go fly, and we do that only at night, so there isn’t much to see. (On that note, if anyone can figure out a way for me to take pictures through my goggles without having to take my helmet off, that would be splendid.) I did get to spend the day at one of the Army’s forward operating bases, which was entertaining considering it was only for a day. I am glad to be back at our normal compound, though.
It’s cold here. We fly at night, and for the past week, it has been hitting -16ºC during our flights (That’s 3ºF for you non-metric types). That doesn’t count the wind chill when we have the doors open. It’s pretty miserable if you don’t have enough clothes on. I’m actually pretty well off, but my feet could use some help. I am learning a great deal about what kind of gear I need over here in the winter (namely, anything thick, heavy, layered, and blocks the wind). In other cold-related news, we have a little gazebo area with a fire pit and a half-moon shaped pond. The pond has been freezing more and more and the central fountain is forming stalagmites! Here is the most recent picture of it’s growth:
Also, I stole a meme from my friend Nat…
Create your own album cover!
Step 1: Go to Wikipedia’s random article page. The first article you get is the name of your band.
Step 2: Go to the Random Quotations page. The last four words of the last quote is the album title.
Step 3: Go to Flickr’s Interesting photo page. Third picture, no matter what it is, is your album cover.
Step 4: PROFIT! (Okay, actually, you take those three elements and combine them using your favorite image editor, and voila!)
Here is my result:
I haven’t made a blog post since my return from overseas, so I have some catching up to do. Heather is much better about posting in a timely manner at her blog, so you should be reading her blog, too, if you don’t already. 
Anyway, here goes…
1) I got back from my overseas trip on December 2nd. It went well, and the trip was a really good one. It was really great to finally get to work with the people we support directly. Also, I got 130 hours of flight time, which is quite a bit for only 2 months.
2) Shortly after my return from oversea, Heather and I took a week-long vacation in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. This was our 3rd visit to Playa del Carmen (as well as our 3rd stay at the lovely Playa Maya hotel on the beach!), and we really enjoyed it. Heather remained “unsick” for almost the entire trip! Next time our goal is for her to feel great the entire time. I guess I just have an iron stomach or something, as I felt fine the whole time.
3) After being off for nearly two weeks after my return, I finally went back to work. Getting back to work was rather anti-climactic. Over the holiday season, there isn’t really anything going on, so there wasn’t much to do.
4) Even though there wasn’t much work to do, I still manage to smash my finger while reinstalling an engine on a Super Puma. It was quite a scare! I’ll spare you the details, but I will say that at the time I was convinced I was going to lose my finger, but now it is almost completely healed up (note: linked picture is *not* gross, I promise), although I need to exercise it more before I get full range of motion back.
5) I got to help fly Santa in to our company’s Kid’s Christmas party! It wasn’t much of a flight, but the kids thought it was pretty awesome. Heather blogged about it already, but the pictures can be found here.
6) We bought a new 42″ plasma TV to replace our broken one in the living room. When we move, this beauty will go in our bedroom, and we’ll buy another, more expensive(!), plasma (or maybe LCD) TV for the living room.
7) Speaking of moving, our new house (link to floorplan) should start getting built in a week or so, and should be finished at the end of March or the beginning of April. I’m very excited to move into a real house!
We have sort of adopted a new cat. The is this (presumably) homeless cat that has been sleeping in the bushes next to my garage and has been greeting us for a few weeks now. Well, it got down below freezing here the last few days, so Heather decided that it would be best to give this cat some shelter for a while. The only problem is that our cat HATES other cats, so we have to keep them separated. We recently bought a heating pad for our cat, and she loves it! Here’s a picture of what happens when you put the heating pad in a basket!
9) I’m leaving again on my next trip overseas on Monday, Jan. 7th. I’ll be back on Feb. 28th. I had to spend several hundred dollars on extra cold weather gear, because I haven’t exactly needed it anytime in the last decade. The weather forecast at my destination for Tuesday is a high of 33F and a low of 11F, with snow. In fact, it’s snowing there now, and snow is forecast for everyday until I get there. Brrrr.
10) Heather and I will be heading to San Antonio to visit family and friends during the first week of March! We should be getting into town on the evening of March 1st, and we expect to leave on the morning of the 6th, and we hope to visit many of our favorite places and people!
Well, that’s it for now, please excuse the long update. I’ll write again with some pictures from my overseas destination!
