Hurray for Herat!

After 3 and a half weeks of living in the corner of the transient shipping container, I finally made it to Herat. The big man left about 3 days earlier for Khandahar...he was pretty sure he'd lose about 27 pounds in the first 27 hours and 13 seconds in that somewhat warmer climate. Some of us are blessed with more subcutaneous insulation that other folks...and we tend to perspire a little more in these warmer climes. 

So they loaded me on a Afghan An-32, a left over Russian transport, with all my junk and a bunch of Afghans going on....vacation? It made a lot of scary noises but we landed in one piece and at the right place! 

 The best part of arriving at the right time and place was the two guys that told me to hurry up, we were leaving on a convoy. WHAAAT?!?! So much for my goal of NO as in zero convoys in Afghanistan! But at least it was on one of these monsters.

Owned by the USN and driven by Indiana National Guard. It was only a seven and half minute drive anyway.

I showed up in the morning, stayed up until 11:30 planning for a last minute flight the next day. We got up at 3:30 in the morning to help the Afghans load ammo on the helicopters we were flying down to Farah in support of Afghan troops. The sun came up as we were loading...

This is the one we drove...a little newer, had kevlar floor mats and some armor around the cockpit, and a gunsight for rockets, when do we get those?!?!

It was really hot so I ditched my helmet for this smooth headset...well I left my helmet in Kabul because I'm a moron...just kidding, I traded my helmet to an Afghan for 3 chickens, a camel and nice David Clark headset. But I'm really just joking, I borrowed an Afghan helmet, with no chin strap, a mike that I'm really not sure where it had been and it was about two sizes two small, but we made it work! And the dent in my forehead will pop out eventually. 

The view from the rear view mirror

Peek-CHURES

I'd like to share some of the pictures of the spectacular and rugged beauty surrounding Kabul. The snow is melting quickly from the 12,000 foot peaks north and east of the city. And the green-ish tint on the hills is fading. The wind blows hard every afternoon, and the fine silt dust is either irritating or blinding. We drive to work every day from the south side of the base to the north side...the base is on one side of the road and Kabul is on the other side of the fence. 

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It's vibrantly green right now in the low ground around the base, the wind blows ripples through little wheat fields and grape vineyards. The houses are for the most part mud as are the walls surrounding homes and gardens. 

Everyday little kids run along the fence waving and yelling...so we throw candy and water whenever we see them. I've seen the Italians and Turks through soccer balls over the fence. If it's windy...you have to throw with a good wind correction but be careful not to overshoot and have it land in the stinky water (sewage like) ditch! 

The kids actually ask for water instead of candy most of the time...we slow down and throw the candy over the fence most but sometimes we stop and pass bottled water through the fence. 

We're not supposed to do it for security reasons. There is legitimate concern that the Taliban, the brave and noble purveyors of the 'religion of peace', might strap bombs to the kids and send them to the fence to blow us up. But those little faces tug at your heart strings.  And to be able give them clean water and some gummy bears or chocolate...makes our day maybe more than theirs.

Here are a few more from the flight up to Baghram...

Joy Ridin' with Presidential Airlift

We just completed the work week...today is our down day. That's Friday for the rest of the world. Thursdays are a half day and Friday is don't go to work day. It was a good week for some and a weak week for others...like ME!

It is still a mystery how this place operates...but we're adapting, which is different than 'understanding' but we have a place to sleep (and my bed has only come apart once while I've been sleeping) and food...but no ice. 

While we're on this subject, WHY DO the Europeans hate ice? What is wrong with them? It's not hard, you just freeze water. And yet so many silly Americans admire and adore everything European? 

Okay...I'm a little guilty of that, they know how to build a bar here in KAIA. That's pronounced Key-YA. It's the airport...anyway, the Dutch built the Holland House, it's awesome and the Italians built a Beach Pit. The poor Dutch get a raw deal though, no real beer, and they get paid in dollars instead of Euros...just LIKE US!

So back to the week in review....

I haven't gotten a chance to fly...except for riding in the back...and that SUCKS, when you're not driving...I just slept because after the brief, I was scared.

This is the Americans briefing up...after we made 'adjustments' to his brief (he briefed he was going to fly at all the altitudes you're not supposed to fly at...unless you enjoy being shot at)

This is me sitting in the back of President Karzai's  helicotper. We were taking it for a joyride. It had a nice leather interior, some wood paneling and a tv...it's no Marine One but it's pretty nice for a Russian helicopter! 

And this is 'Mater, he's um...been working on F-16's, and breathing lots of fumes...and ate a lot of paint chips as a kid. He usually wears a helmet. To cross the street. But he can put his seat belt on by himself, most of the time!

This is the bigman...in proper flying garb, 'cept for the empty magazine well on his GUU-5. Don't worry, we do have bullets, ...somewhere, I think. (just kidding, we traded our ammo for a ping pong table and a kiddy pool....okay, not really, it was for ice cubes)

Beaker was scared too...it sucks sitting in the back and letting someone else fly. So like a good helicopter pilot, he maintained diligent vigilance...and hoped to wake up in Baghram in one piece. This is a good technique we use, called 'sometimes its just better not to see it coming'.

