OMG I finally got to start flight training

Between July 1986 and February 1988 my primary goal in life had been to do everything I could to get to the U.S.Army rotary wing flight school in Fort Rucker, Alabama. During that time, I'd been astounded by my super-supportive wife. Who even though she didn't like the idea of my being a pilot, she knew that if she vetoed this opportunity it would be something between us the rest of our marriage. When I read about the opportunity to apply for flight training I'd commented that is was a bummer I couldn't apply since this would be the last opportunity because I'll be to old for the next board. She simply replied "Get more life insurance and try not to get killed."

In many ways, my journey through flight school was either a gentle bit of divine guidance or an incredible amount of luck. I suspect the former but I can't rule out the latter, I just find it amazing how the stars had to align for me to achieve my goal. For one, I must be one hell of a test taker. One of the primary screening items is the Flight Aptitude Suitability Test (FAST). People study for it like lawyers study for the bar exam. Me I take my lunch hour from the motor pool where I was learning how to maintain snowmobiles and take the test cold, without any study prep at all.

I also had help from my older brother preceded me in my quest to be an Army aviator and he learned the hard way about a Conjugate Gaze disorder we both have that is detected by the "Red Lens Test" (Conjugate gaze is abnormal when either or both eyes fail to move in unison.) In layman's terms; when a fast moving object is observed by someone with this disorder, your eyes do not track at exactly the same speed (one lags slightly behind the other) and this produces an overlapping or dual visual image. The oddity is, that unless you have the issue demonstrated using something like the Red Lens Test, you do not notice it. Your brain will tend to track to your dominate eye (left in my case) and you don't notice the double vision during the event. Regardless, when my brother told me of his experience during the Red Lens Test I took notice of his answer when he failed the test and what the correct answer should have been. (The test is simply holding a red colored lens over one eye, and the doc shines a light into you eyes and moves it all around.) My brother and I saw two lights when it is moving (one red, one white) and a pink light when stationary (The brain combines the light colors and registers pink.) So the 4 times I tool the red lens test (Only required on the Class I flight physical to get into flight school.) I lied like a thief.

In my previous posts, I discussed my great fortune with both my Hyperparathyroidism diagnosis and surgery to remove a benign tumor in my neck. The only reason it was discovered was the Class I flight physical that the aviation board requires you to take again once you arrive at Fort Rucker (Just to make sure you are actually the person whose test results were submitted before your selection board.) The tumor wasn't causing much havoc with my blood chemistry the first teo flight physicals. (My original had been lost during the application process I had to get a second one completed and delivered overnight to the board.) This lucky diagnosis prevented irreversible bone damage that could have caused my bones to become so brittle that I could break a bone just sitting in a chair. (I met a poor unfortunate individual who had such an malady, he was not a happy person.)

I'd also mentioned that I'd finally gotten medical clearance to fly five months after I'd had my surgery to remove my tumor. My flight surgeon overlooked one tiny single sentence paragraph in the manual that indicated that my malady disqualified me from selection. Then again, when the consult clerk (Mrs. Barnett) had told me I was disqualified (DQ'd) and I was stepping out of her office to go pack my bags, she casually commented how it was too bad I hadn't flown yet. I just barely heard he say it. There I was in my Army issue Air Force sage green flight suit and Aviator sunglasses as I executed that perfect about face movement in her office doorway and stood there with a Cheshire Cat grin. Another miracle had occurred.

Luck was still with me when I was assigned to two individuals. My Instructor Pilot, a wonderful gentleman by the name of Hugh Rhoads and by Bravo Company roommate WOC James Herzog. Mr. Rhoads reminded me of my maternal grandfather (Alton Carr) and he treated me in a grandfatherly manner. He was friendly and patient but could be firm and demanding when it was needed. Jim Herzog on the other had was the exact opposite in my ways. I was the oldest member of the class having turned 29 before being cleared to fly. Jim was a still wet 18 and the youngest member of Royal Blue Flight 88-02. Jim sat in our room in the barracks and patiently talked with me until 4 AM well knowing we had to get up at 6 AM. It was mostly this discussion that kept me from quitting after discovering my fear of heights during my "Nickel Ride" with Mr. Rhoads. Jim was a good influence on me. He was wise beyond his years and had been a Civil Air Patrol fixed wing pilot before he joined the Army. Between these to individuals, I made it through primary flight training and moved on the to Huey transition.

Just so it is clear, there were several sections of flight training. Basic Flight in the TH55A "Osage". The TH55A was a Hughes 300 piston engine helicopter that is rugged beyond its slight appearance.

