catching back up

sorry everybody i know that i haven't posted in a while here is the update. things have been really hectic down here lately. for the last two weeks we have been flying with the First Army aviation trainers. we have been getting down and dirty into what we will be doing in the sandbox. last week was the actual evaluation period and the week before that was a lot of preparation for last week. almost every day in the last two weeks we have had 6 helicopters a day flying. that means that we had 12 crew chiefs and 12 pilots flying each day at least. some days there were more and on sunday (a week ago we had only 2 ships flying, but that was the exception.) i flew three days last week. monday i had a day off to get ready for the up coming week. most people had reset days scattered throughout the week to get them some down time. i flew on tuesday, friday and saturday. tuesday was a very interesting day because we had some mishaps happen on monday that everyone who was working on monday knew that i had found out second hand. there was a flight of two that went out and they had briefed that they were going to be flying doors closed (the big cargo doors.) well, they decided that they wanted to fly doors open. which normally would not have been a problem but they forgot to strap the laptop which we keep aircraft information on and it fell out of the aircraft in mid-flight. so that entire crew ended up getting grounded and we had to make some changes to the schedule (that is why i ended up on the schedule on friday which i originally wasn't on.) but i digress tuesday was a good flight me and my fellow crew chief did quite well with the control of the passengers that we had on board. on all of our flights we had observers from First Army that were there to get the wheels turning in our head about different things that we should be doing in country.
wednesday was a maintenance day for me. i came in and did a lot of different menial tasks that needed to get done for the different aircraft. it was pretty boring but i knew that it needed to get done. i did a lot of that til about 2200 or so and then we started getting ready to recover the aircraft for the next day. i worked on all 4 of the aircraft that were out during the night period to make sure that all of the inspections that need to be done after the flights got finished. i got back from the hanger about 0230 that night. thursday i started about the same time and did some more little stuff for the afternoon then had to start getting the aircraft tied down because there was bad weather coming in. each time that the pilots would get the all clear on the weather, it would get worse. i think we tied down the aircraft about 4 times that day. they finally made a weather call, and canceled the flights about 2100 and we made it home about 2200.
friday i needed to start at 12oo because that is when our mission time started. one of the main considerations that we have when we fly is the weather, and thursday was not a good day for weather around fort sill. at for sill the weather was great. it was partly sunny but not too hot most of the time. don't get me wrong there was some rain at the airfield, but most of the evening it was nice there. the problem was that everywhere around fort sill was really dark and rainy and we had to go out there to complete our mission so we couldn't go. we hung out by the aircraft for probably better than 3-4 hours to show that we were ready to go if we ever got the weather clear, but it never happened.
Saturday was the big day for us. we had a AA (Air Assault) mission that took ships from all 4 aircraft. i am not going to get into too much detail because there were some things that happened that if our trainers had set things up correctly probably wouldn't have happened, but they didn't so we had some confusion with what was going on at the drop off point. other than that we did really well being where we needed to be when we needed to be there. it was a big orginization of ships that had to do everything by a time line that all but told you when you could go to the bathroom. but when it comes down to it, when there are 15 aircraft having a schedule like that makes sure that if you are going to have issues they are all addressed long before the mission starts. we had our aircraft ready to go about 4 hours before the mission happened so that we knew that the birds that we were on were in good working order and we didn't need to switch to the back-up aircraft. other than the misunderstanding we had at the drop off point everything went off without a hitch and we all made it back safely.
today was a nice relaxing day for us after two weeks of craziness. we didn't have too much to do today. we had a AAR (after action review) for the training we went through with first army. that took up most of the morning. in the afternoon we took a battalion photo out at the airfield, then we had a pretend memorial service for a soldier that was "killed" this week during our training. they wanted the battalion to do this so that we knew what one would be like. it was very interesting actually. the one thing that kind of got to me was the role call that was taken. at the end of the service they do a short role call, calling out a few names of soldiers that are at the formation, and then they call out the soldier that has passed. that silence is one of the eeriest things that i have ever heard. they call out the name three times. and it is dead silent. really eerie.
just a side story to with all of this: the army has a very standardized set up for a memorial display which includes a rifle, helmet, dogtags, body armor and boots. we had the memorial ceremony set up for before we took the battalion picture so that when it was done we could get the service started right away. rifles in the army are supposed to be watched at all times, but because we were out side they left the rifle where it was in the memorial. to most soldiers taking the rifle out of a memorial would be like tipping a grave stone over, so we left it there. when we got back the rifle and the bayonet that we used to put it in the sand bags were gone. in it's place was a note that said that if the person who left the rifle was there wanted it back that they needed to call SFC so-and-so... well to begin with the weapon belonged to our 1SG (two ranks higher than the SFC) who was not happy to come back to see the display all screwed up and his rifle missing... so he talked to our CSM (highest NCO in our Battalion who called this SFC and gave him an ear full. this SFC decided that he didn't do anything wrong and so that he didn't get too much of a chewing out by our CSM he brought a Warrant officer with him (who technically out ranks our CSM) to back him up. so when he gets out there he gets the ear full that he didn't want, and our CSM tells the warrant officer to in not so few words to shut up while he is telling this SFC off. i thought that this was pretty entertaining. for all of you who don't know the rank structure very well, i know that i abbreviated a of this for ease of typing. http://www.gruntsmilitary.com/rank2.shtml is a good place for you to go to see what i am talking about.
well, that is all for now folks we had a pretty easy rest of the evening hanging out at the barracks. I hope that everyone had a very nice fathers day and a good weekend in general.
Signing off