FOB Hopping

Hello friends!

Long time, no post. Sorry about that. Time flies when you’re having fun or working your butt off in Afghanistan. Actually, I didn’t have much to write about until recently. Last week I went FOB-hopping, which is to say I went to another FOB (forward operating base) to perform an electrical inspection on some shower and latrine containerized units. Sounds sort of trivial, I know, but with the issues we had in Iraq with shower units, it is necessary that any modifications be inspected. I will tell that story some other time. In order to get to the FOB, we had to fly there. We travelled on a C-130, which is a turbo-prop cargo plane. We were in a time crunch and had to catch the next flight available, so we ended up on a re-fueling mission. It was a Marine owned/flown aircraft and we were to re-fuel Harriers in flight. This is a rare opportunity because the Marines do not like to carry passengers on a re-fueling mission. Safety reasons (at least that is what they say.) So my team (me and my four other airmen) was the only “cargo” on the flight. The only down side was that the flight was 2-hours long, which is at least an hour longer than a direct trip would have taken.

Now many of you may be familiar with the concept of re-fueling aircraft in flight. On large re-fuelers, there is a boom that extends from the tail of the plane and mates up with a fuel port on the trailing aircraft. No big deal. C-130 re-fuelers use drogue shoot fuel lines, which are flexible hoses that are deployed from each wing. Each hose has a small drag chute at the end that pulls the line out and keeps it relatively stable in the air. The aircraft to be fueled have to fly up to the chute and basically stab a re-fueling line into the end of the hose. A bit trickier than the boom method. The other cool thing is that they can re-fuel two planes at a time, which is what we did.

The pictures tell the rest of the story. They were taken out of windows on each side of the plane towards the back. The load masters sit in seats by these windows to monitor the re-fueling and track the gallons transferred. The Harriers were no further that 35-40 feet away. I could easily see inside the cockpit. Kind of cool, don’t you think?

Next blog, I’ll have to write about the dust devils over here. Quite a phenomenon.

Take care,

-Dave

Hello friends,

Well, it’s Labor Day weekend. Summer is (un)officially over, football season is about to begin and I’ve been over here for 50 days (as of Sep 6). Everything is heading in the right direction. As much as I would like to be nursing a beer by my pool watching Craig and his friends swim while Karen slaves over the grill, I will be, well, laboring tomorrow. No rest for the weary; we’re working tomorrow as if it is any other Monday. We did have a cook-out tonight, however. Someone organized it and got rolling around 5:00. We decided to call it a day at 5:30 (I called home, so I was in the office until around 6:00) and join the party. Strange having a picnic without any beer in sight, but everyone seemed to have a good time anyway. At one point while standing in line, I overheard a young Army soldier asked “What’s the occasion?” One of his more astute friends replied, “Duh, dude, tomorrow’s Labor Day!” (Far more explicit language was used, but I try to keep this blog at least PG-13). First soldier says “Really!? Wow, I am completely out of sink.” (I know it is “synch”, but I am sure he would have spelled it that way.) So there you have it, another example of how this deployment is like that movie “Groundhog Day”.
Picture is of (L to R) me, Chief Larry Alt and Lt DeJaun Saunders. LtCol Todd Hirneisen took the picture. You can see the smoke from the grills in the background. (No, that is not Tinkerbell on my shirt. Our PT shirts and shorts have reflective decals so we can be seen in the dark. Good thing the Taliban don't carry flashlights.)

I hope everyone enjoyed their summer. Thanks again for all the kind thoughts and, more importantly, all the support. It makes the time away from home bearable.

Until next time,

-Dave