Then you moved on to the Huey Transition with the UH-1D/H

Then Basic Instruments in the UH1 flight simulator

Then back to the UH-1D/H for Advanced Instruments, Basic Combat Skills and Night Vision Goggles (NVGs)

After Graduation, I was awarded a CH-47D transition.

Back to my lucky breaks. After Jim Herzog helped me to get through primary flight, we moved into Hueys and our first turbine powered helicopters. The TH-55A was powered by a 6 cylinder horizontally opposed, air-cooled Lycoming 180 horsepower gasoline engine. If that brings to mind a Volkswagen engine, it is pretty close, just 2 more cylinders and a few other aircraft specific items. The biggest thing on the TH-55A was the manual throttle. As you increased lift you have to manually twist the throttle to increase power. With turbine engines, there was a governor to do that for you (YAY). 

The Huey transition was pretty much play time for me. The Huey flies so easy and had hydraulic controls which were smooth and user friendly. The one thing that I had trouble with in the Huey transition was sloped landings. The Huey has skids for landing gear and that is nice except on the slopes where you can roll over sideways if you are not very careful. Since one skid touches before the other on a side slope landing it can create a pivot point for a roll over. So we were training to wait until the uphill skid touched down then to ease the other one down in a fluid but controlled movement. I did the maneuver well enough to be signed off as ready for my check ride when another curve ball was sent my way.

In all my other training, your final evaluation was made by a "Check Pilot" this involved swapping instructors with another student and having him evaluate you and by proxy your instructor. For the Huey Transition, by stick buddy and I were selected for evaluation by "Lowe Standards". We were flying out of Lowe Army Heliport at Fort Rucker and The Standards office was the team that made sure all the flight instructors were training to the correct standards. They usually gave check rides to the flight instructors, but as I learned that day, they form time to time gave check rides too students too.

Every training flight breaks down in to 5 parts. Table talk/Flight planning, Pre-Flight, The Training flight, Post-Flight and debrief. Table talk is a discussion about the topic of choice with your instructor. During a check ride, it is a spot check on your academic training about flight rules, aircraft knowledge, weather limitations and such. Emergency Procedures (EPs) are a instructor favorite as you have to memorize all IMMEDIATE ACTION emergency procedures as you will not have time to pull out the checklist. In a Huey it isn't bad, about 7 pages of Immediate Action items and say 24 pages or so for all EP's. This check ride was our first with an actual active army instructor pilot, All before were contractors and as civilians, there was a bit more casual interaction. Our check pilot was a Master Warrant Officer 5 and a Master Aviator, so he'd been around for quite a while and I was intimidated by him. He turned out to be a pretty nice guy but I was still pretty gun shy about the entire situation. In most cases, we only spent about 15 to 30 minutes at the table before going to operations and drawing an aircraft, I guess we spent about 45 minutes to a hour with this check pilot partly because there was not class briefing and maybe because it just seemed to last forever.

Finally, he had mercy upon us, and gave us the benefit of the doubt and we went out to the helicopter. You got a different bird every flight and it could be a D model or an H model. Not a great difference between the 2 but it was something we discussed both at the table and at the aircraft. The major difference being the location of the pitot tube that is part of the airspeed measurement system. D model it is on the nose, H model it is on top of the canopy. for what it is worth. Pre-flight was pretty uneventful, and actually one of my favorite parts as I was very attentive to details. "If it is broke on the ground, it will not fix itself in the air" was our motto. I was selected to fly first and so that both a relief and scary as I wanted to get it over, but I'd never flown with him so I was unsure about how his cockpit manner would be.

Every training flight had the same order of events. Get the aircraft started and though all required checks, hover taxi to the takeoff pad, take off then depart the traffic pattern then fly a route to the training area to train. No training maneuvers were done at Lowe, there were satellite training airfields for those purposes and to reduce congestion. 250 Huey were based at Lowe, so departure and arrival at the 11 helipads was busy. During the check ride, I was responsible for all radio calls to Ground and Tower and responsible for making sure all check list items were completed. I liked talking on the radio (it was something I was familiar with in the Army) and I liked Lowe because they had the best controllers and they all new their stuff. You called with your tail number (01 Golf is the one pictured above) and the pad you were parked on (H14 or whatever) and they would tell you the helipad to hover taxi to for takeoff. We were on the south side of the airfield and were taking off to the east then departing to the south via the south low-level corridor. The only reason this was noteworthy was that the low-level corridor was called that because you had to stay below 150 AGL to stay out of the approach path of the instrument approach to Carnes Army Airfield to the east. Due to this by policy, once you departed the airfield and started decent into the corridor, you had to turn the aircraft over to the instructor, as you were not yet proficient in low-level flight (90 knots, less than 100 ft above the trees.)

