So i thought that the waiting for 3 or for hours at the land nav course was bad. we were at the 9mm range on friday, and there were three companies which is around 150 people. we woke up at 5 so that we could draw our weapons before we went to the range. We had just enough time to get get our weapons before we went to chow and then straight to the range. they only had 1 bus for all of us to get to chow so they shuttled us to chow. from there they managed to have enough buses but because they were shuttling people and we weren't the first group to go over we ended up being the last group to get to fire. we arrived at the range at about 8:30 and waited around until almost 3 pm before we fired and then we spent about 20 minutes on the range firing and then we spent another 5 hours waiting. until 8 pm. the only thing that we did besides eat in those time periods was clean up the casings for the spent rounds. now normally at ranges when you expend ammo you have to pick up the expended ammo, that is just fine, clean up after yourselves. but at this range they wanted you to be 100% accountable for the brass that you expended. that means that we had to pick up rounds for 150+people at 57 rounds a person and account for every single one of them. let do the math shall we... 150x57=8,550 rounds and that doesn't count the people who had to re-qualify. when we collected them all off the ground we had to put them back in the foam containers of 50 rounds. that is a lot of foam containers. then when we were all done with that we ended up just sitting around until it was dark out. to go along with all of this, the range safeties are telling us that when we are sitting around in the parking lot (nowhere near the range) that we can't take out helmets and vests off, and we can't lay down even though we have been out there for forever. we waited until 8:45 to do the night fire and they ran that extremely slowly. The army gave us a whole new definition of hurry up and wait.
Saturday was not bad at all we did some of the hurry up and wait, but we were done with everything by about 3 so it wasn't as bad, especially after what we had the day before. We did EST training and it is basically firing the m16/m4 video game style. we got to the trainer about 8:30 like normal, and again had to wait until after lunch to get to do anything.
yesterday was a little bit better version of the m9 range. we were on the m4 range and we had to zero the m4s so there were two stations that you had to go through for qualifying.
the zero part of the range went pretty fast for most people. i had my m4 zeroed in 12 shots. there are 15 hole in my paper because on the second three rounds the guy next to me accidentally shot my paper instead of his own. once you were done zeroing you had to walk down to the qualification range. i was lucky enough to get out to the qual range pretty quickly and be in one of the first firing orders. When we got out onto the lane i was all ready to go. i was shooting great at the zero range and I was all excited to shoot and get my expert for the 2nd time. the ranges were a little different because instead of the old foxhole supported we did prone supported. and instead of doing 20 rounds in prone unsupported we did 10 rounds prone unsupported and 10 rounds in kneeling. i wasn't too worried about any of the new stuff because the kneeling only fires at the 150m and closer. But when we got out and started firing the first two targets went down without a problem. they were 50 and 200 meters not very hard targets. the next one goes out at the 300 and i miss it. i was thinking ok, that is a hard target to hit and i missed it. i deal with and move on thinking that i will hit the next one, i catch a few of the closer ones and go on to another farther target and i miss it again. it starts to worry me when i am shooting these targets and they aren't going down. the spotter that i have is telling me that i hit the target but they aren't going down. i ended up hitting 14 targets that round needing 23 to qualifying. when i got to concurrent training i saw a few people there that i never thought would be in that building. we went through all of that and when everyone who had qualified was done we started talking and we got to talking about the 1st seargent and one other guy in the company who are u.s. competition quality shooters, both of them had streaks of shooting expert for at least 13 years. both of them barely qualified. so i started thinking that it wasn't as bad. we were out there all until about 8 waiting for people to qualify. the people running the range thought that we were doing awesome with qual rates at about 50%, that is worse than most basic training ranges. and on the last firing order we went through we had a bunch of open slots for people who had already qualed. and when we made it through those orders the guy came down and thought that it was amazing that we had that many qualified and that it proved that there couldn't have been anything wrong with their system because that many people had qualed. little did they know that we stacked the firing line with some of the best shooters. when we got all of the got out of the day qual we had to do night qual, this range was ready to do this really fast. so we managed to get out of there at a relatively decent time.
to make it even better we are starting our flight training tomorrow so we had a reset day today to get the rest that we didn't get the last three days. it was nice i slept until 10 and didn't have to get to anywhere so i just sat around. it was nice!
tomorrow i have my first flight
i hope that everyone is doing well at home
signing off
Monday, April 30, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Land Nav the the worthless classes to go with!
