Haji Don't Surf

I don't where they came from, but we have a set of old school shades floating around the office. We took a few pictures the other day with the shades. Here is me and my desk.

Me and Irene.

I think there is a striking resemblance to Lt. Col Kilgore from Apocalypse Now. What do you think?

Also, some good news from here. After 12 months here at Anaconda, we discovered there is an MWR lab right next door to our building. The battlespace owner, 2-82 FA, which is a 1st Cav Division unit, shares office space with us and our guys go out on joint patrols with them. The previous group never bothered to offer to let us use their MWR lab, but the new guys are much more gracious, so it will be a little easier for me to do blog updates. So look forward to some increased activity here.

Irene

As promised, here are some pictures of my newest time killer. After buying the Picco Z, and flying that around for a while, I realized I needed something with a little more power. I did some research and found just the bird, the Blade CP. It is a 6 channel collective pitch helicopter, which means that it will fly forward, backwards, side to side, and up and down. It will also fly upside down, although I'm light years away from doing that.

Here is a pic with the old helicopter.

The controller. Lots of buttons and switches.

The canopy with a few additions.

The only negative so far is that I don't have a great place to fly. I use the Tomahawk range in back of our building, which is good unless it is windy. So I can only fly a few days a week. I'm done with ground school and have moved on to learning how to hover. It is quite difficult but I'm learning. Someone compared it to balancing a marble and a sheet of glass, which I think is accurate. The controls are very sensitive and you are constantly adjusting to what the helicopter wants to do. Good times!

I've only crashed once (at least once hard) so far, and I bent a piece that I had to replace. Other than that, things are going pretty good. Hopefully soon I'll be moving past the hover stage and doing some real flying shortly.

The Man Has Got Me Down

Well, the blogging has been pretty hit or miss lately. It has been a combination of the MWR lab being closed for painting, being busy with work stuff (always a drag on my myriad number of hobbies), and lack of motivation. March is going to be the toughest month of the deployment. Everyday there is a new milestone for something that should or shouldn't have happened due to the extension. For instance, we should currently have our "left seat" training complete with our replacements. That is where we do the work and they ride along and take notes. Our "right seat" training should have started by now, which is where our replacements do the work and we watch over their shoulders. For us admin pukes, it is pretty simple because our replacements were to be active duty and probably don't need a Nat'l Guard unit telling them how to do their jobs. It was more of an update for anything special they need to know about being in theater. Friday, March 9th, was our original TOA (transfer of authority) date and we would have been outta dodge shortly after that. Each day that goes by we talk about how different things would be if we were going home and not spending another 4 months here. SFC Kerchal went so far as to say we may actually have all died in a mortar attack, and are currently in purgatory. Every time our new TOA date comes around we'll find out we are getting extended and never get to leave. I've been having nightmares ever since.

Once we get through March things will get better. We should have an idea of our new TOA date by the end of the month, and essentially April 1st will be sort of like December 1st. Time to start thinking/planning/working on getting out of here. Right now we are in limbo which isn't much fun. One of the Brigade staff officers used to always say that this deployment isn't a sprint, it is a marathon. He now says that is isn't a marathon, it is a death march. We have depicted this on our big white board with stick figures representing each month. Right now our stick figure guy is crawling along the ground. In April he will start to get up off the ground. May and June he will be heading towards the light. July he will be back on his feet. August he will be celebrating with his friends and family. So, we'll make it through some how.

I was planning on doing a post on my new helicopter today but I forgot my flash drive with the pictures. After consulting with the Dan the Man, I've named her Irene. I am still figuring out how to fly her, and things are going pretty slow right now. I found a flight instructor on the 'net (really!) and he is giving me some tips. Once I get the hang of it I'll do a more detailed post of me and my bird. I am done with Radd's ground school and am moving on to hovering right now. I had a little bit of a hard landing the other day and bent an important piece, but my Crew Chief (SFC Kerchal) and I did some maintenance and she is back up in the air. Good times.

Gettin' Some Stick Time

I saw an article in one of the magazines I read, Business 2.0, shortly after Christmas that extolled the virtues of the latest toy craze. It was about mini RC helicopters and how they were the most popular toy of 2006. I was instantly intrigued, however, since we were due to head out of town shortly I decided against purchasing one. Well, once we got the news that we were staying, I decided a little break from the mundane would help cure my ills. I went out and purchased one, and even roped in SFC Kerchal and SSG Johnson. LTC Apprich and Chief Regan soon followed suit with a purchase of their own.

Here is the my chopper and controller, going through the pre-flight charge.

This one is a little blurry, but shows my lil' guy up in the air.

Getting ready to launch. They will take off from a flat surface or you can toss them around which is quite fun.

Hovering above Hammer's desk. My heli is drawn towards Hammer's work space, I think because it annoys him greatly.

In flight, out the door of the S1 section.
These helis are a ton of fun, but unfortunately they are only 2 channel (up/down and rotate left/right). You can't really hover or fly back and forth, they are so light that any air current moves them around. The main thing is just keeping them in the air and away from obstacles. They can really take a beating as most flights end up with a crash. I must say that I've become quite addicted, so with the wife's permission I am in the process of upgrading to a 4 channel model that will go forward/back as well. More to follow on that....