This was my first argument with my instructor. As when I started my decent, I per the policy told him he had the flight controls. He told me to fly it myself. I tried to politely but firmly let him know that was against the rules and he had the flight controls. He started to get a tad frustrated with me, and told me that he was the one who made that rule, and he was not going to fail me for not following it, He said I appeared that I knew how to fly the aircraft and he trusted my judgement. So I got to fly low level for the first time, on my check ride. Only once he told me to bring it up a but (50 feet above the highest obstacle) so I guess I did pretty well. About halfway down the route he tool the controls and did something I'd never seen before (or since for that matter). He was in the left (instructors) seat and I was in the right. Your collective pitch control (Up and down and airspeed/power) is on the left side of your seat and you use you left hand. They cyclic (Direction) is in between your legs and you use your right hand on it. When he tool the controls, he used his cyclic with his left hand, and my collective with his right hand, reaching over the console. At this point I decided he was a bit of a different breed of pilot, Interesting, but different.

We flew to the training area, and we went through all the maneuvers I was being graded on till we got to slopes. IT didn't take a rocket scientist to see that this maneuver had me terrified and super tense. after 3 aborted attempts, he very nicely demonstrated how HE did the maneuver and had me feel how he did it by having my hand on the controls but letting him do the maneuver (he did use his collective most the flight after the corridor), He demonstrated his technique both left and right sides then had be do it myself, with dramatically improved results. Then were were off to the stage field for maneuvers there.

The most fun you can have in a UH-1 is a low level autorotation. You are approaching the runway at 90 knots, 50 feet above the trees when your instructor rolls off the throttle and you start dropping. You have to immediately pull back on the Cyclic (stick) and raise the nose slightly while the aircraft starts to descend. At 50 feet above the ground you pull up slightly on the collective in your right hand which flattens your descent angle and slightly extends you glide time. When you feel the skids touch, you slowly begin to decrease the collective so it starts to act like a brake and you use your pedals to keep the nose pointed in the direction you want to go as the rotor will have some torque effect as you slide to a stop. Once you stop, you neutralize the controls and the instructor rolls on the throttle again for the next maneuver. Apparently, I did it right as he said I couldn't do another low level auto and we went on to the next item on the checklist, the simulated engine failure from altitude.

A simulated engine failure (autorotation) from altitude is like an elevator ride going down. You are cruising along fat, dumb and happy when your instructor rolls the throttle to idle to simulate an engine failure. (I am interjecting a bit of technical knowledge here, because I feel it needs to be explained.) The rotor system is equipped with a sprag clutch (one way clutch) that engages when power is applied from the engine, but disengages automatically when power is lost allowing the rotor system to freewheel. The rotor system is in many ways similar to a flywheel and due to Newton's law of motion it wants to stay in motion. This concept allows you to be able to establish and control and autorotative descent. When power is lost you have to IMMEDIATELY lower the collective as far as it will go down (we called it dumping the collective) and stomp on the right pedal to compensate for the lack of torque to keep your nose pointing forward. This puts the blades in a negative pitch so that they would be pushing down if power was applied and this allows the air going up through the rotors to help maintain the rotor speed. You also slow your forward airspeed to 70 knots from the normal cruise speed of 90 knots. Maintaining the rotor speed is crucial as you use this at the bottom of the descent to cushion your landing. The helicopter is going down in a very steep glide of about 3 feet down to 1 foot forward but you can turn and maneuver like you were still in powered flight. You pick your touchdown point and and watch your altimeter  to ensure that when you get to 100 feet above the ground you pull INITIAL pitch on the collective.

This point is critical in the autorotation as you don't get a second chance on a real engine failure so you have to get it right. Initial pitch flattens you descent angle from 3 to 1 to about 1 to 7 maybe 1 to 10 depending on your airspeed and slows your rate of descent. But you do this by sacrificing that rotor speed you worked so hard to keep on the descent. So for a moment, you descent almost stops, and from  100 feet to around 50 you glide has changed to about what a fixed wing would use to land on the runway. This being the objective. As rotor speed starts to decay, you feel the aircraft start to drop faster and you then apply more collective (we called it cushion) to soften the impact of the landing and then from this point it is like the low-level auto and you slide to a stop. It is just a much shorted slide as you've been decelerating during the descent and even more during initial and cushion phases.

