Night Qualification

October 8, 2005

I flew last night from about 2300 - 0030. It was my first flight in the desert with night vision goggles. It was simply an introduction to this type of flying. It was a great flght. I have only had a handful of flights since I started this craazy endeavor where I walked away feeling like I was really on top of everything. This was one of them. Everything clicked. The crew worked together seamlessly. The desert was beautiful in the green glow of the goggles and I enjoyed moving along 100 feet above the sand. As expected, I had to watch the instruments very closely to be sure I was not climbing or descending because there are no visual references to let you know altitude, especially under goggles. Whenever I saw a vehicle driving across the desert I would, for practice, treat it as potentially hostile. We would avoid a direct overflight. The door gunners, also for practice, would announce "hostile fire from the vehicle, suppressing!" and then make machine gun sounds over the intercom. We got into a contest to see who could make the best impression of the door gun. It was a fun flight but with a very serious purpose. The more I work were these guys the more confident I am in the team that is going to Iraq. Other than the occassional flight life has been uneventful. The Kuwaiti evenings are cool enough to go running so Ive been getting 3 to 6 miles in each night. Ive also been going to the gym most days. The rest of the time is still spent mostly waiting for meals and sitting around the tent. I think we are all ready to move on to our more permanant homes.

Photos

October 7, 2005

Here are some promised photos. They are from the trip over here and from some of the time we have spent in kuwait. The one behind the fence is from out stop-over in germany when we were waiting for the plane to be serviced. The one of me in the dark is in Kuwait waiting for the bus after we got off the plane. I think the others are self-explanatory.

Range

October 4, 2005

We spent about 6 hours at the shooting range yesterday. It was basically an empty spot in the desert with targets and sandbags. Very different from the highly controlled and cooridated shooting ranges back home. The idea was for everyone to get familiar with their weapons. We had 9 mm handgun, M-4 rifles and the 7.622 M-240 (this is the door gunner's machine gun. the rounds are the same as those in a .208 hunting rifle for those of you who care).

My rifle had some mechanical issues at first. Needless to say there was sand everywhere. After some tinkering, however, it worked pretty well considering the circumstances. From what I understand the 204s worked great. We all had a pretty good time shooting but got really hot and dehydrated standing out in the midafternoon desert sun. Everyone was ready to get back to the tent when the range time ended. We then spent a few more hours cleaning weapons before everyone passed out in the refrigerated comfort of the tent.

A new public radio station

October 3, 2005

I've recently begun listening a lot to KQED. The Bay Area's excellent radio station offers many benefits over Las Vegas' KNPR. One of the biggest is that it is possible to listen throughout a day and not hear the same story repeated ad-noseum. With KNPR it's gotten tough because four hours a day are filled with the local programing but it's not four hours a day worth. In fact it's not even two. They run the same segments during Morning Edition, and then again a few hours later, and in All Things Considered, and then again repeated in the State of Nevada. All and all not a terribly productive use of time.

Unlike many of the NPR affiliates KQED has an mp3 stream. This is important as I now have the stream in iTunes not in yet another poor third-party media player. Sure I could launch something like Real Player but why? Best of all it works great with Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack Pro - time shifting radio is really here. Now the programs I can't find time for on the weekend shift nicely into drive time podcasts.

First Flight

October 3, 2005

I had my first desert flight yesterday. It is challenging flying over such a barren landscape. There are very few references to indicated how high or fast I am flying. The instruments, therefore, become almost as important as they are when flying in the clouds. It is barren but beautiful over the desert. The sand takes all kinds of interesting shapes that change with the shadows. We also see the occassional lizard and camels as we fly along less than a hundred feet from the sand.

I really appreciate all of the encouragement I get from those of you who read this. I apologize for not replying to everyone personally. I simply dont have much time to use the public internet terminals here. I will do my best to write back to everyone eventually. It is great to know that so many people care.

More about Kuwait

October 1, 2005

I am scheduled to have my first environmental training flight today. Everyone has to do a few of the desert flights before we move on to Iraq. Things here are still uneventful. I carry my M-4 rifle everywhere I go (but we havnt been issued ammo). Most of my time is spent waiting for our next meal and napping. I expect the pace to pick up a little now that we are doing some traiining.

My brother asked me who works in the taco bell, subway, etc. Its a good question. All of the facilities are staffed by foreign nationals. They are mostly pakistanis, indians, and neplalise. It seems that Kuwaitis do not do manual labor. I dont know who will be working at the facilities in Iraq.

I should be living in a CHU (containiner housing unit) in iraq within the next few weeks and have personal internet access. I just heard that we will have seven people per CHU. That is going to be very tight but pobably better than 50 to a tent.

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