details

well, i am officially on my first army detail of the deployment. and if this is the way that details go, we of the flight companies have it pretty darn easy. i have been sitting in front of a computer since 2000 keeping track of people who are using the phone and the internet. if all of the phones or computers are full i keep track of who is next in line and when they get to get on the computer. there is a little program that runs on the computer that keeps track of how long people are on so all i have to do is tell them that they need to get off if they are on for over 30 minutes with people in line. and now that it has gotten later here, all i have to do is say phone or internet, and click the start or stop button when people come or go. after this is over i have to go do maintenance for a while, but i can't complain. i am not sitting in a guard tower for a week straight and i am not watching iraqis fill sandbags. so this is pretty nice.
things here are going really well. we hauled a senator around the other day and i got a really cool shot of the other helicopter and one of the escort aircraft that was flying along with us. if i have the time i am going to try and add it to the post. if i can't i will add it when i get a little bit more time. i am currently waiting for my replacement to show up and relieve me so that i can go eat something before i go do maintenance.
so the image should be in there, but we will have to see... i haven't added images before as you can tell.

hey!

Things here are going really well, things have been really busy with the new mission set that we picked up a few weeks ago, so i have been flying almost everyday. this mission is a good one because it goes out in the afternoon and it comes back in at night so you get some day flight time and some night flight time. the one thing about this mission is that you need to remain flexible. we can't get to the helicopters without there being a mission change, but after the first week, we were quite used to it, and started planning for the changes to happen. we have had days where we have flown all over the place to get people and accomplished nothing and days where we barely flew anywhere and we got a lot done.
there was one day that we took off out of here and we picked up a few guys from romania who were just trying to get home. we had to go pretty far south past baghdad and we had a head wind so it took a lot longer, instead of a 1 hour flight it was almost two. and on top of it the weather was starting to get bad, so it was hard to see where we were going. from there we had to fly out east past baghdad and when we got there we shut down to switch from days to nights, and they found out that the weather was bad so we decided to wait it out... remember that the romanians have already been with us for about 4 hours. once they decided that we were going to wait it out, we went to go get some chow. about 5 minutes after we went to get chow, one of the pilots came and told us that we had to get going right away because there was a c-130 waiting for our passenger to get him to where he wanted to be, but we had to get him from where he was because the c-130 can't land that the base that he was at. so we picked up and went out to the birds... poor romanians didn't get to eat anything either. we went over to the base that we were supposed to pick up this guy at, and when they get there they say that now that we are there we are the back up because he is going to get picked up by some ofsprey that are coming in. so we shut down there too. we couldn't get any further west because of the weather, but the romanians needed to get into baghdad so that they could get home. luckily they had an extra day planned into their trip because we ended up going back home after that place, and they made it down to baghdad the next day in the morning. so they spent about 9 hours touring iraq to get back where they started. we felt so bad for them.
well, i need to get to work so i will hopefully write again soon.
hope everyon is doing well back home!

good story

here a good story to tell about what it is like around here and how fast the weather can change.
wednesday we were flying one of the missions and we had some VIP pax that needed to head out east from bagdad. when we started the mission we briefed, the weather and it was supposed to be hazy but clear. that is normal for bagdad so we didn't flinch. we flew down to the big airport in bagdad to refuel before we picked up our VIPs and there were no problems there either. hopped over to the place that we were picking up our VIPs and got them all loaded up. when we left there it was hazy like it was forcasted and so we didn't even think about it. but we started flying east to where we were supposed to be dropping people off, and all of a sudden it is sandy all over the place, and the visibility is getting worse. we start to take heed to the fact that we can't see as far as we used to, but we only need to be able to see a mile to continue on... well as we kept going through it kept getting worse and worse. the Lead pilot called that if it got any worse that we were going to have to go back to where we came from. no less than about a minute later they called that we were going to turn around. we were flying about 800 feet and we could barely see the ground. it was very sandy and a little bit nerve racking not being able to see very much of what is going on. so we went back to the place that we picked the VIPs up from did some weather checking to see if we were going to be able to get them to where they needed to be going, and when it came back that it was going to be too late for us to do anything we flew back home.
one of the more entertaining things to look back on now, was the face of the 1 star admiral that was sitting right next to me as we were getting deeper and deeper into the sandstorm. as the visibility got less and lass his face started dropping and he started looking more and more worried. and when we turned around, i let him know by writing a little message on my clip board with a dry erase marker, and when he saw that we were going back he was definatly relieved. when we got out for a little while all he could say was "you made the right choice" it was a little comical to say the least. specially because this guy was about 6 foot 6 and made me look like a midget.
well, i should be getting to bed. i hope that everything is going well for you back home!
Signing off