Not that I have all the technical garbage out of the way, back to the checkride. I did my simulated engine failure like a champ, not the best I ever did, but well above standard to get a good grade., then it was off to the edge of the airfield for the remaining tasks like s simulated engine failure at a hover (Super easy, you feel the helo start to drop, apply cushion and right pedal to maintain heading.) The entire maneuver is like 3 seconds and done. At this point, my part as student under eval was completed and I switched places with my stick buddy (he was a first lieutenant and I can't remember his name, it may be in my log book.) but he got in the pilots seat and I in the crew chief  seat between and behind the pilots seats. As far as riding goes it is the best seat in the house. His checkride was essentially the reverse of mine, So he started with his hover work, then we hovered out to the lanes to get into the traffic pattern to do his autorotations. We completed his low-level auto, which is almost as much fun riding as being the pilot, then on the next pattern we went up to traffic pattern altitude of 600 ft above ground level (AGL) which was around 840 feet on the altimeter allowing for the airfield elevation of 240 ft. Our instructor rolled off the throttle at the appropriate point and we entered autorotation as we should then things almost went really bad. My stick buddy badly misjudged when to pull initial pitch and pulled it at about 250 feet AGL instead of 100 feet. Lucky for us, the instructor was on his toes and he grabbed the controls an initiated a powered recovery (he rolled the throttle back on) and landed with power. This is very dicey in a turbine powered aircraft as there is a lag from the time you apply power until the turbine comes up to speed. and it was a close call.

The instructor gave my buddy the controls again and told him to repeat the maneuver. and the second time was almost exactly like the first except the instructor was much more vigilant and took the controls a second time a bit faster so that landing wasn't quite as exciting. I'd kept quiet the first time as I wasn't the instructor, but as we were sitting on the lane and he was talking to by buddy about what was going wrong it didn't appear the instructor had noticed exactly why the maneuver was failing and I timidly chimed in that I thought I knew why, and mentioned the too high initial pitch application on the way down. So we went around again and our instructor had me call out when to apply initial pitch and we landed the autorotation just like the book. My buddy (and the instructor I think) were relieved and we went on to complete the checkride without any other items of great interest. (as far as our flying it).

The only other thing of note on the the return to Lowe Army Heliport was the normal peak recovery period traffic flow to the heliport. 250 helicopters would fly back and land at 11 different helipads in a 15 minute time span. IT was something impressive to see and listen to on the radio. One controller in the tower directed the landing traffic and once on the ground, he turned you over to the ground controller to taxi instructions to your parking spot. There were 5 landmarks around the airfield where you would call the tower and give your tail number and you parking pad as a response to the controller when he called you out. As you would approach the landmark for your approach direction, the tower controller would call out to you. Our checkpoint was the Macedonia Water Tower. The exchange would go something like this:

TOWER: Number 1 for Macedonia, say tail number and parking.

US (01D): 01D parking Hotel 14 (Pad H-14)

TOWER: 01D land 06 right contact ground, Number 2 for Macedonia say tail number and parking.

Once you knew the local area and the landmarks, you could tell the tower controller just walked in a slow circle and kept calling out the approaching aircraft and he would give them their landing pad and taxi instructions. It was something to behold. He knew every parking location and would give you clearance to the nearest of 11 helipads to approach. I never once caught him in a mistake.

We passed our checkride and I even got a complement from the instructor for my observation of the issue on the standard auto issue and speaking up. And the story will continue....

Tales of WOEC Continued

Hell Day in WOEC was the first real hazing we encountered. Like my previous reference to :An Officer and a Gentleman" it was much like it was depicted in the movie. Every TAC officer was there, up and rousted out of bed at 03:30. It was cool and dark, there were plenty of water hoses, ditches fill of water and of course mud. "Get up, get down, get up, get down, too slow, in the ditch." was pretty much the order of the day. By the time they sent us to the showers, we were filthy, sweaty, exhausted and of course we had a full day of regular training to finish. So we got chewed out for being late to chow, late for formation and of course more push-us.

One other interesting fact is that about 10% of the class were non-aviation warrant candidates. Engineers, MPs and Vehicle Mechanic warrants. Once they finished WOEC, they got their commissions. Aviation warrants, had 8 more months of training to finish before they were awarded their bars. The non-aviation candidates were generally older and more experienced, but they also had a harder time in general dealing with the high stress environment. Many were E-7s with 15+ years and were used to being in charge of a platoon, not getting harassed by a TAC officer half his age. I made friends with an engineer candidate named Bill. Bill was a bit heavy like me and was struggling with the physical part some but mostly the mental part. I encouraged him a lot and we had a personal saying we kept repeating to each other:  "You got to want it!" Together, we helped each other deal with personal issues and make it to the end.

