Work Ups

The whole pre-mobilization thing is kind of an interesting experience. We are now on active duty on state orders preparing to depart to our MOB station. This is somewhat new to me as for my last deployment we were only on state orders for a couple of days. Since then Arizona has developed a pre-mob team whose job it is to provide the training required by 1st Army for deploying troops. In theory this means that we won't have to do these particular briefings and tasks at Ft Sill, but frankly I'll believe that when I see it. That being said I have very little in the way of criticism for the training team. They're currently working Aviation, Military Police, Engineering and Administrative units all of which have their own specific requirements. They've clearly worked to provide us training in areas useful to our mission while acknowledging that some of the required tasks have little application for us. The training actually started the weekend before our activation with a three day "Combat Life Saver" course. This is an advanced first aid course that I had before the last deployment, but was happy to get again. (It requires annual certification to remain current.) The course has been adjusted continuously as dictated by the current situation and covers initial first aid, assessing and stabilizing the injured soldier up to and including starting an IV. The last time I took this course there was more emphasis on chemical agent treatment since that was a current threat at the time. While it made for a long weekend, it was a good class and well presented. The following Saturday we began our active duty with a day of last minute finance briefings, administrative processing and generally practiced standing in line. Complain as I do about the admin stuff (see my last post) it was actually pretty painless. That Sunday we began three days of classroom briefings and training. Twelve hour days of briefings causes more fatigue than you would expect. Still, we were in nice, air conditioned facilities... Thursday morning at 4:30 found us at our facility drawing our personal weapons and protective masks for a few days of field training and qualifications. Thursday and Friday morning was spent at the Florence Military Reservation near Phoenix qualifying with the M9 pistol, zeroing the M4 carbine, familiarization training for the M-2, M-240 and M-249 machine guns and several training lanes covering employment of grenades, Claymore mines, individual movement and IED recognition and response. Friday afternoon we moved up to the Flagstaff area for M-4 qualification (day, night and with gas masks). There were also classes on the Chemical Protective suits and a class on combatives, however our command decided that air crew would skip that due to the possibility of injury. Our aviation medical staff take their jobs very seriously and we've had people taken off flight status for seemingly minor injuries and conditions. For those not familiar with military jargon combatives is what used to be called hand to hand combat and consists of beating the daylights out of each other. It's a good workout, fun, and I usually recover in a week or so, but as much as I enjoy it I can understand the commands position on the subject.
Hat tip to FuzzyBear Lioness for the timely YouTube pointer...

An aside to all the weapons qual is that someone somewhere has decided that the crew chief and gunner in a UH 60 must be under gunned with only a .30 caliber machine gun and a 9mm pistol, and that we needed an M-4 for protection. Right. So now I carry get to carry 36 pound of weapons, plus ammo, plus all my other gear in the event of a forced landing. I guess they want us to stay put...

SRP

An interesting tidbit about the process of taking a National Guard unit from its normal drill status to mobilized and deployed is that the closer you get to your mobilization date the less useful training you are allowed to do. This weekend was the last drill prior to our mobilization date, and it was consumed by SRP - "Soldier Readiness Processing." Admittedly having all of the paperwork in order is necessary, but since the process is repeated several times - once when you get the word you're on deck at about a year out, again when you go on alert about six months out, just before you mobilize at about a month out, and just after you mobilize since the mob station doesn't trust you any further than they can throw you one has to wonder if the real driver is the admin types have heard that paperwork is secondary during combat deployments and it causes them to succumb to a panic attack. So in spite of the fact that we have crew that still need to progress in their qualifications and a whole herd of gunners to train up, (actually we decided that rather than herd, flock or gaggle they should be referred to as a murder of gunners) our helicopters sat on the ramp all weekend. Oh, well... Once we go on state orders our schedule is going to be a lot more mission oriented.

Air Force Museum AAR

Being an Air Force brat I grew up around military aircraft. As such I've always enjoyed going to air museums and shows, but having never lived near Dayton, Ohio I've not had the opportunity to make it to the Air Force Museum. Since Her Accuracy and I were over due a vacation, we decided to stop by for a couple days on the way to visit my parents. There's a lot of history to be seen there, and rather than trying to describe it all go here for some photos.

Summer Doldrums

The summer heat is finally here and I'm going through my annual slow down as I acclimate to the higher temperatures. Lots of progress to report but the clock keeps ticking and our deployment will be starting before we know it. Currently we're still working on getting all of the qualifications we can taken care of, since the more we do now the less we need to worry about as we mobilize. I've progressed to RL1 day/night meaning I'm a mission qualified crew chief for day and unaided night flights. I'm still working on my night vision goggle progression, I'm flight qualified (RL2) but not yet mission qualified. Since it doesn't get dark till relatively late that limits the number of flights I can do to once a week. I still have to work during the day... I should be RL1 NVG in July if all goes well.

Update: Got surprised with an evaluation flight - Now RL 1 Day/Night/NVG.

* * *

In the civilian world I've now got my flight instructor certificate for Rotorcraft/Helicopter so that's another major milestone out of the way. I was hoping to get my Instrument Instructor Certificate before the deployment as well, but with all the things I have scheduled for the next two months there's no way I could complete it before we left, so that will be my first project when we get back. Until then I'll be getting current for my instrument rating and getting a little more practice in the R44. I may also be able to get some ground instructor certifications knocked out as well.

* * *

This weekend we had our annual aviation safety day, a requirement for all flight personnel. Safety training is important, but all too often it is brutally boring. I'm happy to report that this year the Brigade did a fine job. Our keynote speaker was Astronaut Mike Mullane who provided us an excellent insight on some of the issues NASA faced during the shuttle program, and talked frankly about some of the institutional problems that contributed to the Challenger and Columbia losses. As a space flight geek for as long as I can remember I found his presentation fascinating. His book "Riding Rockets" is pretty damn good, too. The Army Safety Center was out and discussed some recent accidents and the Flight Surgeon an interesting presentation on the Swine Flu. No, really... He was good!

Touchdown Autorotation

People wonder what happens when the engine quits on a helicopter. The answer is the same as with an airplane - you glide to a landing. The mechanism is a little different since the "wings" on a helicopter move a bit faster than the crew does. So when the engine quits we set the controls to allow the wind coming up through the rotor to spin it like a windmill. As we get to our landing spot we flair (nose up) to slow the helicopter down, and as it settles we increase the pitch of the rotor blades to cushion the touchdown. The above video is me with the schools Chief Flight Instructor practicing a touchdown autorotation. By the start of the video I've already set the engine to idle and have established a glide. I'm about half way through a 180º turn to line up with the runway. Most of the sound you hear is coming from the tail rotor. At about 40 feet above the ground you can see the tail drop in the flair, these as the helicopter settles I level the skids and you can hear the rotor slow down as I cushion the touchdown.

Memorial Day 2009

Donald Layman
Darrel Kasson
Charles Browning
Richard Peris