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

another short one

I figure that i will give a little explaination of the posts that i just put up. i haven't had internet on my computer for a while so i have been doing most of my internet work from a public computer. now i have finally had a chance to get my computer on the net so i am posting these for you. things are going well over here... i am on the night recovery crew today so i don't need to be out to the airfield until about 8 pm. so i am going to relax today and just chill for a while.
still missing everyone and i hope things are going well at home
Signing off

a week in

Well, we have been here for a week now and things are finally picking up. About two days ago we started getting our aircraft in from the port. The first couple of days were pretty much just getting used to the heat. Other than that we had a few classes that we had to take, but most of them only lasted for about an hour and the rest of the time we just had to hang out seeing the sites (not much… mainly sand and… sand and… yeah, more sand.) You can only go to the PX and the Internet Café so many times before you get bored. Other than that, I have beat the original final fantasy, finished a book that I started on the flight over here. Gotten plenty of sleep.
Now that the aircraft are here we have finally gotten to start doing what we are supposed to be doing. Tomorrow morning is my first flight since leaving Fort Sill over a month ago. For the last three days we have been getting the helicopters ready for all of the sand and making them safer for the crew by putting in ballistic plates. When we flew the helicopters to port back in the states we loaded them all up with a ton of equipment to get them shipped over here, and now that they are here we had to unload all of them. Today we did a bunch of dailies to make sure that the birds are ready to go when we start flying them tomorrow. The flight schedule for tomorrow is pretty crazy busy. EVERYBODY from A Co. is flying at least an hour. Some of our trainers are flying 4 hours. That is going to be a long day.
hope that everyong is doing ok, miss you all
Signing off

Firsrt day in Kuwait

Hey,
Well this brings about the end of the first full day in Kuwait. I know that by the time that you are reading this the first full day will have been over for quite a bit of time, but I am doing my best to keep up so that when I do post these it won’t be 1 huge long post that will be horrible to read. Yesterday we traveled here by dc-10 that is a huge airplane and it was just about full. We had 2 stops between here and when we took off. The first was in banger maine and the second was in Shannon Ireland. The first leg of the trip was the shortest only around 3 hours or so. The second one was about 6 hours and the third closer to 8. It was weird because we left about noon on Saturday and didn’t get here until about 5 pm on Sunday, and after that we still had a 2 hour bus ride from the airport in Kuwait city to Udairi Kuwait. We are staying in a 50 man tent with all of the males from alpha company. The weather here is sunny and hot. The sun comes up around 5 or 6 here… really early, and it sets really early too… around 7 or so. During the day the temperature gets up to 130 as a high (which it was today) and it drops to about 90-95 at night. When they talk about it being a dry heat you really know the difference once you have felt the temperatures here. When we were in Oklahoma, it was very humid and it only got up to about 100 there, but it felt hotter there and it was more physically draining there because you sweated a lot more. Here there is no moisture in the air so there is almost no humidity so it is really hot, but it isn’t any worse than being in Oklahoma. The base is pretty nice there are 3 different chow halls and 4 meals a day if you want to eat them. We had today to acclimate to the weather and tomorrow we will start some sort of training I think that it is just going to be classroom type stuff. Oh and by the way… everything over here is airconditioned so unless you have to spend the whole day outside you don’t get too hot overall. Well, I am going to get some sleep.
Hope that everyone at home is doing well, and keeping safe
Signing off

just a short one

I just wanted to let everyone know that i am doing ok and that i am safely in Kuwait. i will update this again soon when i get a chance. i am going to be putting a few posts on at a time when i get a chance, i wrote one last night in word because i don't have the internet on my computer, and i am still not on my computer so i will be posting them when i get a chance. Things here are going well, have spent some time getting used to the heat other than that things are going well.
I hope that everyone at home is staying safe and that they are having fun.
Signing off