When we were the intermediate flight, things started coming together. The flight was pretty much a team and most all of us were on board with the plan. Things were still rushed, but it didn't seem nearly as hard as the 1st 2 weeks had been. One day we had an unusual event. I dead fly was found during the daily inspection. Our TAC officer determined that this "Aviator" had died in the line of duty, and he was deserving of burial rights. So on a Saturday afternoon, we held a funeral for the "Aviator". A matchbox was his casket, on 6 long yarn strings. Our candidate chaplain gave the eulogy and we were dying trying not to break up while standing at attention. I swear this guy was a great comedian and he really put everything he had into the eulogy. Afterward, we marched in a pass and review, 4 of the Engineer candidates wore their yellow track suits and carried their ironing boards emulating D7 Caterpillars, and  one raised his blade then turned out in a "Missing Man Formation". This had us all in tears.  It was a lot of effort, but it did wonders for morale. I believe it was at point we got over the "hump" and figured out that we'd make it to graduation.

I can't really think of a great deal more to talk about WOEC. By the time we were the Senior Flight, we had it down pat. In the 7 minutes we had to get up and get in PT formation, we'd be out in the company street and wait for 2 minutes for reveille to sound. (What a difference from 6 weeks earlier.) The only challenge remaining was Phase inspection. You had to have less than 30 demerits to pass, and you had to pass to graduate. Unlike all the previous inspections, demerits were not stacked and the average was 7 or less. I think 1 candidate for over 20, several had less than 5.

Once we graduated, the MP's, Engineers and Mechanics got their bars and went off to their technical courses. The rest of us moved across post to Bravo Company and to the Initial Entry Rotary Wing Aviator Course (IERWAC). My flight became Light Blue Flight Class 87-23 (It think). There was a rotation of 13 colors (Red, Orange, Light Blue, Dark Blue, Royal Blue, Green, Maroon, Gray, are the ones I remember offhand). I got to watch them start training because I didn't have medical clearance to fly (An UP SLIP) due to a problem with some of the tests on my flight physical. Initially it seemed like I would be on hold for 2 weeks until the next class started then start with that class. In the meantime I was a Rainbow flight member and I was assigned a busy work job in the supply room. The supply sergeant had a civilian employee that did most of the work. For me, I had real work on Wednesdays when candidates exchanged their linen. The best thing about this time was that due to lack of space in the barracks, I was allowed to live at hope while I was in Rainbow status. In many ways, this shaped my future in ways I never anticipated.

Things I hadn't anticipated included #1 my Hyperparathyroidism diagnosis I mentioned in earlier blog posts. If I hadn't applied for flight school, the most likely scenario is that I would not have been diagnosed until I stated to have spontaneous bone fractures. As that is the primary symptom of someone with untreated Hyperparathyroidism. At that point, the bone damage is irreversible and life gets pretty bleak. I met such an individual in Eisenhower Army Medial Center and he didn't seem to be a happy camper.

The second unanticipated event was the conception of my youngest child. It was 1987, we had 2 sons and just entering elementary school and we'd tried for several years for another child and it seemed we were destined for only two. While on medical hold, my flight surgeon (Dr. Robledo) had been running test on me to see if they could determine the cause of my elevated blood and urine calcium levels. When he couldn't then I was referred to a Specialist at Eisenhower Army Medical Center located at Fort Gordon Georgia. It is a day long 350 mile trip, so I was sent there on Temporary Duty (TDY) orders. I was housed in the Bachelor Enlisted Quarters (BEQ) and seen as an outpatient at the hospital clinic. The trip was Monday thru Friday with 3 days of testing in the middle. The 1st trip was uneventful. The second, since this appeared to be a drawn out affair, I asked the wife and kids to come along. Nothing significant really occurred medically for me, but we had a good time in Augusta Georgia and surprise, we managed to conceive our third son.

The last unanticipated consequence was the start of my fourth career in computing. As I go used to working in the Supply Room, it was the dawn of the computer age in the Army. Sitting in the inner office was an ITT Xtra 8086 computer with a CGA color screen and a 10 MB external hard drive. For the most part the computer just sat there unused except once a week when one of the TAC officers from Bravo company used a Lotus 123 spreadsheet to compute his weekly pass roster for his flight. I asked if I could watch (Fairly bold move since I was a candidate and all) and since I wasn't actively in training he saw little need to put me in my place and actually taught me a few things. After that I asked if I could use the computer on my own and the reply was "OK, just don't break it." The computer had a few applications installed including WordStar 4, Lotus 123 and Database 3 Plus.