We made it to Bahgram and back safely. But it was best to do it with your eyes closed. The nice thing about flying into an airport in and Afghan Air Corp helicopter, everyone gets out of your way because they think pilots have no idea what they're  doing...which incidently, described us pretty well.

1 down...51 to go

The 365 day countdown has begun...358 to go! Should just cruise right by, I'm sure of it. We left families in Albuquerque at the butt crack of dawn. Because the US Air Farce, well, DoD travel geniuses, think it's better for us to take two flights & over 5 hours of flying, switching planes (with the possibility of our required luggage, like guns...because Delta Airlines never losses luggage in Atlanta, right?), a 7 hour trip to get to Baltimore...instead of the Southwest two and half hour direct flight. Anyway, we got to Baltimore, with our luggage (we even upgraded to First Class for free....so I take back the bad stuff I just said about Delta Airlines).

We got a flight on some made up airline, World Airways or something, at 9:00pm and flew from Baltimore, to Ramstein AFB, Germany, on to Incerlik, Turkey and finally on to Manas, Kyrgystan. It was long...and World Scareways' DC-10, number 3 off the original production line, didn't really have cold air blowing. I guess they were just helping us acclimate to the hot environments we were heading too. Traveling in uniform is fun...& I was pretty sure the plane was going to crash, after my feet spontaneously combusted, catching the interior of the plane on fire. It almost happened, we landed with hot brakes in Manas...so we got an extra 2 hours in the hot, stinky, sweaty airplane on the ground...waiting to get towed in. More acclimating, so really we should have thanked them for leaving us on the jet while deciding if the hot brakes were going to catch on fire, with us all inside. 

You can see some of the spectacularlly rugged mountains surrounding Manas. 

This is the Bigman and Petunia on the way from our super awesome tent to catch our plane ride to Bahgram. The Marines are funny, they came in at 2:00AM and the gy-rine in charge was yelling at the rest of them to "find a bunk NOW and BE  QUIET, PEOPLE ARE SLEEPING!" We were sleeping...until he yelled at his Marines to be quiet. Good job.

This is the same Marines loading into our C-17 to Bahgram. They were part of the first wave of the Afghanistan surge. So they had some business to conduct. If you've ever seen them up close, all loaded up with their combat gear...well, they are a lot tougher than the Air Force dorks! We wish them good luck and pray for their safe return to families.

Arrival in Bahgram, in a thunderstorm...we had to wait to unload because there was lightening within 5 miles so the flightline was closed. At least this time the back of the jet was open and letting in actual nice cool air.  

Bahgram is a complete train wreck...total chaos. We had to find a flight down to Kabul through a transportation office...the flight we were scheduled for when we left Manas, didn't actually exist. If you're transient at Bahgram, it's a tent, a cot and not sheets...we wanted to ditch that place ASAP! So we wondered around...and found a different, non Air Force flight down to Kabul. The transportation people said a one star general had to approve us switching flights. yeah right, I'm still waiting to hear from the general. We went with Blackwater Airlines. This is the pilot sporting the obligatory biker goatee...the tactical approach into Kabul was awesome, nosed over and straight down into the runway.

This is a shot of the countryside right out of Bahgram.

So today is Memorial Day...please remember why this is a national holiday. And those Marines, that will be hiking all over 10,000'+ mountains, loaded down with 75+ lbs of gear, looking for and engaging the bad guys on their home turf...keep them in your prayers, they are brave young men.

Em Eye Qualified...as in Mi-17

We're are officially Mi-17 qualified pilots...after a  mere 23 hours of training & 2 hours of evaluation. The best part was the extra 4 days we got to spend here, instead of home...because the Air Force sent us to here to fly with no idea who was going to give us our checkrides. Good plan. So after bullying the company that was giving us our training into letting an evaluator from a competing company give us our checkrides...we have our certificates for the refrigerator. (okay, he didn't actually work for the competing company, he just owed his GS-13 government job to them) ....and four days late. 

The company that provided our training was great. The instructors were outstanding, even if one of them was retired Army. The facilities were great, training excellent, maintenance was awesome and they even had a spouse flying training program...

This is Kellie's first flight in the co-pilot seat of the MD500...

This is Kellie flying over the water...Magnum PI style, no doors on the bird.

She got to do low level on the beach, rocket attack profiles, hovering practice and some loop-tee-loops. Thanks JT and James!