Yesterday we went to two classes that took all day. the worst part was that they could have scheduled it for the morning and we could have gotten it done before lunch. to make things worse, the classes that we had to take had nothing to do with the things that we were doing today or anything that we will be doing over in Iraq. The first class that we had was the PLGR (plugger as we call it) it is the old army version of a GPS, but it is the size of a 1980's cell phone and ways just about as much as my laptop. The other class was the ground singars class. Singars is the secure radio that they use in the ground vehicles and by infantry men. it is a nice radio compared to what they used to be like, but we will never use it. we have radios built into the aircraft and emergency radios that we have in our vests if we ever go down. after both classes we had a very long time before we got to leave the training area because the buses only come at chow time and we were done at least an hour before chow for both of the classes.
Today we did our land nav training. there are two parts to the land nav training. Mounted and dismounted. Mounted is using a humvee to navigate around a map. we had a DAGR (dagger) which is the new version of the PLGR. it works very well, even though we really had no idea how to use them. That part of the nav was really easy because the GPS took us to right where we needed to be. the second part of the nav was a lot harder, we had 3 hours to go about 5 km on foot over rough terrain and we had the hardest of the point combinations. we took almost the whole three hours to get the points. all three companies that went through that were done by about 2 and we had to sit and wait because the instructors had thought that because we were the largest group that they had ever run they would need to get chow for us because we would be there late. once that was done we couldn't change what was going on. if they would not have changed the training schedule we would have been able to get back to the barracks by about 2 or so and be done for the day. but instead we sat around for an hour then they made some random points for us to go find walking around with the DAGR to kill time. then we had to wait for another hour for chow to get there. the only thing that really made that better was that the buses showed up early because the battalion commander started looking into why everything had got screwed up.
Other than sitting around all afternoon in the hot sun, it wasn't a bad day.
I hope that everyone at home is doing well and that they are having fun
Signing off
Today we did our land nav training. there are two parts to the land nav training. Mounted and dismounted. Mounted is using a humvee to navigate around a map. we had a DAGR (dagger) which is the new version of the PLGR. it works very well, even though we really had no idea how to use them. That part of the nav was really easy because the GPS took us to right where we needed to be. the second part of the nav was a lot harder, we had 3 hours to go about 5 km on foot over rough terrain and we had the hardest of the point combinations. we took almost the whole three hours to get the points. all three companies that went through that were done by about 2 and we had to sit and wait because the instructors had thought that because we were the largest group that they had ever run they would need to get chow for us because we would be there late. once that was done we couldn't change what was going on. if they would not have changed the training schedule we would have been able to get back to the barracks by about 2 or so and be done for the day. but instead we sat around for an hour then they made some random points for us to go find walking around with the DAGR to kill time. then we had to wait for another hour for chow to get there. the only thing that really made that better was that the buses showed up early because the battalion commander started looking into why everything had got screwed up.
Other than sitting around all afternoon in the hot sun, it wasn't a bad day.
I hope that everyone at home is doing well and that they are having fun
Signing off
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Live fire and the rain!
Yesterday we were out at the range firing the m249. over all it was a fun time though i think that the whole range and communications could have gone better. There were 12 of us at the range 4 from each company with 2 weapons from each company. Right away when we got there we had a mishap with communications. the m249 has a dts-4 night site, kind of like night vision goggles, and we unknowingly were supposed to bring these to the range, and it was our fault that we didn't bring them. and when the 1lt left with the van while we were still in the middle of unloading she took our MREs so at lunch time we needed to wait to get our lunch. right when we started firing we had two weapons break. one had a broken spring in the feed tray and the other the charging handle was binding. so there were 4 weapons for 12 people to qualify on and only the first people to shoot got to zero the weapon. overall firing the weapon was a lot of fun, but all of the hoops that we had to jump through kind of made it kind of stressful.
today has been pretty interesting we were supposed to have a relaxing day with not much to do. and things definitely changed. instead of getting to relax after breakfast we had to take the PT test that we were going to be taking thursday we took after breakfast. after showering and resting for about 30 minutes we went down stairs for lunch and instead of eating lunch we ended up going to move aircraft into hangers because it was supposed to be really stormy. we got out there and they wanted two more birds moved into the hangers. there were two tug drivers and nobody else moving aircraft. the 8 people that went out to get the last two birds and when we got them into the hanger there were a bunch of other people from B and C companies sitting in the hanger. By this time we were SOAKING wet. we had our gortex jackets on and we were still wet underneath them, and my pants were drenched. it was raining hard enough that my gortex jacket was holding water in the pockets. by the time that we had picked up our kevlars, it had stopped raining. we spent the next hour moving more aircraft into different configurations in different hangers. There were a lot of pilots there because there were supposed to be flights going on. those pilots thought that they were the experts on moving aircrafts. it took probably twice the amount of time. they were trying to put 10 aircraft in a hanger that was built for 8 at the most.
after that we had time to relax. i read about 75 pages in my book and then fell asleep. we went to chow came back and went to prep for the land nav class that we will be doing on thursday.
i hope that everyone at home is doing well! i hope to hear from you soon!