I learned for Mr. Hall about Lotus 123 (intermediate on usage, beginner on macro programming) but the rest of the items I was pretty much self-taught. I had noticed a couple of issues in the administration of Bravo company that I thought I could make better using the computer. The first was the revision of the Warrant Officer Candidate (WOC) Guide. Like all army publications at the time, they were all printed (Hard copy) manuals and when enough errata was found, then change pages were printed and you inserted these pages into the existing manual. Some times the change page replaced a page, sometimes a .1 page was inserted (Example between page 22 and 23 you inserted page 22.1) and sometimes the change notice just had you line out a paragraph or word or sentence and have you write in the correction. After about change 10, a document could and did get very wonky. So I volunteered to make the 1st computer document version of the WOC guide and incorporated all the current changes (Seemed like change 24 or so at the time). This project took several weeks and of course was delayed by my TDY trips (4 total) to Fort Gordon.

The second project I worked was the computerization of the operations office. Until I created the database, all active flights (5) plus snowbird (Awaiting training) and Rainbow (On hold for various reasons) were tracked manually. I observed in operations for several days an determined the 2 sergeants in that office spent about 50 man hours a week keeping track of candidates and generating 31 specific reports. I figured out this could all be done using a database and I got permission to try.
Keyboard entry was the biggest challenge as there were roughly 400+ candidates in Bravo company. I had 147 specific database entries for each individual, and created reports for the 31 required reports. I guess this project ran for over a month, but I was successful in debugging it and I could run a report and tell you have many left handed Army reservists there were in the company and what flights they were in. The sergeants in operations considered me their savior as they went form very overworked to pretty happy with their jobs in about a week, after I trained them on the database. These endeavors in computing were the germ of my fascination with computers. At every new assignment, I learned more and 2 assignments later, one of my additional duties that would follow me the rest of my army career was "Automation Officer".

Tales of the Warrant Officer Entry Course at Fort Rucker (aka Mother Rucker) Alabama

I've mentioned talking about the Warrant Officer Entry Course (WOEC) in more detail. Well I guess this is a good time to do it. Historical note, this is what is was like in 1987, there have been a lot of changes, I don't know what most of them are, but this is only a recount of my life in 1987. My first thought upon arrival at WOEC was disappointment. While the majority of the post was more modern buildings, the WOEC was all housed in good ole World War II buildings. The first 2 weeks were mostly like a reception station at any post. They barely acknowledged your existence, because until you started training you really didn't matter to anyone. 2 weeks of getting your act together. Getting all the items you'd need for the next 6 weeks of training but mostly waiting and a lot of dread as you could see what the candidates in training were going through.

There were other "Administrative" things that had to be taken care of while in Snowbird status before training commenced. Aside from acquiring gear that you would need for your training, all aviation tracked candidates had to take the Class I Flight Physical I'd mentioned earlier. That took up a couple of days, but the one item I was dreading the most was the Physical Fitness Test (PT Test for short).
PT Tests have always been my nemesis. I've never been a great athlete and I'll admit my PT Test scores had always been mediocre at best. I wasn't really worried about the test itself as I'd been training with the Scout Platoon of the 5/327 Infantry before I made the Permanent Change of Station (PCS) to Fort Rucker Alabama from Fort Richardson Alaska. What I was concerned about was acclimatization.

Acclimatization is your ability to adapt to the surrounding climate conditions and I was struggling. In May of 1981, while attending an Army training course in Fort Lee Virginia, I'd developed a severe case of Heat Exhaustion nearly to the point of Heat Stroke during a field training exercise (FTX). I ended up in the Emergency Room and received 2 liters of IV fluids because I was so dehydrated. I missed the remaining part of that FTX but I had passed enough of the training to merit graduating the course. I'd also earned the label "Heat Casualty". Once you have had your body stressed severely due to dehydration, one of the unfortunate results is that you are statistically more prone to have the experience again.

My body had become acclimated to the cold weather in Alaska. When we'd left, the high in Anchorage was 20 below zero. I'd been running all Winter in snow and cold and now I was in Alabama where the low temperature was higher than the summer high temps I'd experienced in Alaska the past 2 seasons. Add with that the oppressive humidity and the result was my body having a very bad reaction to the conditions. I had voiced my concerns to our Platoon Sergeant who would administer our test and she did have some compassion for us. The PT test was scheduled for 6 AM on a Saturday morning and it was a balmy 70 degrees. I'd been in Alabama 29 days and I was up against the wall as I had to pass this test today. Obviously, I did, but I assure you it was not my best test score ever, but better that I expected.