So now she's ready to rock. The plan is...we'll keep the little bird (a nickname for the MD500) in the back of the Mi-17, so if we go down because...like if we ran out of gas or...something, we can pull the little bird out of the back and Kellie can fly us back to base...it'd look kinda like this:

Our training included Emergency Procedures (EP's), instruments (which would be an EP if you went into the clouds for real on those 'instruments'), low level formation and NVG flying...good thing the EP's are easy, since the switches are in Cyrillic and the gauges are in units of measure I've never heard of. The good info is in our Dash 10, Army flight manual...like where it says the rotor turns the opposite way it does in real life. They've been using that manual for over 10 years! You'd figure simple concepts like counter clockwise vs. clockwise would be easy, even for the Army, but maybe all of their clocks only have numbers, no hour and minute hands? Those can be confusing...for kindergartners.

Here are some good formation pictures...

Down the beach in front of the condo...looking for sharks...& not bikinis.

Oh yeah...the checkride. We were given bogus information on the evaluator pilot...he told the guys here that he was just coming to an 'over the shoulder, make sure it stays greasy side down, spinny side up' kind of check ride. A gentleman's checkride...like as in EASY. I knew it was gonna be all down hill when the as the big guy was strapping in, the evaluator says, "So, tell me how far do the tail rotor petals travel"...are you joking?!?! Then he asked  how the pneumatic brakes work...we said 'air'...he only asked a few more questions and quit...when he realized we where lucky to find the right helicopter on the ramp.

Half way done with learning how to drive Russian built agricultural grade flying machines.

Alright...we're about at the midway point in the Mi-17 flying training part. It's a lot of fun, occasionally humbling and usually funny. One of my favorite characteristics is...no two  Mi-17's are alike, which is awesome for learning how to drive them. Every cockpit is slightly different in switch placement, gauge configuration, radio compliment and translation of Cyrillic to 'engrish' on the little switch labels...but the operating manuals are super awesome. And those translations...well, there are quite a few engrish words I never knew existed and I have no idea what they mean. But that's okay, because nobody really does...we just guess what the Russians were trying to say. Sometimes it's better to read it how it was written...as in half a bottle of Vodka later. To be honest with you dear readers....it's kind of our style, it's pretty vague, a little loose and the end of the day it comes down to a good WAG. (that means 'wild ass guess' in case that was unclear). And that is pretty much how we fly...pretty much...'mostly like that', 'I'm pretty sure that's the switch/its supposed to do that' and 'close enough' are words to live by.

Here is an occasionally 'typical' cockpit...the Russians had a whole lot of teal paint. They used it in the cockpits of everything. And all the gauges were made in the same barn...for everything, helicopters to Mach 2 fighters. It's a great way to save money and it works out okay since the helicopter goes like 240 Kmh/h. That sounds way faster than 134 knots....and jets go like 500+ knots. And the radar altimeters are sometimes in meters and sometimes in feet. The VSI or VVI is (vertical velocity indicator...it tells you how fast you're climbing or decending) in meters per second which is just like an american one, which is in feet per minute...it's all the same, I think.

Then this one...is all black inside with ALL of the switches in Cyrillic, and the Radios are ridiculous, but at least you can't hear them so you can't really tell how bad the sound is most of the time. Ah...the centralized planners, those little Commies didn't really want it to be easy to communicate with the outside world, and definitely not for all the crew members to know what was really going on, in that scary outside world! Like when other planes are going to land on you but you can't hear them.

Oh yeah......this one also has a door to the cabin, too keep the riff raff out. This cabin door is where our Mi-8 (Mi-17's and Mi-8's are the same thing, mostly, usually like a lot of the time, for the most part, when drinking Vodka)...anyway, this is where it says 'EXPERIMENTAL'...read the fine print underneath:

NOTICE THIS AIRCRAFT DOES NOT COMPLY WITH FEDERAL SAFETY REGULATIONS FOR STANDARD AIRCRAFT

I don't know what that means. But I do know that we hold the door open with a couple of bungie cords. It lets a good breeze blow up into the cockpit.

 

I almost forgot...the agricultural equipment, yes, this thing smells like a tractor, and the air brakes sound like big rig or bus brakes hissing and squeaking when you're driving around on the wheels. Here is a view down the tail boom...those little cables up at the top of the picture, go back like 50 feet (okay, not quite but almost) to the tail rotor. Those little cables are what work the tail rotor! 

That's it for today. I need to go shampoo and condition my mustache...I think there are Oreo crumbs in there, and yes, they were double stuff.

Update from Florida...it's Been Rough, the Living Accommodations are Sparse...

We arrived in Florida for Mi-17 training last Sunday...the place we're staying at is on a highway and the noise is sort of constant. The weather is so so and we've been cooking for ourselves too...

So here are a couple pictures of the place we're staying at for the month while we learn how to fly a Russian built flying dump truck. They build stuff a little...well, okay, a lot different than the non-commie type countries (like they did things to make it harder for pilots to defect back in the day...)

anyway....the view and constant noise is oh yeah, the gulf surf on the beach. 

and this is our completely hetero convertible? um...but we are in Florida so we had to rent it right? Okay it's kinda metro...

and the Mi- we're gonna fly...the guys that are going to teach us just picked this bird up a few days ago...so they're working the kinks out...and they flew by the beach condo for us...