Blog-tober

Busy as ever, and not too many stories to tell, but I’ll try and relay the last 9 days before I fall asleep. October was welcomed by everyone counting down the days (yes, there’s an official countdown in our maintenance shop) as another turn of the calendar, and the beginning of our first full month underway. Late September marked the beginning of moustache season for some of the det members, and perhaps coincidentally, all those who had them to begin with shaved them off once they noticed the trend! Unfortunately for us creative types, the Navy is rather strict on the style of facial hair, so you will not be seeing any pictures of handlebars.

Flying has not calmed down as much as some would have hoped, but once we look back at the weeks and months, we definitely welcome the hours. We track everything related to flight time. Landings, night time, SAR training, NVG time, and several other stats go into our logbooks so that we can use them for future qualifications. Last month, I ended up with about 36 hours, and I didn’t fly until the 19^th of the month. So far in October, I’m on pace for about 70. To put all of that in perspective, I flew less than 75 during my entire time in San Diego. Yeah, it’s like that.

I’ll summarize our “typical” day first, which should cover the basics (and certainly everything anyone would want to read about), and then I’ll relay the few days that I feel warrant specific mention. Normally the flight window is from around 1000 until 2000, and the window is almost always limited to 10 hours due to ship operations, crew rest schedules, etc. But regardless, our helicopter has to be airborne 15 minutes prior to the first launch of the day, and will be up until the last USMC aircraft is safe on deck. This is especially true during the times when we’re launching and recovering jets (AV-8B), but it applies during helicopter ops as well. Also, we are often tasked with PMC (passenger, mail, cargo) flights to support the ship’s personnel. We’ve been off the coast of Okinawa since we picked up the Marines, so we’re usually flying into the military bases there either to drop off or pick up passengers or mail. Anyway, back to the SAR part. We fly a pattern known as the “starboard delta” that allows us to pay attention to flight operations with out interfering with the landing and departing traffic. Sometimes we’ll wander off and practice our SAR procedures, but we’re almost always within 5 miles of the ship, turning right about 100 times in a row before we inevitably get called in to refuel. Boring stuff, but if they need us, things will certainly jump to the “exciting” category, so we always have to be ready. They will let us into the landing pattern sometimes too, because we do have to keep proficient on that as well. Either before or after the flight, during down time, we’ll stand “flower” watch in the control tower. As for the name, the best guess I’ve heard is because we plant ourselves in the corner and try to look pretty. We get to sit in a cool lookin’ chair and talk on a red phone, so I can’t complain too much! Our job is to talk on the radio to our aircraft and keep track of fuel state, coordinate tasking and maintenance, and generally be a method of communication between the helicopter and the ship. Again, it can get pretty boring if all the aircraft is doing is sitting in “the D” turning circles, but sometimes it’s the only chance I get to study, so the quiet is nice sometimes. Once flight ops are done, I’ll try and get as much done on my ground job as possible, but with another busy day approaching, sometimes a shower and bed is all that remains in the day. Oh, and there is food mixed in there, but you have to time it right sometimes. We can usually count on at least one meal in the aircraft. They’ll bring out some “to-go” plates, and hopefully we’re lucky enough to have remembered our utensils.

As for daily stories, There haven’t been too many worth telling, but I’ll share probably the three most fun days of flying so far this month.

1. VERTREP – If you haven’t heard me say it already, it’s the most fun I’ve had in a helicopter, and luckily enough, we actually get to take a break from the normal schedule to practice our skills (and show off sometimes) whenever the ship needs to replenish supplies. The typical method for this is when the ship pulls alongside a replenishment ship (full of Matt’s cronies) in CONREP position to use hoses, wires, cranes and whatever else needs to be used to resupply us with fuel, ammo, or other stores. The rest of the transfer is done by the helicopters. We use both helo’s so it can go faster, and take turns hovering over the supply ship’s deck while their guy runs under us, hooks up the load, and we lift it onto the deck of Iron Gator (that’s the Essex). It sounds a little boring, but we’re usually flying sideways or backwards, so we get to practice some pretty fun maneuvers. The day I got to practice, we flew about 150 pallets of mail/food/stuff from the USNS Rappahannock to ESSEX. We had another day of VERTREP later, but unfortunately I spent the whole time in “flower” just watching the other guys have all the fun.

2. Guns – One of the new missions our squadron has taken over is to provide tactical support to special forces, ground troops, or ship-boarding teams. To train for the mission, we have to become proficient in tactical formation flying, SPECOPS insertion and extraction, terrain flying (close to the ground around mountains and such), and of course, the new versions of the MH-60S can be fitted with M240 machine guns in the windows, 50cal guns out the cabin door, and support wings to carry hellfire missiles or fuel tanks. Of those, we practice procedures for all of the ship boarding techniques, formation flying, terrain flying, and the gun part. Our OIC (officer in charge) and I took our qualified crew chief and the 3 most junior crewmen out away from any ships and land, dropped a specially made target in the water, and flew gun patterns so that the guys in the back could practice shooting, and of course so I could practice flying. We got to shoot about 1800 rounds during the day, then spent some time landing on the USS Denver, and then headed out for another 1200 at night. I’ll try to scrounge up the videos of the shots, because apparently the non-shooting crew got some pretty cool footage of the whole thing.

3. PMC day – We all thought we had a good deal when the schedule came out for a log day of passenger flights. The ship allowed us to take some pax into Okinawa, and due to the flight schedule that day, we had to stay away for a few hours. Plan was to land, shut down, and stay on deck long enough to grab some lunch on solid ground, pick up some pizzas for the troops, and head back to the boat after a nice rest in town. WEEEEeelllll… the ship had other plans. We ended up making several runs (11 legs in the journey) between Okinawa, Essex, Denver, Harpers Ferry, and back again. About 20 minutes on deck wasn’t even close to the time we hoped for, but we were still able to arrange pizzas for our maintenance department, so the day was at least a partial success. That, and we moved probably 30 passengers and about a half ton of mail to help out all the ships in our group. What started as a 4 hour fly day with a 3 hour break right in the middle turned into an 8 ½ hour day, of which over 7 was spent in the air, and the rest of the time was split between each of the 10 stops along the way. Good way to up the flight hours if you ask me!

OK well who knows if the stories made any of that sound as fun as it was to fly all of it, but there will of course be more stories to follow. We’re scheduled for a port visit at the end of the month, so that should be a good time to relax, have some fun, and get ready for the next chapter at sea. Of course, by the time this is posted, we’ll probably already be there!