Then comes the WOEC experience. First there is a bit of history about Warrant Officer Candidate School. It was created after World War I when a need was identified for engineer technicians to plant land mines and some clerical positions. The rank of Warrant Officer was created between the existing enlisted and officer ranks in the US Army.  Attaining Warrant Officer rank became a goal of many tenured enlisted personnel between WWI and WWII. "The Warrant Officer grade continued to be used as a reward to enlisted men of long service and special qualifications rather than to fill essential military requirements." In World War II, patterned after the British, aviation training was opened to enlisted soldiers who earned the rank of Warrant Officer Junior Grade upon completion of training.

The Warrant Officer corps continued to evolve after WWII when the Air Force was separated from the Army and helicopters became a war fighting tool in the 50s and 60s. Both Commissioned officers and Warrant officers were assigned to helicopter flight training in the Army. In 1984, it was determined that a training school for newly selected Warrant Officers was needed and this was the birth of WOEC. WOEC was formally created in 1984. Before WOEC, if an enlisted soldier was selected to be a Warrant Officer, they were just awarded the rank. With WOEC, you now had to complete the 6 week training course, and of course that meant that you now had to pay for the privilege, and pay you did.

How can I describe this course? In a lot of ways it is like basic training, magnified. You have the feeling of being lost without a map, overwhelmed by ridiculous attention to detail and just generally harassed. Like basic training, the main intent of WOEC is to weed out those who can't handle it. If you've seen the movie "An Officer and a Gentleman" you get an idea of how this is done. First you are awarded the fictitious rank of Warrant Officer Candidate. If you were below pay Grade E5 you were bumped up to E5, if you had a higher pay grade, you kept it. But we were all the same, and treated worse than a private. You were addressed and called yourself "Candidate". When addressing the WOEC equivalent of a drill sergeant (Your "friendly" Training and Counselling Officer aka "TAC Officer") you started and ended any answer with Sir and identified yourself: EG:  Sir, Candidate Kempf, Yes Sir). If you were outside in the designated company area and you visibly saw a TAC officer, regardless of the distance away, you were required to salute and give the greeting of the day: Sir, Candidate Kempf, Good Morning Sir! This was of course done at the top of your lungs. To make things more interesting, you were also required to run, anytime you were outside and not on steps. When marching, you had 8 steps from quick-time to double-time. (Forward March, 2 steps then Double-time March was the norm.)

There were 3 active platoons in WOEC, Red, White and Blue Platoons that were nominally called flights. One flight started training every 2 weeks. Junior, Intermediate and Senior flights. The Junior flight always seemed to be in crisis, Intermediate flight was figuring it out and the Senior flight, like all seniors had it all figured out. Everything was done by seniority so the Junior class was always last.
The first day as an active flight, was all about getting organized. The leadership team was appointed (Flight Leader, Flight Sergeant, Admin Officer, Security Officer, Standardization officer and other tasks I can't remember. The Admin Officer became my assignment and was both a blessing and a curse. (More about that in later entries.) Unlike all my other training environments I'd encountered in the Army, this was the first one where almost everything you had with you was a "Display item". We had a single wall locker that we kept the select items that were not inspectable such as our tackle box with "tools of the trade" that that consisted of plastic signs used to wrap clothing rolls to make them wrinkle free, stencils, magic markers and a very gaudy yellow track suit that was used for physical training. Everything else, was an item that had to be on display for inspection. A place for everything and everything in its place.

You had 4 set of battle Dress Uniforms (BDUs) which were the standard duty uniform. A field jacket, and dress uniforms. 2 sets of boots, 1 set of dress shoes, 1 pair of running shoes. I don't remember if there was a limit on the number of T-Shirts, underwear and socks, Your pin on insignia for you uniforms had to be pinned on a fresh 5 x 7 index card (no extra holes when some pieces were in use) 2 towels, and a washcloth. Your display wall locker had 4 to 12 hanging items (4 minimum, 12 maximum) depending on how much dirty laundry you had either at the laundry or in your dirty laundry bag. Hanging items had to be spaced equal distance apart. they measured this to the 64th of an inch. Try that in your closet if you think it is easy. T-Shirts were rolled 7 inches wide and could have no wrinkles. Same for underwear. In case you are curious, there are shortcuts for all these, and as flights leave the training environment, outgoing candidates sell their equipment to incoming snowbirds. Sometimes they even give you a tip or two. One tool was a 12 inch wooden army issue ruler. It had 9 notches on the back side marked 4, 5, 6 ... 12. These notches corresponded with the number of hanging items in your wall locker. You counted the hangars, then used the corresponding notch to space the hangars and Viola! they were evenly spaced, to the 64th of an inch. Total time with practice, maybe 15 seconds.

