Trying something new!

I decided that setting up a blog account could be a good way to keep everyone up to speed with what I am doing. So this is the beginning of a new adventure in writing! I will try to keep this as up to date as time and security considerations will allow.

I will most likely write in general terms just to make sure that I do not approach anything that could compromise protected information.

To bring everyone up to date, here is the last two months in a nut shell. I am part of an aviation task force comprised primarily of units from the Utah Army National Guard and the New Jersey Army National Guard. The 2-211 General Support Aviation Battalion is the core of this Task Force and we are headquartered in West Jordan, Utah. I am the Executive Officer (2nd in Command) of the Battalion and therefore also the Task Force. I am a UH-60 Blackhawk pilot and have been flying since Army helicopters since 1990.

In mid February 2008, TF 2-211 was activated and sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma for training and validation prior to deploying to the Persian Gulf. While at Fort Sill, we conducted many individual and collective training events that were designed to enhance our combat survivability. We took advantage of this training to forge strong ties with our new found friends from New Jersey, who prior to this mobilization we had not trained with.

As is often the case with Army National Guard units, we exceeded the standards and were able to complete the required training 3 weeks ahead of schedule. Now here we sit, still at Fort Sill waiting to time our arrival overseas with the arrival of our equipment that is being transported by ship. As fun as it sounds, we really don't want to arrive their much earlier then our equipment for fairly obvious reasons. So in the mean time, we sit here working on the "nice to know" training events like Hand to Hand Combat. Although this is great training, if I as a pilot, find myself engaged in Hand to Hand Combat, my day has already gone really really bad!

Well as fun as this is to write, I better get back to work learning some more Arabic phrases just in case I have one of those really bad days and I find myself not in my aircraft while in bad guy country. How do you say "I'm in a really tight spot" in Arabic?