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Nightmare515

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Everything posted by Nightmare515

  1. That's basically it. Blackhawks and Chinooks do everything. Air Assaults, mail drop, MEDEVAC, logistics, taking the General to lunch, etc. Apaches do one thing only. So when they aren't deployed the 60's and 47s still have a mission to do. They can get a call saying they need to pick up a platoon of troops for a training mission, or the Artillery boys need you to pick up their artillery gun and move it somewhere. Or the General needs a ride to a meeting, etc. Apaches just do combat so unless there is a war we don't fly as much. That's why the tell you to "Pick the mission, not the aircraft" when selecting an airframe in flight school. If you want to fly the most then pick Blackhawks. If you want to fly less but shoot things then pick Apaches or Kiowas before they got nixed. It's just personal preference. I for one agree with you I had absolutely no desire to fly anything but the Apache. Many people said that they didn't care what they flew as long as they got to fly. Not this guy. I'm pretty sure I chewed my fingers down to the bone in the days leading up to selection day. I wouldn't have been happy in anything else. I would have done my job, but I wouldn't have been happy lol.
  2. Yeah I suppose it could. But you also have to think about where we are operating right now and the way we are operating now. In places like Afghanistan and Iraq a big green helicopter isn't camouflage anyway so painting shark teeth on it isn't really going to matter much. I would assume that if we moved to an environment with more vegetation then we might not want to alter the paint scheme as often. Well I've found that there are 2 main reasons people don't want to fly the Apache. We tend to get the least amount of hours and they don't want to kill anybody. Like AlphaOneSix said many people join the Army because they want to fly helicopters. It's the same with other jobs in the Army. We aren't exactly hurting for recruits for Infantry or Tanks or anything but many people want to serve their country without actually engaging in combat so roles such as Supply and Medical are very popular. Some people are honestly just afraid of combat roles. There is nothing at all wrong with that. It takes a "special" kind of person to be able to get shot at for a living. I'm not trying to sound tough or anything because we are all scared when bullets start flying. Anyone who says they aren't terrified is flat out lying. But some people can handle that fear and keep moving, some people can't. Nothing wrong with that at all. I heard a few people mention that the wanted the Blackhawk because of that movie Blackhawk Down. They think it's cool. I am by no means disrespecting, downplaying, or degrading the service of any member of our military, we need them all and I have the utmost respect for anyone who wears the uniform. However, in my own philosophy I felt that if I am going to be in the Army then I'm going to fight. As the old saying goes there are two types of people in the Army, the ones who go out and destroy the enemy and those who support the people who do. To me I am in the military, I didn't join the military to do a job I can do as a civilian. If Im going to be in the Army then I going to fight. Thats why I enlisted in Tanks at first and am in Apaches now. As far as the callsigns we don't follow the same tradition as the Air Force and Navy pilots. We don't have callsigns like Maverick or Iceman or anything. Those aren't actually their real callsigns for the flight they are just nicknames they give each other personally. Actual callsigns are given to a flight and are usually something basic like "Falcon 1" for F-16s or "Eagle 1" for F-15s. AC-130s usually get something like "Hammer" or "Thunder". F/A-18s are usually "Sting" or "Hornet" and the A-10s usually got "Hog". B-1 bombers got "Bone" (B-One) get it? ;) Pretty much the same stuff you hear in the video games. Some people have nicknames in my company and they are based on the way anyone gets a nickname, we can't pronounce their real name lol. But for the most part we just call each other by our first names.
  3. Well I was finally able to get a break in the weather and do some flying yesterday. Only got to fly a couple hours because we had freezing rain and started running into icing conditions. Got familiar with taking off and landing in white out snow conditions which was pretty nice. But when the sensors start freezing over it's time to put the bird on the ground.
  4. In theory yes the Apache is an all weather attack helo. In practicality eh....not really. With all of the advanced technology on the bird we are still helicopters. When we have blizzards blowing 50mph+ gusts and snow measured in feet then we tend to stand down. The fixed wing fellows can get away with worse weather conditions, we can't deal with it as well. In a real world situation we lower our limitations. But for training there is no reason to risk flying in a snow storm just to go out and shoot plastic targets. Plus like Flagrum said the snow is stacked up here. Even though we can technically dig the birds out of the snow and fly we have to get people to work and thats no easy task when there's a few feet of snow stacked outside of your front door and the roads are covered in ice.
