Interesting Day

Well, this is officially my 36th day in a war zone, but who is counting. I will have to remember to record that in my baby book later. Anyway, I had a new experience today. I flew in one of our helicopters. At our base here, they use Blackhawks for flying the wounded in. They will be eventually using a new helicopter, but that will not be available for a while. Because the injuries have been down, they haven’t been flying on as many missions as before. The pilots have to log a certain amount of flight time, so they do training missions on the base every so often. I was lucky to go on one of those missions, and it was neat. They go through their preflight checks, (for the pilots in the group you know about that). They stand on it and check everything out. They buckled me inside (they know I am fragile). One thing I never thought of before, but they practiced like “touch and go” landings and take offs. I always thought the helicopters go up or down, then travel to wherever. But these guys were landing like a plane, rolling down the runway, then take off again, just like a plane. They said it is actually easier to land like a planed than the up and down stuff. They even practiced landing on an angle, so they used the side of a hill because not always where they land is it always level. It was a neat experience.



In my last blog, I appreciate Kristin’s comment about her Iraqi cab driver. I just hope it never comes down to invading Iran. It certainly is nice that some people besides Americans appreciate our war efforts.

Found an interesting web site that people may be interested in checking out. (Actually, I bowered it from one of my fellow doctors here). If you goggle “Mosul Airport” or click on the link, it gives some good information of where I am hiding these days. All along I thought it was classified information, so I am trying to be vague and secretive, and now I find out that you could download it from the internet all along. It has a picture of the airway and also quite a few related links. Some of the information is old, like from 2003, but it gives you an idea.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/mosul-airbase.htm


Tom