Well, I’ve been out here at my new “job site” for almost a week, and I’m starting to get the hang of things. I’m flying pretty much every night, so that’s good. All in all, it’s a pretty smooth operation they’ve got going on here. I took a few pictures of my living area, which you can see by clicking here. I set up that gallery for my whole trip, and it’s just a couple of pics now, but if/when I take more pictures, I’ll add them to that same gallery. I leave here on December 1st, so I should have an opportunity to take a few more pictures at some point.
Oh, and we have a mama cat here with 4-5 little kittens. Apparently they are being taken care of by someone, because they are always hanging around outside the dining facility. I tried to entice them with my awesome sounding fake meows, but they just run away. I guess they are wise to the person-making-a-meow-sound trick. I will try to get some pictures of them in the near future as well.
The temps are coming down nicely here. It’s only up into the mid-high 90’s during the day, but then again we don’t do much during the day. Last night it got down to around 75 when I was doing laundry at 2am, and that was quite nice. Well, it would be nicer if there wasn’t so much smoke in the air from some huge trash fire nearby, but oh well.
Stolen from you guys:
1.) Go to Career Cruising
2.) login nycareers; password landmark
3.) Take the career match maker quiz and list the top 10 responses
1. Race Car Mechanic
2. Heating, Air Conditioning, Refrigeration Tech
3. Farm Equipment Mechanic
4. Heavy Equipment Mechanic
5. Diesel Mechanic
6. Automobile Mechanic
7. Motorcycle Mechanic
8. Aircraft Mechanic
9. Millwright
10. Industrial Machinery Mechanic
Hmm…I’m sensing a “mechanic” theme. I’m actually somewhat suprised by this, since I answered with how I actually feel instead of based on what I am currently doing, and I really enjoyed my previous desk job doing IT systems engineering. For those that may not know, I am actually an Aircraft Mechanic, so I guess the quiz is pretty good!
I’m currently in training again. This time it’s a two-week field maintenance course for our Super Puma. I’m not really into the Puma. It’s very pretty and all, but I still prefer the Mi-17. Speaking of which, I’m up to 40 hours of flight time, which is pretty good considering it’s all training time here in the States. Nearly all of that time has been spent in this helicopter. Yeah, it’s kind of dirty, but we wash it every couple of weeks or whenever the tailboom turns completely black. I finally finished buying all of my overseas gear, since I found out that I leave on October 1st. It’s my first overseas trip, so I’m pretty excited. I will be gone for two months (should get back just after Thanksgiving), but I will have Internet access, so no worries there.
In other news, the house-building process is moving along, although we don’t expect to actually start building until sometime on November. Also, as I promised Heather a vacation after my first overseas trip, we’ve already planned another trip to Playa del Carmen (Mexico) in the middle of December. The weather looks pretty nice there in December, so I can’t wait.
I’m also trying to head back overseas before Christmas, so I can be back before it’s time to close on the new house and move. So it looks like I’ll be really busy in the coming months!
My current job is the first I’ve had where I get paid overtime. Overtime, I’m discovering, is rather nice. I had 35.5 hours of overtime last month, which made for a nice jump in my paycheck. Speaking of overtime, I just worked two 15-hour days in a row, so I am already up to 14 hours of overtime in just two days. It was worth it, though, as I racked up almost four hours of night vision goggle time during two night flights. The first night was just a cross country flight around the local area for 2.5 hours. Last night, however, was actual mission simulation, which was a lot of fun. Well, fun for me at least. Other people might have different opinions about trying to guide a pilot into putting one wheel of a helicopter onto the roof of a small cement blockhouse and holding it there for 30 seconds (using night vision goggles, mind you).
I got an after-action review from my direct supervisor and he said he was “pleasantly surprised” at how well I performed given my lack of prior aircrew experience. So I’m a happy (abeit tired) camper.
Well, I’m finally starting to fly more often. (yay!) I’m not overseas yet, but I’ll be going on my first trip soon enough. Of the 9 work days so far this month, I’ve gone flying on 7. In those 7 days, I’ve racked up 22.2 hours of flight time. The above picture is from one of my flights. I spent a few hours looking at the water, so I took a few pictures and videos. Most of the flights are for training purposes, but I can also now say that I’ve helped dump 2,000 pounds of millet seed out of the back of a helicopter. (I should get a conservation merit badge for that!) If the above picture isn’t enuogh, here is a little 9 second video of me staring at our shadow over the water:
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