  5. Ya know I really don't know what sort of paint they use to be honest. All I know is that I walked downstairs in the hanger one day and saw the crew chiefs painting shark teeth on the helo's. I'll ask them what type of paint they use I think it's just regular paint. They have paint all over the place in the hangers but if not its not too big of a deal for someone to run to Wal Mart or something and grab some. Last time I saw them do it they did it while at work. I'm still relatively new though so I don't know how often they do it. Yeah the weapons are classified and some of the sights are. The Fire Control Radar is classified as well. There are also loads of other things in the aircrafts avionics package that are classified that are simply omitted from the sims. We are briefed on which systems are classified and which are not but we also just use common sense to know what we can talk about and what we shoudln't. Yeah he was more or less just surprised at how well they got the avionics down with what they were allowed to do. Most sims just sort of put half effort into avionics because unless you actually fly the aircraft in real life then you won't know the difference anyway. Sort of like how I said before when I press a button in a sim it rarely goes to the same MPD page as it does in the real aircraft. I'm assuming that in DCS A-10 a lot of the avionics actually functioned the way they do in the real thing which impressed/shocked him. lol yeah the HDU is what makes the Apache famous but it's a real PITA sometimes. I know guys that have been flying for years who still can't get that thing centered and focused properly. Very rarely is the display as clear and perfect looking as it is in the video games. Unfortunately my PS3 is in storage somewhere I haven't played it in a long time. I've moved on to computer games now. Anyone in the US Army can apply to become a Warrant Officer and apply for flight school. We are the only branch that has Warrant Officers who can fly. I always wanted to be a pilot but it's very difficult to get into Warrant Officer Flight Training straight from the civilian world. They tend to pick people out of the actual Army. Some civilians do get selected though. I wanted to be in the military so I enlisted in the one thing that I thought was the second coolest job besides pilot, tanks. After years of doing that and deployments and whatnot I finally put together my packet to Warrant Officer Flight Training and sent it off and they selected me to go to the school. Getting accepted is tough because like you said there are way more applicants than there are slots. I just made my packet look the best I could and they took me. To be honest the Apache is "cooler" to the outside world than it is to those in flight school. Most people actually DON'T want to fly it. The Blackhawks and Chinooks are the ones that most people want. The way it works is that you go through the initial helicopter training program where they teach you how to fly a small Bell 206 (news chopper) and an OH-58A/C (green news chopper). Once that is complete you get to put your name on a wishlist for which aircraft you would like to fly. Depending on how well you did in the months of learning how to fly the news chopper depends on how far up the list your name gets placed. Then the Army puts out a list of what types of aircraft it has available for selection at that time. As expected the people at the top of the list usually get what they want because they get to pick first while the farther down the list you are the better chance you have of getting whatever's left. It's not uncommon to see some broken hearts on selection day because the guys at the bottom got stuck with an aircraft they didn't want. Luckily for me I was near the top and I got exactly what I always wanted, plus very few people wanted them anyway so I would have gotten one even if I was dead last. Yeah the Navy SEALs are the ones who motivated me back when I was in flight school. I read all of the books about SEAL training and watch all the shows on tv and the documentaries. I figured that those young kids literally go through the toughest military training in the free world. If they can do that then Im pretty sure I can suck it up and study for a little longer. I know full well how it feels to have a dream and go for it at all costs and I fully understand what drives those young men to go through that Navy SEAL school. But I do thank my lucky stars every day that my dream in life wasn't to be a Navy SEAL. I absolutely admire those young men but screw that lol.
