Been offline as of late for a short-notice tasker and return date that was moved up.
So as of now, I type to everyone from here in sunny TUS Arizona. It's good to be back in the world. During the last time I'd posted, I was tasked to coordinate getting my squadron's planes out of Iraq and into Qatar for the return home. Our projected return date was moved up due to our replacements being able to arrive earlier than expected. So as of 10 March, we turned over the reigns of Kirkuk Airbase, northern Iraq over to F-16s of the Michigan Air National Guard.
Took us this whole time to fly back from Qatar to TUS, via Sicily, the Azores, and across the Atlantic Ocean to Massachusetts. During that time, I didn't have access to any internet, and when there was access, I was exceedingly busy with flight planning.
Many thanks again for all who contributed to the morale campaign to my squadron, you have no idea just how much of a difference you made and just how appreciative your recipients are.
Final tally: 46 missions, a ton of night/IMC time that, FAR-wise, would make the FAA administrator blow his lid were it under his perview and being done in the US; no damage, no losses, no more A-10s in theatre.
Now, flying-wise, the need is to "deprogram" all the "bad habits" of IMC under VFR and file those back into the IFR bag of tricks under the "combat/emergency use only" folder.
MD
So as of now, I type to everyone from here in sunny TUS Arizona. It's good to be back in the world. During the last time I'd posted, I was tasked to coordinate getting my squadron's planes out of Iraq and into Qatar for the return home. Our projected return date was moved up due to our replacements being able to arrive earlier than expected. So as of 10 March, we turned over the reigns of Kirkuk Airbase, northern Iraq over to F-16s of the Michigan Air National Guard.
Took us this whole time to fly back from Qatar to TUS, via Sicily, the Azores, and across the Atlantic Ocean to Massachusetts. During that time, I didn't have access to any internet, and when there was access, I was exceedingly busy with flight planning.
Many thanks again for all who contributed to the morale campaign to my squadron, you have no idea just how much of a difference you made and just how appreciative your recipients are.
Final tally: 46 missions, a ton of night/IMC time that, FAR-wise, would make the FAA administrator blow his lid were it under his perview and being done in the US; no damage, no losses, no more A-10s in theatre.
Now, flying-wise, the need is to "deprogram" all the "bad habits" of IMC under VFR and file those back into the IFR bag of tricks under the "combat/emergency use only" folder.
MD
