Flight complete!

Today was the day. My first flight as a pilot-in-command! We had a really great time flying people all over the place. I was thankful to have Jeremiah as my Pilot. We had a lot of fun and finished the mission without any issues at all. From left to right: Jeremiah Pyrdol, Arlan Sybert, Luke Ferguson, Kyle Johnson, and Tony Matysik. Thanks to everyone for the hard work and for making my first ride a great and memorable one!

PC ride complete!

Well, it's finally done! I finished my Pilot-in-Command Evaluation with CW4 Manny Portela yesterday. It's really the one goal of every pilot once you finish flight school. It's been a long time coming... there's been an influx of pilots in the Army for the last several years to the point where every airframe is over strength and there aren't enough hours to go around. It makes it difficult to gain enough experience to get signed off as PC.
So this is it... I'm flying my first flight as a PC tomorrow with our maintenance pilot. He's already a PC so this is kind of a 50/50 flight. Saturday will be my first true flight as a PC. Should be fun!

Here are a few pictures from the last few months. I haven't been too great at posting pictures and I'm not sure I'll get better over the next few months. I started an Aviation Law class that is supposedly going to require quite a bit of reading. So far it's not too bad, but I'm sure it'll get worse!
This one is from an early morning maintenance flight near Bagram.


A mid-day shot on our way into Jalalabad.


Matt workin' the hula hoop.


Jeff wasn't doing so well.


This monster dive bombed my head one day... thankfully I had my weapon available and was able to protect myself.


Look at the stinger on that thing! Well... I suppose it's not on it anymore.


My corny platoon leader showing me his airfield badge.


Here is an MI-24 Hind. This is what the Russians flew back in the 80's when they went village to village killing everyone in sight. They're obviously not used for that now, but I can't help but wonder how the Afghan people feel when they see one of these things fly over. I wouldn't think they enjoy it too much.


The other day we were all inside when we heard a bunch of loud crashing noises outside. There was a storm rolling through and a microburst sent everything flying, including our porta-john. Ended up spilling it's contents all over the ground right outside our door... not a pretty sight (or smell).



What a pleasant way to end the day!

Broke

The other day we had the privilege of being stuck at another small base awhile. We took the opportunity to enjoy ourselves as much as possible. This was a Russian MI-8 (Maybe MI-17... not sure) we decided to take a look at.


Not sure when this thing was made, but it was ancient! The newest piece of gear was a Garmin 296 GPS mounted in the middle. I think the seat cushions were the originals!



It was extremely spacious in the cockpit... really easy to get in and out of the seats. Sure would be nice to have all that space instead of playing origami with my body every time I fly.


Our Crew... sunburns in progress.

More flying to be done.

This is why you don't want to be a fuel truck driver in Afghanistan... or, should I say, an Afghan Fuel truck driver working for the Americans. Actually, we really don't know who owned the trucks... could be anyone, really. We saw the billowing smoke from about 20 miles away and were pretty shocked to see what it was when we got close. Had we been there 30 minutes earlier we may have seen it happen!




More pics from Kabul.

Back to Work

After a wonderful few weeks at home in beautiful Oregon, it's back to work. The trip back to Afghanistan wasn't so bad, just a bummer since I knew where I was going. It was pretty rough leaving home for the second time in 4 months, but after being here for awhile I'm getting back into the swing of things. Here are a few pics from the last month:


Waiting to head back out .


We strictly follow the "tread lightly" policy and afford great care when landing with our Chinook in people's fields making sure not to "damage" any crops or buildings!




Interesting find when we landed after one of our night missions...


Turns out this little guy (a bat) didn't fare too well against the mighty Chinook! He only THOUGHT he was getting a huge meal that night... didn't quite work out the way he planned it!



Moving the satellite... of course the most important part of the deployment!


Brilliant planning by the Air Force and the Army. We moved about 50 yards so they can tear down our current B-huts. We'll be moving again soon... so they can tear these down.

10,000'

Minus the Color... Ansel Adams Style.

We took a flight to a very scenic part of the country today. Our final destination was at 8,500' above sea level and a few of the ridges we crossed took us above 12,000'. As I went through my pictures I decided to change it up a bit. Sometimes, less it more. Here are a few from the flight (click to enlarge):

A typical work day...

Brian and Brian going at it. Big Brian thinks it would be fun to pick up little Brian and toss him around like a rag-doll. But little Brian has some fight in him... pretty much choked him out right there!


Matt passed some gas... everyone ran, but Dennis figured he'd just stick his nose in the bag of sunflower seeds to offset the smell.



This is our bear. It was the last bit of morale we had after we were told to take down all the fun pictures. "This place is a work environment. If you're not working, you need to leave."


So we decided to get rid of it. The shredder didn't work... too thick.


So we took it to the next level. Skewer the poor thing...


Add a little something to speed up the process, so as not to torture the poor little guy...


And I suppose you can figure out the rest.



Still going at it.