FOB Miami

So as previously mentioned we spent 2 weeks at Forward Operating Base Miami. This was where the "war games" started up, although I didn't really participate in that side of things too much. The only thing we ha to worry about was making it to a hardened shelter or some sort of bunker for protection if we received simulated indirect fire.

Other then that we did normal aircraft maintenance. My squad worked from 12pm -12 am and another squad worked the other 12 hours.

 

 

Clockwise from top left: the flight line; Out sleep tents, the one I slept in is furthest to the right in the back; the two hangers along with the white tents which served as our "shop"; and the desert which surrounded us, this is looking towards death valley just beyond the mountains.

Here is a collage of other random pictures.

This is a OH-58 Kiowa. Officers that are stationed at Fort Irwin to train us would fly these and grade our pilots on how well they performed. The Kiowa is also used as a scout aircraft.

 

We also had 6 UH-60 Blackhawks with us. They were a detachment out of Fort Rucker, AL.

 

 

 

      

The last picture was actually taken during sunset during a dust storm. I thought it was pretty crazy how it turned out.

I love the color of the sky in this picture and the way the moon looks.

Our commander was extremely happy with the way our unit performed while at NTC. We flew close to 1,000 hours of flight time, which is a record for any unit in the past 3 years.

Also, for those of you that have not heard already, I will be home for Christmas this year from the 21st of Dec to the 4th of Jan.

National Training Center

Many of you know that I was recently on a field trip to California with my battalion. We were at the National Training Center located at Fort Irwin from the 1st to the 27th of October. NTC is supposed to replicate being in Iraq to help prepare units for deployment to Iraq.

The first week we were there was spent at the staging area known as "Aruba". We spent this time getting all of our equipment, trucks and aircraft ready to go out to the "box".

These are some pictures from Aruba. It was pretty windy almost the whole time we were there which made for some fun dust storms to work in.

The next place we were at is known as Forward Operating Base(FOB) Miami. We spent 2 weeks there, doing normal aircraft maintenance and some other training missions.

 

This was part of our convoy out to FOB Miami. This was also a dusty trip because the Humvee I rode in had no doors or top.