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:
- Most of the PICs found their job every boring and
repetitive.
- Most all the co-pilots only interest was flying the
helicopter and let the PIC do all the "Work".
- 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.
1 comment:
Great story! I flew with Sue while training nights at Rucker prior to the buildup for Desert Storm. Like you said 5 hours flying at night conversations wander and ours drifted into her challenges before and after her sex change. Very interesting conversations to say the least.
Don't know what brought me to think of Sue today some 20+ years later but I hope she is doing well.
R. Shnowski
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