Nose Art

Still pretty busy here, working 12 hours days more or less. Thought I would share some of the nose art on our aircraft.

This is me and my roomie getting ready to fly an American flag for Grant's second birthday. I flew one for Jack's first birthday when I was stationed here flying Apaches.

I have to send a special thanks to Donna and all of our friend at the Robson Ranch Support Our Troops in Texas. I recently received 23 boxes of care packages for my unit from them. Everything from Twizzlers, to trail mix, to popcorn, to deodorant (can you smell us from all the way over here?). Thank you all so much, you don't know how that can lift every one's day when I bring a big box of goodies to the company. (I've been bringing one in every couple of days, so they last longer!)

Let me get this posted, and maybe I can even get a second one done this week! We'll see.

Hot Cockpit

As you may have guessed, I have been pretty busy lately. We have had a high turn-over rate of pilots, which means those of us left have to pick up the slack. In addition to this, I have been appointed as the scheduler (I fill in the names for the flight schedule) and I took and passed a Unit Trainer (UT) check ride. So I now fly with newer guys and teach them our mission.

As we flew over Iraq yesterday the temperature in the airplane rose steadily. Since we wanted to continue our mission, we elected to open our side vent windows to try to cool it down. After we landed, our maintenance people determined that the aft blower for our air conditioning had seized up on us and they proceeded to replace it. Here is a quick video of us flying at 150 mph with the windows open. Sorry about the sound, it was a little noisy.