Sunday, September 28, 2008

Hey L.T. - wanna try?

A little while ago I wrote about some of the missions that we accomplish (see below) and one of them was SAR (Search and Recovery). In our squadron we have 4 groups of people, all of which perform a distinct function:

Pilots: Of course you can't really fly anything without a qualified pilot - well I assume you could, but I'd say the odds are that gravity would take over and calamity would ensue. One of the important groups of people we have are pilots. All in our squadron are commissioned officers - most rank between LT (O3) and CDR (O5) and vary between 5-25 years of experience in the Navy. At some point they have been through various stages of training, most of which I can not name, and they have earned their "Wings of Gold". They are therefore provided the classification of "Naval Aviator". We find them very important when we want the aircraft to go airborne...

AirCrew: These guys are all enlisted Sailors in the Navy, and ages and experiences vary. What I've learned over the last few months is that their paths can vary a good deal. Most seem to have started as maintainers (more on them later) and decided that they wanted to change their job (so to speak) to become an aircrewman. I know even less about their training, except that they are the ones that know how to operate all the gadgets inside the helicopter - the hoist, the guns, the communications equipment - whatever it takes to get the mission done other than fly the aircraft. One of their other jobs is to be a SAR swimmer - where they jump out of aircraft and swim to the rescue of those in need. So not only are these guys tasked with operating the cabin, looking out the door for obstructions, and potentially defending the aircraft by shooting bad-guys - they may also have to jump out and save you.

SIDENOTE: Sometimes these guys can have amazing 'sea stories' and you find yourself somewhat in awe of things they have done. For instance there is a Chief at our squadron who had 39 'saves' during relief missions for Katrina in New Orleans. Yes - he saved 39 people from situations that they could not get themselves out of - that's impressive in my book!

Maintainers: I kinda fall into this category as I do work in the maintenance department, but these guys are 'ground-pounders' or 'wrench turners'. Working in 3 shifts on a 24 hour-a-day basis they inspect, fix and maintain the aircraft - all the way from the frame to the engine to the electronic equipment that is in there. They pretty much know everything about the aircraft, and how to fix it. It really is quite amazing when you think about taking your car into the shop, and you hand it over to the mechanic, and a few days later its fixed. Now there's a pretty good amount of stuff going on in your car - now take that and add communications equipment, weapons systems, and a 100 times more powerful engine. Oh and if that stuff doesn't work, then 5-6 people could die because when failure occurs in a helicopter you really can't pull off into the breakdown lane!

Front Office: As with any smoothly operating office we have our administration department. These people work very hard at getting all the paper that the paper-less Navy seems to generate done. Downstairs in our squadron are the maintainers and upstairs is the front office and administration departments. I find myself climbing a lot of stairs on a daily basis trying to get things that upstairs wants, and trotting down to my office to get it ordered.

Every afternoon at the squadron the OPS department posts the flight schedule for the next day, listing what pilots and what aircrew are going on what mission. I saw that there were going to be SAR jumps going on the next day, and those are not usually on the flight schedule. I figured that I would ask the question "Can I go on that flight and jump?". Most everyone seemed OK with it - but unfortunately the request never made it across the CO's desk, and I was relegated to try another day.

Instead I saw some of the AirCrew heading out in the rescue boat - in the event that something happened and someone needed to be rescued during the exercise. I asked if I could tag along - since my wife isn't here, and all I have is an empty hotel room to come back to, sitting in a boat watching this stuff seemed like a great great alternative. We went out in the boat and waited for the helicopter to take off - at this time I realized how a sense of humor comes in handy in the Navy. As we sat in the inflatable rubber boat the coxswain radioed in to the helicopter, and requested our call sign changed... to 'rubber ducky'... and so it was for the rest of the night. Men who had saved others lifes, run missions through areas unknown in Iraq were being referred to as 'rubber ducky' - humor ensues.

The first two sets of jumps went off well for the most part. It seemed as if the crewman in charge of the hoisting had some issues with the hoist at first, and some of them seemed jerky, but everyone did two jumps and were recovered successfully.

There was a nightime part of this training evolution, and we had to wait about 30 min for the sun to set. During this time the swimmers came over to the boat, and hung on the outside just talking and waiting. One of them asked me "hey LT - you wanna try?". Needless to say I was hesitant as I'm not really sure if I was supposed to be in the boat, but I'm pretty sure that I wasn't supposed to be geared up and getting hoisted up. In all honesty, it didn't take much to convince me, but I was sold on the fact that this was a good training opportunity for the guys - taking someone who didn't know what they were doing and then 'teaching them'.

So I took the mask and snorkle, harness and flippers and jumped into the water. We hung out there for a bit waiting for the helicopter to return. As it did, we all swam into a line in the water, and the first group got ready to be hoisted.

