some questions answered

I wrote this a couple of days ago but i was too tired to get here and put it out on the web. so i am putting it out now! sorry about the delay between posts!

Hello all,
Things are going well here. Uncle Gary asked a few questions that I thought that I would try and answer so that you can understand without being too specific so that I don’t say or give away anything that I shouldn’t. First, most of the flying that goes on here is done at night. There are a few missions that go out during the day, but most of the time they are specific missions with very little flight time, just moving someone important from one place to another. I have already accrued about 20 hours of night flight and I have only been on about 8 flights with 3 of them being during the day.
We take precautions when we fly that we start long before we start flying. Even the missions that have the same basic principal keep changing so to stay a step ahead of the enemy. Once we have a mission in our hands so that we know what we are going to be doing, the pilots plan out a route, avoiding all sorts of known bad areas and entering high traffic areas differently each time. Once that planning is done we get the whole crew together and we do a mission brief. Walking through what we will be doing and where we will be going. One of the things that happens is we get a brief from the intel guys about what has been happening along our route to keep up on our toes when we go into an area where we know that bad things could happen.
Once we get out and flying there are a lot of different things that keep us safe. For one we never fly the same route twice. We don’t take a canned route that has been planned and just go the same route over again. We also do what is called three dimensional flight, moving left and right, up and down so that we aren’t an easy target going across the sky. Now this doesn’t mean that we fly like Tom Cruise in top gun, just simple altitude changes or direction changes that keep out flight path moving. All of our night flights are done under NVGs (night vision goggles) so that we can see in what would be almost pitch-black conditions. The helicopter has different countermeasures both passive and active that keep us safe from some of the bigger weapons that could be used against us. It has a system to dissipate heat from the engines. Different IR sensing equipment and flares to thwart off missile attacks. The flares go off right past the crew chief windows, and though I had seen them go off before in the daylight, last night was the first time that I had it happen under NVGs and it was quite an experience. They look like fireworks that don’t go off with a bang at the end.
With all of these things going on before and during a flight I feel pretty safe. I doesn’t make me feel like I am not threatened, because I know that every time that I get into that helicopter there could be a chance that someone is going to try and shoot at us, but with all of the precautions that we take things are pretty safe up in the air.
Just last night was a good example of the reason why we can’t get complacent when we are flying. Everything is ok and nobody was close to being hurt but it was just the idea behind what happened. We were flying out of Balad when someone on the ground decided that they wanted to shoot at us. Now, you have to understand the people who are trying to hurt us sometimes aren’t that smart. When we fly at night if you look out under the NVGs it is pitch dark, so they can’t see anywhere near where we actually are, but they can usually hear us. We can’t hide that, so they shoot at our sound. The guy probably unloaded a mag of AK rounds up into the air, but he had no chance of even coming close to hitting us.
Well, it is getting late here; I have to get some sleep because I have to fly tomorrow. I hope that everyone at home is doing well and staying safe. Gary, I will try and answer some more of your questions when I get a chance if i didn't already answer them. If anyone else has any questions feel free to ask, and I will do my best to answer them.
Signing off

hey all, things are going well here, i just spent the last couple of days on day maintenance. we have been getting a lot of things done. we just had the change of command ceremony from the 108th to the 2/147th here and now we are on our own. we are getting ready to switch to a new set of missions, and we will be getting into our schedule that we will be following for a while soon. i have a few flights coming up, which is going to be nice. i am going back to night shift for a while so things are going to be a little cooler while i work.
well, i just have a little bit of time today so i have to get going again. sorry for the short post, but things are going well and i will update more when i get a chance.
hope everyone is doing well at home!
Signing off

hello all,
I am safe in balad, sorry that i haven't updated my postings in a while, things have been kind of on weird schedules and they have been changing a lot so most of the time i get just enough time to check my e-mail while i am on the net. things are going well here. we have been getting a lot done in the short time that we have been here in balad. we are all moved into our housing, it was good that we got to move in right away it is nice that we won't have to move until right before we leave. it is nice to know where home is for a while. other than that. we have 2 12 hour maintenance shifts so either you are on during the day or you are on at night. the last couple of days i have been on during the day, but most of the time you are on during the night, the day crew is small because there isn't a lot of flying going on then. I had my 2 train up flights a few days ago, they were pretty interesting. we got to fly over bagdad the first day and we transported some people to work on a downed umanned aircraft the second. the second mission was really cool because it is a little different than the normal mission that we will be going on, which is hopping from FOB to FOB bringing people back and forth. we got to land off base and help people recover some equipment and then load the UAV onto a flat bed.
well, sorry this was short, but i have to get back to work. I will post again soon!
Hope things are going well at home and everyone is safe
Signing off