  6. That's a bit strange about the airshow. When I was growing up we had airshows all the time and the pilots were all over the place standing by their static display aircraft answering questions and letting people walk up and look in the cockpit and whatnot. The newer aircraft like the F/A-22's were always roped off so nobody could get close but the rest were free game. For the most part all of the pilots I spoke to were really friendly and informative. Towards the end of the day they would tend to get a bit irritable which is understandable seeing how the airshow was usually on a weekend and they had been sitting out there all day talking to people and they probably wanted to go home. But overall really nice folks. Now as far as your questions The decals are usually individually unit based. Depending on the Commander some units are allowed to paint the "cool" stuff on the aircraft like the shark teeth and other things like that. Some units don't let you do that it just depends. Usually the crew chiefs paint the stuff on there. In reality the birds are their aircraft not ours. We just fly them, they do everything else so when it comes to what type of decals they want to paint on there it's left up to them. That's how it works in the US Army Im not sure how the other branches work. All I know is that we don't have cool paint schemes like the foreign military's have. We get decals thats about as far as it goes, no full camo makeover or anything. I've toyed around with Apache commercial sims before and it does sort of screw me up but it's actually the opposite of what you are thinking. All of the controls and switches and avionics are muscle memory at this point so when I tried the sim I was trying to press buttons to do certain things that didn't work the same way as they do in real life. Commercial sims can get close to the real thing but much of the aircraft systems are classified so they can't include that in the sim so the developers just guess what some things do or leave out that function. Flying around in the sim is fine but when using the weapons it becomes a bit tricky. In the actual aircraft the gunner has what are called TEDAC handles with a bunch of switches that he uses to operate the weapons and sights and anything else needed to engage targets. It's a bit difficult to relearn how to do that by using a standard keyboard when you are so used to having handles to grab on to. Plus in real life the HDU over the pilots right eye plays a huge role and its hard to simulate that on a computer screen. I will say that I probably wouldn't be a very good co pilot in a sim for anyone lol. I don't understand the avionics in the sims and I haven't spent that much time trying to figure it out so I wouldn't be very helpful although it would seem like it should be the opposite lol. My buddy has the game ARMA and he has an Apache mod for it. I hopped in the gunners seat and we went off on a mission and I wasn't very good...He kept laughing at me "What the heck man shouldn't you be really good at this?" lol. I actually have the most fun with the more arcade type games. I enjoyed playing the game Apache Air Assault for the PS3. I enjoyed flying around with like 1000 missiles and stuff and shooting up everything haha. Feel free to post any questions you like I don't mind. Like I said Im snowed into my house and have been since Monday so I don't have much to do lol. I'll be busier once we go back to work of course but I try to pop in from time to time. I appreciate your kind words. Thank You.
  7. Yup, its still snowing, still no flights, no work at all for that matter...Hopefully the power stays on I would hate to be stuck in the house in this blizzard if the power goes out...
  8. Here's what I've been doing for the past couple weeks. 0500 - Supposed to wake up for work 0510 - Try to wake up again for work 0515 - Smack alarm clock again 0520 - Quickly calculate how much time I really need to get to work 0525 - 0540 - Get up before I am late 0600 - PT, go to the gym it's cold outside 0630 - Treadmill is boring, go home 0700 - 0830 - Shower, make breakfast, watch the news 0900 - Arrive at work and get told our flights were cancelled 0930 - Sit at my desk and study for gunnery or hang out with the 1st Sgt 1000 - Go downstairs and hang out with the crew chiefs 1130 - Lunch 1300 - Go back to my desk and study some more 1400 - Try to snag some simulator time 1430 - Yay the sim is free or damnit the sim is already booked 1500 - Go run errands if the sim is booked 1600 - Tell the LT im going home Right now things are slow because of the weather and there's only one sim that all of the companies have to try to fight over in advance. Our flights keep getting cancelled and we just sit around and find random things to do like quiz each other or help each other with the various extra duties we have. Most of the guys either bail out and go home early in the day or sit around bored with their feet up on the desk. Our schedules depend on whether or not we are "supposed" to fly in the morning or at night. So half the guys come in at 1300 and the other half shows up around 0900 or 1000. This week will be much the same. The weather is going to be horrible this week. I'm supposed to fly another gunnery flight on Tuesday but we have a snow storm rolling in on Monday night with 40mph winds and a foot + of snow so I highly doubt I'll be going anywhere. At least tomorrow I have some sim time so thats good. But yeah that's about it lol, pretty boring right now not much going on. I spend the majority of my time trying to keep busy so I don't go crazy.
  9. Oh if only the Army actually let us choose where we went lol. Trust me, this place was NOT one of my choices... ;)
  10. Grrr the snow sucks!! 3 times I have been trying to go out and shoot gunnery and 3 times we get cancelled due to snow storms blowing in from the north! Why oh why is there an aviation wing on a base located directly in the snow belt vortex thing that causes the most snow to fall in the continental US?? We need to relocate.... Sorry I had to vent lol.