Signing Off
today has been pretty interesting we were supposed to have a relaxing day with not much to do. and things definitely changed. instead of getting to relax after breakfast we had to take the PT test that we were going to be taking thursday we took after breakfast. after showering and resting for about 30 minutes we went down stairs for lunch and instead of eating lunch we ended up going to move aircraft into hangers because it was supposed to be really stormy. we got out there and they wanted two more birds moved into the hangers. there were two tug drivers and nobody else moving aircraft. the 8 people that went out to get the last two birds and when we got them into the hanger there were a bunch of other people from B and C companies sitting in the hanger. By this time we were SOAKING wet. we had our gortex jackets on and we were still wet underneath them, and my pants were drenched. it was raining hard enough that my gortex jacket was holding water in the pockets. by the time that we had picked up our kevlars, it had stopped raining. we spent the next hour moving more aircraft into different configurations in different hangers. There were a lot of pilots there because there were supposed to be flights going on. those pilots thought that they were the experts on moving aircrafts. it took probably twice the amount of time. they were trying to put 10 aircraft in a hanger that was built for 8 at the most.
after that we had time to relax. i read about 75 pages in my book and then fell asleep. we went to chow came back and went to prep for the land nav class that we will be doing on thursday.
i hope that everyone at home is doing well! i hope to hear from you soon!
Signing Off
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Weapons day two
today was more of the same as yesterday, but with bigger weapons. We worked with the 249 saw and the m240B/H.
If you want a relative picture of what I am talking about when i say a bunch of names of weapons. I will start with the smallest. The M-9 is a Handgun and all black. It fires a 9 mm round. That is a big round, but it is smaller on the handgun side, they are usually a .308 or a .45 caliber round. it is very accurate, but not very powerful. it ways about 3 pounds
The m-4 is a rifle that is a semi-automatic. that means that it will reload itself but it is not fully automatic. the m-4 is a 5.56 mm round. small compact and accurate. it is not very powerful but it will do enough damage that if you don't kill the enemy you will do enough to keep the enemy from getting back up. it can handle up to a 30 round magazine. it has two fire settings single and burst. in single fire mode it will fire a single shot. in burst it will fire 3. this is the primary weapon that a soldier carries. It is the upgraded model of the m-16. the m-4 ways 7-8 pounds fully loaded.
The 249 is a beefed up version of the m-16. the 249 is also known as the squad automatic weapon. it is a fully automatic weapon. it is usually fired in 5-8 round bursts, but if the trigger is held down it will expend all of the ammo that it can. it also fires the the ammo comes in anything from a 30 round magazines that is used in a m-4 to the 200 round drums that are supposed to be attached. it ways a little less than 20 pounds. I am assigned one of these, because it is very likely that they are not going to be used in country and the first sergeant wanted to give the lowest ranking of the company a chance to get some extra training, and have some fun while doing it.
If the 249 is a big version of the m-4, the m240b/h is a big version of the 249. It fires a 7.62 round, which is much more powerful than the 5.56 round that the m-4 and the 249 fire. it is the weapon that we will have mounted on the aircraft in the crew windows. these we will be using anytime that we fly. it has two trigger systems for the different types of firing, ground and mounted. the ground is set up with a butt stock and regular trigger. the mounted trigger, used for humvees and helicopters. it has a butterfly handle and a trigger that is fired by the thumbs.
here are some links that will explain the weapons a little better than I can
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M9_pistol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_carbine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M249_Squad_Automatic_Weapon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M240_machine_gun
i have been having a good day, things are going well, i hope everyone else has too.
signing off
If you want a relative picture of what I am talking about when i say a bunch of names of weapons. I will start with the smallest. The M-9 is a Handgun and all black. It fires a 9 mm round. That is a big round, but it is smaller on the handgun side, they are usually a .308 or a .45 caliber round. it is very accurate, but not very powerful. it ways about 3 pounds
The m-4 is a rifle that is a semi-automatic. that means that it will reload itself but it is not fully automatic. the m-4 is a 5.56 mm round. small compact and accurate. it is not very powerful but it will do enough damage that if you don't kill the enemy you will do enough to keep the enemy from getting back up. it can handle up to a 30 round magazine. it has two fire settings single and burst. in single fire mode it will fire a single shot. in burst it will fire 3. this is the primary weapon that a soldier carries. It is the upgraded model of the m-16. the m-4 ways 7-8 pounds fully loaded.
