Interesting couple of days

I tried to post yesterday, but... was SO tired, I (and my roommates) all fell asleep while we were doing our various activities. We woke up and the lights were still on, etc.

Anyway, yesterday, as I was going in to work, I looked (as I tend to, being an aviation nut) across the flight line. It was noticeably empty. Wow, guess we're up to something out there today, I thought to myself.

Apparently so. For the duration of the morning, myself and the few worker-bees left in the shop got to tend to the part of our job where we're actually handling the ammo. We go out to the pads, and load the birds. We must have loaded six or so birds, easily, and they all kept going out for more. Some got loaded twice. Lots of rounds going downrange.

Turns out that we'd found a major cluster of Taliban/al-Qaeda, and the Chinooks dropped off forces at the top of the mountain, coming down, driving them towards the waiting Apaches. Busy, busy day. Successful. Birds fought hard. Kept coming back with various parts breaking, but the pilots saying, "Load me up, got to go back... we'll fix it later."

And we did. There was one bird that day that came back and had ammunition feed troubles. Well, that is just a nightmare of a job as we have to take a lot out to get to the feed chutes inside. Remove fuel tanks, amongst other things. Anyways, we did all that, fixed our problem... and then, of course, have to make sure it works. We loaded dummy rounds in, made sure they fed, and then...

I got to fire the gun. Whoa! It is SO much fun. Can only imagine what it's like in flight. The whole bird moves when it fires. YAY!!!!!!!! Must do that again. Made the 7 hours of repair effort worth it.




In other news, getting a new roommate. Will make it a 4 man room. :( oh well, still not bad living conditions.

Our showers are working fully (we lost them after one day, but is fixed.) Is such an incredible shower. We're ALL raving about it. Was almost late to work one day it felt so good. Really helps after a hard day.




Spent all day today in the office. Basically babysitting it while the command staff took a day off. Would have been a good day for aircraft work. Was only 115. Nice and cool. We didn't even sweat.
Picked up a new Soldier. She was complaining how hot it was. All I (and others) could do was just hand her water and warn her... it gets worse.