Okay, I managed to graduate flight school, then what happened

After graduation from flight school, I was awarded my Warrant Officer 1 (WO1) bar and my aviator wings. Many of my classmates who were assigned to UH1 or OH58 unit assignments, Army Reserve or National Guard, left Fort Rucker. The rest of the class was now assigned to Delta Company (D Co) as a "Casual Officer" until we started our advanced aircraft transitions. (AH64 Apache, UH60 Blackhawk, AH1 Cobra or CH47 Chinook were all advanced aircraft). During flight school if you were tracked for an observation or attack helicopter you completed your basic combat skills and NVGs in the OH58 Kiowa (Bell Jetranger) while the rest of us had flown UH1s. 

In casual status, you could either find gainful employment in a base unit at Fort Rucker on your own or you could be assigned a job by Delta company operations. One job assignment that many of these newly minted WO1s were given was "Casualty Assistance Officer". You were assigned to assist an Army family where the service member had died. That didn't sound too appealing to me so I tried hard to find gainful employment. Since I had a follow on transition assignment for my CH47 qualification over 90 days away (I graduated in November 1988 and my CH47 class started in March 1989) I had sufficient time for one of the most coveted of casual assignments at Fort Rucker. I applied to fly for PRIMA.

When pilots were training their Basic Combat Skills and NVG navigation skills, they were required to "Flight Follow" by radio so that if there was an emergency their approximate location was known and emergency help could be dispatched to their location. In 1989 and earlier (I'm sure technology has changed since then so I have no idea how this is done in 2019) flight following for low flying aircraft was done from another aircraft circling above the training area at altitude high enough to ensure good radio reception across the entire training area (Generally 2500-ft Mean Sea Level (MSL) or higher). The call sign for these aircraft was PRIMA.

All the Pilots-in-Command (PICs) at Prima were permanently assigned to the unit, most of the co-pilots were casual officers from Delta Company and other aviators in ground assignments at Fort Rucker (Like TAC Officers) who needed to meet their flight minimums to stay on flight status. The one requirement aside from being a qualified aviator to be able to fly for Prima was you had to be available for over 90 days. I had 94 days when I was accepted as a Prima co-pilot. The first week of the assignment was pretty simple we were given Readiness Level (RL) progression training and testing required of any new aviator assigned to a unit. Level 3 (RL3) was someone new to a unit and they could only fly with an Instructor Pilot. Level 2 (RL2) meant that you were safe to fly with a PIC and you just needed polish to be signed of as Level 1 (RL1) which was proficient in all combat duties. Since you could fly RL2 for up to 90 days, we never tested for RL1 as casual officers as it would be a waste of training effort.

I was signed off by the Prima standards office RL2 after 2 training flights (one day and one night) and operations assigned me to my first mission a couple days later. Flying Nap of the Earth (NOE) covership was done in a UH-1 equipped with an Auxiliary Fuel tank and was from the same fleet if helicopters at Cairns Army Airfield we had flown in Advanced Instruments. The PIC got our assignment from operations and the weather, the co-pilot (Me) got to go preflight the aircraft. The flights were scheduled for 5 hours and involved keeping track of up to 30 training aircraft over 2, 2-hour flight periods (they switched pilots in training during refuel).

The typical Prima mission profile was the PIC ran the radios and usually took off and flew to and from the training area and the co-pilot flew the aircraft while the PIC kept radio contact with the training flights and recorded their progress on a clipboard. The co-pilots most generally flew the aircraft most the flight and the PICs just kept busy talking to these training flights. It didn't talk long for me to figure out a few facts:

1. Most of the PICs found their job every boring and repetitive.
2. Most all the co-pilots only interest was flying the helicopter and let the PIC do all the "Work".
3. Flying in a lazy circle @ 2500-ft got boring pretty quickly and I didn't like boredom.

