Nighttime Calls

As I may have mentioned earlier, I am once again in Qalat on a Medevac mission where my aircraft follows a Medevac Blackhawk to provide gun support while they go into a pickup zone to extract the wounded. On this rotation I have had the opportunity to fly a couple of missions at night using night vision goggles.
The first was just after I arrived to Qalat this time. We were delayed in Kandahar because of aircraft maintenance issues and took off late. The sun went down on the way here and we had to transition to using NVGs midflight. Luckily, if you have already mounted your goggles, all it takes to turn them on is to flip them down over your eyes. We landed at 6:55, and rushed to shut down the aircraft so we could get to chow which closed at 7:00PM since we had already missed lunch. We just made it, quickly ate, and were just getting back to our tent when we got a call to launch. We rushed out to the aircraft, started up and took off for a 30 minute flight to one of the forward operating bases to our North. The entire area to our North is mountainous and it was challenging to fly in the mountains, especially using NVGs which condense our usual 210 degree field of view (with peripheral vision) into approximately 40 degrees. Also everything is a shade of green. However, this just made it more interesting, and we successfully picked up the wounded soldier and brought him to the field hospital.
Our second goggle flight happened about a week later, at 2:00AM. We received the call to launch and quickly got dressed and while simultaneously waking up. After launching to the same area as the previous flight, we quickly arrived at the pickup zone and the medevac aircraft landed and picked up the soldier next to the accident site. He had accidentally fallen into a river while on night patrol, and he required medical care. We were able to get him back to the field hospital quickly and safely. I was so pumped on adrenaline after the early morning wake up that it took a couple of hours to get to sleep after we got back. It took a couple of days to get back onto a semi-normal schedule, but it was a very interesting and memorable experience and its good to know that we were able to help wounded soldiers to get the medical care that they need.

Decorating the "Bird"

We wanted to paint the engine cowling of the aircraft to carry on a long tradition in A Company 4-101 Aviation Regiment. We are the Comancheros and the picture to the right is our company symbol painted on an older aircraft.

We started by printing off a template to trace onto the cowling. Then we put tape on the cowling to trace onto.

Then trace the image onto the tape...

And using a knife, cut out and peel off the tape where the image is.

And keep peeling...

Then spray paint, let dry and clean up.

Here are our two crew chiefs, SPC Spencer, SPC Alvis, and below is CW2 Justin Mix, our Pilot in Command.

And this is how it turned out! 041 is the first UH60M to have its engine cowlings painted!

I Know It's Been Awhile

I haven't taken the time to write recently, and I would like to say that it is because I have been crazy busy, but that just isn't the case. I have been in Kandahar for the last month, and so I haven't had as much free time, but I am now back in Qalat on Medevac standby, so I am again faced with quite a bit of time on my hands. My goal is to get some updates done to highlight the best of the best of the last month....at least it shouldn't take too long. Updates coming soon!

Learning to Use the M240

This is not the preferred method of firing the 240 because of its weight and because I am holding it by the bipod so I don't burn my hand on the barrel. Lots of fun though!

Don't Try This at Home

This is a little video at the small arms range. We had some targets but it was fun to shoot at the plastic bottles as well! Fun!

A Day at the Range

We were able to go to the firing range a couple of days ago and it was a blast! Luckily, we have a steady supply of ammo and plenty of time. We also have an AK-47 in our tent and plenty of ammo for it. We started off at the small arms range and I zeroed my M-4, and got used to using a red dot sight. The red dot is the way to go, way better than lining up the iron sights. I also fired my M9 and then took a turn using the AK. It was fun, but there is no accuracy when you go full auto and you're standing up! We had some paper targets, but also setup some empty ammo cans, water bottles, .50 cal shells and other misc things as targets.

After the small arms range, we went to the range where we could fire the M240 (Fully automatic, 7.62mm). It was the first time I had fired a 240, it was alot like the 249 (Fully automatic, 5.56mm), just a bit bigger and heavier. Overall it was a great time!

Birthday Party!!!

Well, Feb. 1st was my birthday and also the Super Bowl. I decided to stay up with the crew chiefs to watch it, which we theorized would start at around 1 AM (Feb 2nd). However, we later found out it wouldn't start until 3:30 AM and that the kick off wasn't going to be until about 25 minutes after that. I would have given up right there and then, but the crew chiefs (who are still quite young by the way), kept taunting me, so I decided to stay up. I made it through the first half, but didn't want to wait through the halftime show to see the rest. I figured I could get an hour or two of sleep and then wake up for the last half/quarter. I woke up about 5 minutes after it ended. Oh well, at least I got to see all the good plays in the highlight reels, and then later they showed the whole game again. Probably the worst part is that we aren't able to see any of the commercials, which is most of the draw for me anyway. I rooted for the Cardinals, and they put up a good fight and almost took it, great game!

The photo is of the Baskin Robbins ice cream I had for dinner on my birthday. I ate almost no food so that I would feel better about filling about 1/3 of my cup with hot fudge...yummmmm! Oh, and that is indeed Fanta Orange in the background, it says fanta orange phonetically in arabic/pashtun.