CXL which means canceled

Ok it starts like this; I get up and prepare myself for another long day. I walk to the shower room which is about a 100 yard walk no big deal except its closed for cleaning, so I walk to the standby shower and luckily its open. After a nice hot shower, brush the chops and a shave I head back to my room to get dressed for work. After I get dressed I head to the chow hall for lunch which happens to be my breakfast since I never get up before 10:00 and our real breakfast is over at 08:00. So I scarf down some quick chow and head to the office to meet up with my two pilots that I will be flying today. We go over some paperwork and do a quick brief and talk about what we will accomplish today. I tell them that I will meet them out at the aircraft for a preflight as soon as I gather my flight gear from my office. We meet up at the aircraft and start with the preflight which is like looking over your car really closely you know check the oil, tire pressure, hydraulic pressure’s, rotor blades, push pull tubes, all fluid levels, all flight surfaces you get the picture. After we finish our preflight and start setting up our crew stations, our head maintainer comes out to let me know that the aircraft has too many hours on it and my training flight has been canceled. So we grab our stuff which takes a while, because you have to get all your stuff out of your crew station, like my M4 rifle and my Go Bag which has extra clips and some first aid items like super clot bandages and tourniquets, and the rest of my flight gear, helmet, knee board, etc. etc. So after all this time it’s back to my office for some table talk and classes with the two pilots. I have had to adjust my table talk quite a bit over here; there are so many things that just don’t apply in this situation and this environment. Needless to say no more talk of national airspace and more talk of how to shoot move and communicate when times are more than stressful responding to a TIC “troops in contact”. We fly differently over here too, approaches are faster and steeper and we fly around loaded all the time. Back in the states when the aircraft is armed you are at gunnery and there are so many extra precautions when working near, around and with the aircraft. And for the most part none of that applies over here, don’t get me wrong it’s not like we are getting complacent because we are definitely not it’s just that you get so use to the aircraft being loaded at all times you are more in tune with what needs to be done. You see back in the states we are lucky if we shoot twice a year during our gunneries and over here we shoot almost every time we go out. OK where was I in my story of what my typical day is like, al yea after we were done talking we were told that the SOF team was here to give us a brief. Sorry SOF “special operations forces” their brief was Secret no foreign closed door you know the deal, pretty typical. We work with them all the time over here; remember my job when I am not training new people is to fly missions in support of ground forces over here. And their missions are comprised of such a broad spectrum of operations that I can’t even go into that I will leave that right there. So back to the office to get some more paper work done because you just can’t document things well enough for some people if you know what I mean. Well after a couple of hours doing exactly that a couple of friends came by to let me know they were going to the chow hall for dinner, so off we went. Saturday night chow is not steak night but it was ok, they had some of my favorites so I was not complaining at all. On the way to chow I stopped by my room to get my grocery store fleece jacket. My fleece jacket has some big pockets so I can raid the cooler and grab some drinks for my fridge and gather some snacks for my room.

Back to the office, I stayed till about 21:00 and called it a night. Everything I did not get done I will do tomorrow before I go fly. I was told that tomorrow I will have priority on aircraft and we will be able to fly our 6 hours. I am trying to get one pilot done so he can be shipped out to another FOB, The Boss wants him progressed here and then sent to the other FOB. So he is my priority I am trying to get him done as soon as I can I know how I would feel if I was in a place that I knew that I would not be staying at. I hope to stay right here so I have made my room as nice as I can with make shift furniture and carpets and a fridge and what not where Paul on the other hand is still living out of his bags. Well that is how a typical non flying day goes, as for days that I am flying it all depends on what I am doing, whether or not I am on a deliberate mission in support of a ground asset, QRF or if I am doing training flights.

Well I kind of ran off at the mouth on this one, it’s amazing what listening to music can do to the creative side of your brain I just get all gabby. Now it’s after 23:00 and I need to do a few more things before I go to bed so I need to finish this post and get it online. I type most of my post in word and then add them to my Blog. I do this because the Blog site is not to user friendly sometimes. I spent over a half hour one night typing a post and when I tried to hit publish I lost the whole thing and I will not let that happen again. I hope all of you are doing well, night all