Been really busy

hey all,
I know that i said that i was going to try and write more, but i was really busy again this week! we have been going through aerial gunnery and that has kept us quite busy.
The first day we were firing from the ground on stationary helicopters. they weren't running so things were pretty good. we had about 800 rounds that we got to fire that day.
the next day was actually aerial gunnery. we did some flying that day. we each had 400 rounds to fire on two passes. and then another 200 rounds to fire under NBC conditions. it was fun because we actually were shooting and flying. there were a lot of targets along the range to keep us busy. i have to say that the best was the little house in the beginning. there were all sorts of things like cars old tanks and even got to shoot some fish.
the next night we were planning on doing our NVG firing. it was going to be a really late night for us. we were waiting for another company to get all of their people through the range and then we were going to go out to the range after that, but we are only supposed to work for 12 hours on days that we fly so that we don't get too overworked. they can give us extensions to go past the 12 hour days but every two hours you have to go up a command level, the first one goes to the company commander, then the battalion commander and the brigade commander. you push your luck when you are going to the battalion commander, but we were getting into the range that we needed to get to the brigade commander, and we probably would not have gotten the approval if we had gone that far up the chain. the reason that we were pushing our time limit was because they had us up and ready to go at 1 so that we could go through RFI (rapid fielding Initiative) which gave us a replacement for most of the woodland camo gear that we have like our old rucksack and Load bearing vest and other things like that. we were out at formation at 1 like they told us, and then the transportation that was supposed to get us there didn't show up so we waited for 20 minutes and then took our own little short bus to get there. then we stood in formation for the the next hour for them to get ready for us. once they were ready for us we went and got fitted for 4 new sets of ACUs which took about 15 minutes for the entire company. we then proceeded to line up so that we could wait for another hour. then we went through getting a new kevlar 2 new sets of boots. one that i will probably not wear (they are not flight approved). a replacement for the new $1200 that i have right now (they replaced it because the outer shell was woodland camo instead of the new digital camo. they gave us more long underwear, gloves, knee pads and elbow pads more gloves, and a few fleeces. then they gave us a winter hat, ear plugs, goggles and a new first aid kit. after all of that it took them about 20 mintutes to start checking people out even though all they needed us to do was sign two sheets of paper that they could print the instant that we were done getting all of our stuff. as we walked out we got a new ruck sack and a new load bearing system. all of that took us about 8 hours. it was a fast 8 hours but it still took 8 hours to do way too little. we were supposed to start firing around 1 and the range was supposed to take 5 or 6 hours that would put us way outside our window because we would have to take an hour to get the aircraft back and tied down and then it would take another 30 minutes to get us back and actually end the work day. so they decided that we would wait until the next night.
the next day was much better. we actually had our NBC firing that night. i thought i had seen a lot of things that looked like star wars in my day with tracers and ground fire, but you haven't seen anything more star wars like until you have watched a helicopter fly by shooting tracers. it looks like the orange lasers that the rebels fire from their x-wings. it is really cool looking. firing was even better under the NVGs you could see all of the rounds coming out of the barrel because of the heat signature.
the day after, we didn't have too much to do, we did a little bit of aircraft maintenance.
yesterday we had two flights scheduled and only went out on one. we did combat maneuvering flight. which is a lot of yanks and banks. it was a lot of fun kinda like a roller coaster ride. we didn't get to go on our NVG flight because the second period was canceled.
we did manage to get out tonight. and i am now a fully qualified crew chief. there really wasn't that much that happened to night we just needed to do multi-ship under NVGs so we followed another helicopter around for a while. but i am now a fully qualified crew chief. now all the training i do is practice and not introductions.
I hope that everyone at home is doing well.
signing off