When the helicopter starts to come over, it not only gets reall really loud, but it also starts to spray water everywhere. As I was given the gear I was told to make sure I had my mask on when the helicopter came over and to breathe through the snorkel as it would be almost impossible to breathe and see without them. This I found out was very true. When the helicopter came over the spray from the rotorwash was pelting me in the face, and it didn't really hurt - but it was kinda annoying. Then I watched the first group hook up and get hoisted up, then the helicopter came our way.

We had to go up in tandem simulating the rescuer (not me) and the person being rescued (definitely me). I swam over with the guy that was rescuing me, and tried to find the hoist. It was really difficult to see it - its dark, there is ocean spray everywhere, and there is a hook with an orange flag on it that's sitting under water. Needless to say we got there, we hooked up and off we went! It didn't last long, but it was amazing, we went up in the air just under the helicopter then back into the water and up and down again. There you are at night, being hoistted out of water, and the only thing to identify you is a night stick attached to your harness. Really really cool... I can't believe people are paid to do this stuff :)

When I got back I had to tell Jen, and I don't think that I really got to sleep until late that night. I'm sure for those that do this regularly its not a big deal, but for a Supply Officer, these experiences are not offerred very much - so when they are you have to take them. My hope is to get on a GUNEX soon and I hear they are actually doing jumps again in OCT - I'm going to beg and plead to jump out of the helicopter next time.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

EW HOP


When I first knew I was reporting to a helicopter squadron something hit me: I'd never actually been in a helicopter. Strange feeling when you're going to work for a group of people that go fly in these things every day, and you don't even have a clue what it is they do, or what its even like to be in one. During my check-in process I spoke with the CO and XO, and expressed interest in going up on a ride with the pilots to see what it was like - they wholeheartedly agreed, all I had to do was schedule it.

Over the next few months I kept mentioning it to the Operations room, the ones who schedule the flights, and eventually I managed to get on a flight. I was told that it was going to be an EW 'hop' - in other words it was an Electronic Warfare flight that we were going on. First let me explain the different kinds of flights the squadron may do on any given day:

EW: I'll start here, since this is the flight that I went on, and I have at least an idea of what they do here. The purpose of an EW hop is to practice evading radar, once it is locked on to you. In order to do this you have to get low and fast, banking and rolling - basically like a roller coaster. There are radar sites with different kinds of radar (can't say which exact types!) that try to lock you on, then once you're locked on a simulated fire message is issued - basically they just shot a surface to air guided missle at you (for pretend). At this point the helicopter tries to get as low to the earth and evade the missles and/or radar system that is tracking it.

GUNEX: This is one of the training exercises I really want to go on - its where they mount up a GAU and a 240, and go to the range and shoot thousands of rounds. Think of it this way - a GAO can shoot up to 4,000 rounds or so per minute!

SAR JUMPS: SAR stands for Search and Recovery - so this is when someone is downed, either on land or at sea and they send a helicopter out to rescue that person. If the mission is at sea then swimmers must jump from about 10 - 15 feet in the air, and then swim to the rescue of whoever needs it. There will be more on this in another post - I'm trying to get permission to do the jumps myself :)

NSW Training: Yeah - I can't really say much about these. Let's just say that our squadron has Special Forces swing by every once and a while, and they go out and play. Unfortunately these are training missions that I'll never be able to join on - but as I've said before, I'm glad there are people who do what they do.

So I got to do an EW hop, and I'm glad I did. Essentially during this training exercise were going to be locked on by different kinds of radar, and then do evasion of that radar capability. Our hard deck for this mission was 35 feet - meaning that aircraft shouldn't be flown below 35 feet. Why? Well there are trees that were 30 feet tall in the area.

The flight out was pretty cool - it was different being in a helicopter, its not like being in an airplane. Obviously the take off is a little different since you go almost straight up, and there's no massive acceleration. There's also that great big difference that the windows are all open, and the door is open! That's more than necessary as on a summer day the cabin can get really hot, and the air that rushes in cools you down nicely.

We traveled down from Norfolk into North Carolina where the radar training sites were located. The flight down was pretty simple, we flew along the coast, just barely over the water - a lot of people on the ground waived to us. We did a quick stop, where the helicopter rocks back in the air and slows its forward progress quickly which was fun.

When we arrived at the site we did a few practice passes through it, so familiarize one of the pilots with the layout of the area since he had not been there before. I heard the call that we had been locked on, and then the fun began. Immediately upon hearing that the radar had lock, and I think they said fire - we dove down, hit the accelerator and started banking and rolling. Here's a video of it I made from my camera...


If you can see it, you'll see that the horizon is going up and down, meaning we're banking and rolling all over the place. It became apparent to me why some of the pilots had said to eat a light lunch earlier in the day.

Overall it was a lot of fun, and quite an experience. As I said before I'm going to try and get into a GUNEX and SAR JUMPS. These kinds of experiences are not the main reason, but definitely one of the reasons, that I joined the Navy to begin with. It really is amazing when you see some of the opportunities to do things that others will never get to see or do. I'm grateful that I'm going to get to do them!

UPDATE: I've gotten confirmation - I'll be heading to Iraq sometime in the last week of October, only for a few weeks...