  11. No, "leave" means I have taken some time off. I'm on vacation.
  12. Well our unit is averaging a couple times per week in my company. Some of the new guys are flying more around 3 or 4 times a week. Yes its an active unit. Me personally Im not flying at all right now, I'm on leave ;)
  13. The amount of flight time you get depends on a lot of things. It depends on your unit (some units just fly more than others) it depends on your readiness level and it depends on your Flight Activity Category (FAC). New pilots will fly a lot in most cases in order to get experience and get to readiness level 1. When you graduate flight school you aren't really good enough to go out and fly with the other pilots. When you get to the unit you will fly with an instructor pilot much the same as you did in flight school. The IP there will evaluate you for awhile and sign you off as being able to fly without somebody holding your hand. That can take anywhere from a few weeks to months depending on how well you do. Once that happens you are considered Readiness Level 1 (RL 1) and you are now a regular pilot in the unit and can be anyone's front seat guy rather than having an IP with you. So the new guys tend to fly a lot at first so the unit can get them out of the training wheel stage quickly. A friend of mine flew 2 hours a day every day for 3 weeks in order to progress to RL1 quickly. We don't fly that much normally though. Average pilots will fly anywhere from twice a week to twice a month depending on a huge variety of things. I guess the easy answer to your question is in order to stay current in the airframe most people have to fly once every 60 days. But those figures change too depending on if you are actually doing pilot things or if you got assigned to a desk somewhere etc. Sorry I don't have a straight forward answer, there isn't really a set answer but I hope that helps.
  14. I've heard a few different rumors about what happened to that pilot who crashed. A few people say she got slapped on the wrist pretty hard and is still flying. A few other people say she got sent to the flight eval board and was kicked out. A few other people said that that particular video was the second bird she crashed and she crashed one previously as well. Not really sure what the truth is. Same goes with the "ole ye of little faith" guy who tried to buzz through the gap in the trees.
  15. It went wrong in the other video because they were trying to do it in the mountains with insufficient power to perform the maneuver. That video is shown to every class in flight school now to stress the importance of accurately calculating a performance planning card and actually reading it.
  16. I'm glad I read you guys' posts. I was about to post on that page about how BS that video was lol
  17. Those spectators have more courage than I do. I know that the F-16 isn't AS LOW as it seems but it's still too low for me. I wouldn't be standing under that thing lol. Hats off to the pilot. One tiny miscalculation of the glide path at those slow airspeeds and altitudes could spell disaster for all involved. Shows the skill of the pilot and the trust that the spectators show in the pilot. I wonder if they knew he was going to do that lol.
  18. D models only have the 2 on the wingtips as well. Not sure if the E model has more or not.
  19. When I first started out I did because it was just weird having something right in front of my eye like that. After awhile you get used to it being there. You're supposed to adjust the focus of the symbology to where you "look through" it and kinda read the information in your peripheral vision while looking outside. A lot of new pilots (myself included for months) tend to crank the brightness up too high and focus it wrong to where theres a huge bright green thing in your eye that gives you a headache. Most of us do it at first because we aren't able to read the symbology and look outside at the same time with the same eye and we are afraid that if we turn the brightness down we will miss something. My first few weeks in the Apache course in flight school gave me a massive headache because I was trying to use my left eye to fly outside and use my right eye to read the extremely bright symbology. Once I learned to turn it down and look outside with both eyes all was well.
  20. Yup she was definitely there. I was digging through some old boxes and found a few old PPC's. I used to write our aircraft issue numbers on my PPC and I saw one that said 5086 so I've flown her down there. Its pretty cool to hear that she used to be yours all those years ago.
  21. Hmm after looking at it closely it appears you might be right about the tail wheel. And yeah 5086 is still at Rucker as well.
  22. After watching that video again I noticed something funny. That's at Ft. Rucker and I flew that exact aircraft a few times while in flight school. Tail number 5088.
  23. Whenever you sit the aircraft down you have to get it level before taking the power out or it will sit crooked on the ground because one of the struts is more compressed than the other. Many people don't bother compressing both struts evenly before shutting it down so it sits on the ground crooked with one side being higher than the other. So what you see in the video is the pilot decompressing the struts to make the helicopter level before taxiing.
  24. This is what we think about the rest of the "helicopters" in the world lol ;)
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