The 249 is a beefed up version of the m-16. the 249 is also known as the squad automatic weapon. it is a fully automatic weapon. it is usually fired in 5-8 round bursts, but if the trigger is held down it will expend all of the ammo that it can. it also fires the the ammo comes in anything from a 30 round magazines that is used in a m-4 to the 200 round drums that are supposed to be attached. it ways a little less than 20 pounds. I am assigned one of these, because it is very likely that they are not going to be used in country and the first sergeant wanted to give the lowest ranking of the company a chance to get some extra training, and have some fun while doing it.
If the 249 is a big version of the m-4, the m240b/h is a big version of the 249. It fires a 7.62 round, which is much more powerful than the 5.56 round that the m-4 and the 249 fire. it is the weapon that we will have mounted on the aircraft in the crew windows. these we will be using anytime that we fly. it has two trigger systems for the different types of firing, ground and mounted. the ground is set up with a butt stock and regular trigger. the mounted trigger, used for humvees and helicopters. it has a butterfly handle and a trigger that is fired by the thumbs.
here are some links that will explain the weapons a little better than I can
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M9_pistol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_carbine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M249_Squad_Automatic_Weapon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M240_machine_gun
i have been having a good day, things are going well, i hope everyone else has too.
signing off
Saturday, April 21, 2007
First of many days with my Weapons
Hey all
things here are going well, we had a few down days since i last posted, there really wasn't much to tell about. we went to a few classes about safety that a 5 year old could have taught. and we spend a lot of time waiting for things that didn't ever happen.
yesterday we did get something very important, we got our ground body-armor. and just so you know, i will probably refer to it from now on as my turtle shell. with all of the pieces we look like teenage mutant ninja turtles. It ways about 30 pounds and is very cumbersome to put on, but one you get it on you can't really feel the wait because it is very well balanced. there is a big plate in the front and in the back, and there is also two side plates that cover under my arms. it also has flak deflectors that go around the neck, arms, groin, and and underarm. It is pretty cool, and it is going to save my butt if i am getting shot at.
now to the weapons! Today was the first of many days that we have drawn our weapons. I am going to be signed for a m-9 (9 mm Beretta handgun) and an m-4 (colt rifle, versatile more compact version of the m-16). Those two weapons are my personal weapons. we spent all day learning how to take them apart and put them together and get as close to making sure that they fire without putting a bullet in them. when we were done with the classes we did some dry firing of of the m-4 with laser system to train us in zeroing the weapon.
Just a side note, it takes a while for mail to get here for some reason so it will take me a while to respond, but i promise if i get mail i will reply by mail it is really nice to get snail mail too.
I hope that everyone is doing well back hope!
Signing Off
things here are going well, we had a few down days since i last posted, there really wasn't much to tell about. we went to a few classes about safety that a 5 year old could have taught. and we spend a lot of time waiting for things that didn't ever happen.
yesterday we did get something very important, we got our ground body-armor. and just so you know, i will probably refer to it from now on as my turtle shell. with all of the pieces we look like teenage mutant ninja turtles. It ways about 30 pounds and is very cumbersome to put on, but one you get it on you can't really feel the wait because it is very well balanced. there is a big plate in the front and in the back, and there is also two side plates that cover under my arms. it also has flak deflectors that go around the neck, arms, groin, and and underarm. It is pretty cool, and it is going to save my butt if i am getting shot at.
now to the weapons! Today was the first of many days that we have drawn our weapons. I am going to be signed for a m-9 (9 mm Beretta handgun) and an m-4 (colt rifle, versatile more compact version of the m-16). Those two weapons are my personal weapons. we spent all day learning how to take them apart and put them together and get as close to making sure that they fire without putting a bullet in them. when we were done with the classes we did some dry firing of of the m-4 with laser system to train us in zeroing the weapon.
Just a side note, it takes a while for mail to get here for some reason so it will take me a while to respond, but i promise if i get mail i will reply by mail it is really nice to get snail mail too.
I hope that everyone is doing well back hope!
Signing Off
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
blood and briefings
Hey all!