Generally, co-pilots were scheduled for 2 days a week, sometimes 3. The first week I flew Tuesday and Friday. We also had the opportunity to volunteer to fly on Saturday to provide support for the Fort Rucker Sport Parachute Club skydivers. I volunteered for that about twice a month.

My 3rd mission at Prima was on a Monday we had been in the air an hour or so and were tracking 25 OH-58s training in Basic Combat Skills (BCS) and I had been asking about the shorthand the PIC was using to keep track of the trainees. It was pretty simple, the call sign, their location, their objective and estimated time of arrival (ETA). The conversation would be something like this:

STUDENT: "Prima this is Bandit 22 over"

PRIMA: "Bandit 22 Prima go ahead"

STUDENT: "Bandit 22 is RT 102 en route RT 210"

PRIMA: "Bandit 22 Roger RT 102 report arrival RT 210 or next 15"

STUDENT: Bandit 22 Rodger"

You would note the location and then list the next destination and the time of the communication. The biggest trick is the 15-minute requirement between calls. You were monitoring 25 aircraft or more and if one was not in contact after 15 minutes you had to initiate contact and get an update on status.

This was a lot more interesting than flying circles in the sky and all the PICs complained about never actually getting to fly because casual officers were "Stick Hogs". I asked my PIC if I could give flight following a shot. He looked surprised and told me that when the training aircraft started going into refuel I could have a shot as we'd be down to 6 or 8 aircraft at that time. So about 2 hours into the flight, I got to try my hand at keeping track of a bunch of semi-lost student pilots. The process wasn't too hard to learn and like anything you get better with a little practice. I got to flight follow for about an hour until we got about 15 or so active birds to follow when the PIC took over from me.

The next flight, (Wednesday?) I asked on takeoff if I could do the flight following, and the surprised PIC said OK. (We rotated assignments among the PICs, also among the flight periods (Morning, Afternoon, Night 1 and Night 2) I think this was a night 1 flight so it also meant you had to work in a dark cockpit with lip and finger lights to see what you were doing. My PIC was impressed with how well I could flight follow and he didn't take the clipboard until after the trainees were coming out of refuel the second half of the flight period. I was back to burning circles in the sky but it had felt nice to actually have done something with a bit of meaning to it.

I think my next flight was a Saturday sport parachute club mission, those were easy, as you would take 8 jumpers up to 10,000 ft. and they'd jump, then you stayed above them in the air until all were on the ground then landed and loaded the next bunch. The biggest reward for these missions was a free subway sandwich for lunch and 1/2 off if you wanted to join the club. (I said yes to the sandwich, no to sport parachuting).

The following Monday I was surprised to find myself on the flight schedule 3 days, I said cool, and went about business. The following week, I had 4 flights. I kinda figured something was up here now as most the time co-pilots got 2 flights a week and most PICs were only 3 or 4 flights as they tried to spread things out evenly. I also started getting assigned to fly with the same 3 or 4 PICs so I asked one of them what was the deal? I learned that PICs COULD ask for specific co-pilot assignments and that since I was the only co-pilot that showed any interest in flight following, I was a popular choice. The rest of my time there I flew 4 and occasionally 5 days a week (We were limited to 30 hours of flight time a week). It was nice to be wanted.

There we no crashes during any of my flight following and only 1 precautionary landing. That was at the refuel stage field so it actually didn't involve me flight following it. But one night had some minor interest. We were supporting a bunch of scouts flying OH-58s and this one student was having a tough time with his NVG navigation. The scouts are taught how to direct artillery fire and observe the enemy without being sighted themselves. So land navigation using NVGs ws a big thing for them to become proficient in. This poor guy was having a bad night and he had reported in 4 or 5 times that he was en route to a remote training field (RT) leased from some farmer and he would call in with a contingency location report (I got lost and I'm now at this landmark) and a new ETA to the RT. He radio conversation was similar to this:

Student: "Prima, Bandit 41 shooting a contingency off the Bear Lake dam, en route to RT 210"

Prima: "Bandit 41 report RT210 or next 15"

This went on for 90 minutes, with each radio call you could hear the anxiety building in the student pilot's voice (He was obviously becoming more and more exasperated with each succeeding location update) and with each call I felt a twinge of sympathy for the poor guy. I'd had rough days with instructors and they aren't fun. The ever present fear of washing out of the program after investing this much time and effort was also a factor I'm sure. Finally, after spending most the period trying to find this one field somewhere in southern Alabama, I got the radio call.

Student: "Prima, Bandit 41, landing assured at RT 210"

I replied: "Bandit 41, Roger, you are landing assured at RT210, Congratulations! Report next 15 or departure."

The instructor for Bandit 41 replied chuckling "Thanks, we needed that. We'll report departure."

So much for flight following humor. 

One other significant episode in my short career at Prima was working with Sue Calvin. Sue was one of the most experienced flight instructors at Fort Rucker. She had logged over 8800 hours of flight time when I met her (If you do some quick math you'll note that is over 1 year (365 x 24) of actual flight time) and one of the more demanding Pilot's in Command I flew with while at Prima. Sue was a stickler for following FAA VFR flight regulations to the letter and had an interesting take on how our one location flying should be done. One continuous turn counter clockwise at an altitude of 9500-ft. Most Prima flights were done at 2500, 3500 or on real busy days 4500-ft. depending on how many aircraft were flight following in the area of operations. We all flew at different altitudes to ensure avoidance of each other and 2500-ft was the minimum altitude where you could maintain radio contact throughout the area of operations with low level aircraft.

Sue felt that 9500-ft. was a good altitude as it kept us clear of all hazards, we had excellent radio communications with ATC and the aircraft we were flight following with and she felt if we had an in-flight emergency that the greater altitude would give us a better opportunity to find a safe place to land. Sue preferred to fly at night so I only flew night missions with her. She was a very good instructor and I learned quite about the UH-1 and it's capabilities, and a lot about the limitations of a helicopter at altitude. Most people do not consider that being a mile and a half in the air might affect the performance of the aircraft, but it does make a difference, especially with helicopters. As you get higher, your performance envelope decreases and the aircraft has a minimum airspeed and a maximum airspeed it can fly. As you go higher the minimum airspeed goes up, the max airspeed comes down. You have to be aware that your margins for error also shrink.

These five hour flights left the pilots a lot of time to talk. As a newbie and fresh out of flight school, what I did before flight school and why did I become a pilot were popular topics. The veteran PICs usually talked about what they did before arriving at Fort Rucker. Like most of the other PICs sue liked the fact that I would flight follow leaving her to fly the aircraft part of the time and like the other PICs she told me some of her career history. She became a UH-1 gunship pilot at 19 in Vietnam, when she was a man.

Sue was the first transgender person I'd ever met and she was the first transgender pilot working for the department of the Army. I'd heard rumors along the flight line about her and when I met her for the first time in flight operations I really didn't think a lot about it. What was interesting is we really didn't talk about her being a woman. We did discuss what her Vietnam experience had been like as a young man. One of her most interesting stories was how she had been the gunner on a Huey gunship and the electric gun controls inadvertently fired when she grabbed the grip safety of the gun controls during takeoff when they were reacting to a mortar attack. The guns were slewed downward when parked as a safety precaution and when she tried to move them into the normal combat position they fired shooting up the fuel bladders of the refuel point. She said after the mission she was in hiding for 72 hours from the commander of the airfield until armament cleared her of wrongdoing due to a short in the gun controls.

Flying with Sue was so educational and helped me understand that we are all different. I happen to work in a very diverse working environment and have had working relationships with just about any type of person you can describe. The greatest thing WAs their sex, or sexual preference, tattoos or piercings, or even their religious or political beliefs really didn't make any difference to me as long as they were competent at their job. Sue was most definitely the most unique person I ever flew with and she was also the most professional. She helped me to strive to become a better pilot and in a lot of ways inspired me to be a better and more open minded person.

Thank you Sue.