This weekend was really interesting! Saturday Sunday and Monday were set up for the Combat Life Saver class. That is a lot of gross medical stuff that people who hate needles have a hard time doing. The first day we spend learning things like how to provide care under fire and giving an IV. That stuff is really interesting. We actually get to give people IVs that day. Needles and everything. There is a lot of blood flowing that day. the second day was all about breathing and opening airways. We talked about blocked airways and punctured lungs. The human on human exercise that day was a Nasal pharyngeal. that is a 9 mm tube that goes in your nose to your throat. we had to do this to each other. when i went to get mine the instructor walked up and looked at my nose, he said that i have really small nasal passages and that they might now want to try and do this to my nose. i let them try just to let them have the chance, but it wouldn't go down. that was a really interesting feeling having a tube in your throat. The other major thing that we talked about were punctured lungs. if you seal the wound that punctures your lung and you are still having problems you stick it with a giant needle to let the air out of the sac around the lung as to give the internal organs more space to work. that needle is huge. that evening we got all of the people who hadn't gotten to stick people with IVs finished. i had three holes in my arm from 2 people that night. The third day of CLS was all about the written test. I got 100% on that test which makes me very happy. it was a good day overall.
today was the total opposite. we sat in an auditorium all day listening to different briefings on things like Equal opportunity, sexual harassment, and others. it was a pretty boring day, but that meant that i got a lot of reading done between the briefings. and it is the first day since the night that we moved in that we have had some time to relax before 8 pm. it has been pretty nice. well, everyone have a good night
Signing off
This weekend was really interesting! Saturday Sunday and Monday were set up for the Combat Life Saver class. That is a lot of gross medical stuff that people who hate needles have a hard time doing. The first day we spend learning things like how to provide care under fire and giving an IV. That stuff is really interesting. We actually get to give people IVs that day. Needles and everything. There is a lot of blood flowing that day. the second day was all about breathing and opening airways. We talked about blocked airways and punctured lungs. The human on human exercise that day was a Nasal pharyngeal. that is a 9 mm tube that goes in your nose to your throat. we had to do this to each other. when i went to get mine the instructor walked up and looked at my nose, he said that i have really small nasal passages and that they might now want to try and do this to my nose. i let them try just to let them have the chance, but it wouldn't go down. that was a really interesting feeling having a tube in your throat. The other major thing that we talked about were punctured lungs. if you seal the wound that punctures your lung and you are still having problems you stick it with a giant needle to let the air out of the sac around the lung as to give the internal organs more space to work. that needle is huge. that evening we got all of the people who hadn't gotten to stick people with IVs finished. i had three holes in my arm from 2 people that night. The third day of CLS was all about the written test. I got 100% on that test which makes me very happy. it was a good day overall.
today was the total opposite. we sat in an auditorium all day listening to different briefings on things like Equal opportunity, sexual harassment, and others. it was a pretty boring day, but that meant that i got a lot of reading done between the briefings. and it is the first day since the night that we moved in that we have had some time to relax before 8 pm. it has been pretty nice. well, everyone have a good night
Signing off
Friday, April 13, 2007
My first full day so far
Hey!
I am now down at Fort Sill Oklahoma! We are starting all of the training that we will need for Iraq. We left from St. Paul yesterday morning, flew over the VFW in Crystal then flew over the State capital and the St. Paul Airport. We have three stops. the first at Boone Airbase outside of Des Moines Iowa then we stopped at a small airbase in Kansas and had lunch. after that we went to Tinker Air Force base in Oklahoma (the air force guys have it NICE!) from there it was a short flight to home sweet home Fort Sill. We logged 6.7 hours in the aircraft, but it was about 9 hours down here. (your butt hurts when you sit that long.) Today we took care of some medical processing and have a break before we have to get to our evening briefings. the weather down here is pretty wet, but that makes training all the more fun and different. so far it has not been a bad time down here.
Signing off
I am now down at Fort Sill Oklahoma! We are starting all of the training that we will need for Iraq. We left from St. Paul yesterday morning, flew over the VFW in Crystal then flew over the State capital and the St. Paul Airport. We have three stops. the first at Boone Airbase outside of Des Moines Iowa then we stopped at a small airbase in Kansas and had lunch. after that we went to Tinker Air Force base in Oklahoma (the air force guys have it NICE!) from there it was a short flight to home sweet home Fort Sill. We logged 6.7 hours in the aircraft, but it was about 9 hours down here. (your butt hurts when you sit that long.) Today we took care of some medical processing and have a break before we have to get to our evening briefings. the weather down here is pretty wet, but that makes training all the more fun and different. so far it has not been a bad time down here.
Signing off
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