All this sounds fairly normal for a training environment, and it was. The crazy part was the attention to detail for all items. Socks, for example, had to be rolled individually, 4 inches wide and cuffed so that the rolled up part in the center didn't show any of the side of the roll. This also created a slot on the bottom side that had to be aligned in each sock of the display. "They called it a "Smile" and the standard was smiles toward the isle. (The slot oriented toward the center bay isle in the barracks.) There was a standard for EVERYTHING. The Standardization officer was the deciding authority on any detail that was not specifically designated by the bible of WOEC, the Warrant Officer Guide. This kept him busy the first couple weeks as it turned out to be a lot the guide didn't cover. I learned this as one of the jobs for the administrative officer, was to write memorandums detailing all these standards. (NOTE: A memorandum is a military format letter. They have a regulation for how to format them, and of course, everything was done to regulation.)

Very quickly it seemed evident that it was impossible to do all the required tasks in the time allotted. Time was a precious commodity. 1st call was at 04:53 and 1st formation was at 05:00. In that 7 minutes, you had to get up, make your bed to inspection standard, setup your display (Wall Locker, Desk and Bunk) ensure that the building was ready for inspection and be lined up on the company street (the barracks locked by the security officer) and at attention for Physical Training (PT). No big deal, RIGHT! The first morning, all was chaos and if we were all out there by 05:15 is was a miracle as we didn't have our act together. We were chewed out then taken for an hour of physical abuse then brought back to the barracks. The security officer learned the hard way that you have to check all the doors every day, because during the night one of the TAC officers slipped in and unlocked a fire Escape door on the 2nd floor (They are always locked from the inside) and we found all our mattresses, blankets, sheets etc. in the middle of the immaculately polished center bay floor we never walked on due to it's high gloss shine. Now we had to make up our beds again, shower and shave, have the barracks clean and ready for inspection and be information for chow in 20 minutes.
Since we were the Junior flight, we had to be ready first (The order going to chow was in reverse seniority, so newbies had to be ready 1st.) Of course this means less time for cleanup. We had the supervisory assistance of the TAC officers (This generally included the standard in your face being chewed at at attention, push-ups and other friendly advice) and eventually we made it to the dining facility. This is where the fun really begins.

Disciplined Dining. This was the order of the day, every meal, Monday through Friday, weekends were a tad more relaxed. The first trick, getting in the door. Field Manual (FM) 22-5 Drill and Ceremony was followed to the Tee.  So your Flight (Platoon) leader has to give the correct commands, and the squad leaders the correct supplementary commands for you to file into the building. Day one, this might take 5 to 10 precious minutes and a lot of push-ups, but finally you are in chow line. But you are not just standing in line, you are standing at Parade Rest (Feet shoulder width apart hands overlapping in the small of your back, palms outward and staring at the head of the guy in front of you). To move forward, you came to the position of attention, then stepped forward, then returned to Parade Rest. No looking around, no talking, unless a TAC officer comes up and starts asking you questions. Screw up, and it is outside for push-ups, then into the back of the line. Disconcerting.

Eventually, you make it to the serving line, and like a miracle, you could now act like a normal human. The meals were served by civilians and so you were allowed to interact. The food was plentiful and hot, and generally tasty for institutional food. Since there were no snacks, only 3 meals a day, you got what you could while you could. There were some rules, 3 glasses of liquid (Minimum) and 2 haad to be water. You had to have a knife, fork and tablespoon, even if you were getting only cold cereal. You all had to sit as a group. Until meal rights were given, you could talk.  You took advantage of that while you could. This was likely the freest part of your day outside the barracks.

The tables in the dining facility were the standard institutional folding tables with built in benches. Each table seats 8, 4 people on each side and the tables were lined up in rows of 5 end to end making a long continuous table that seated 30. You sat in groups of 4, 2 on each side, and then you placed your pistol belt with canteen and headgear on top of it under you seat. You had a tray, it had to be aligned to the edge of the table, Your 3 glasses of liquid were aligned against the back edge of the tray on each corner and the center. You plate was aligned and centered on the forward edge of the tray. Your fork was laid tines on the plate upside down with the handle pointing to the right, your spoon the same manner on the left and your knife on the back edge of the plate pointing to the left and blade edge pointing away from you. (If the edge of the knife is pointing toward you, you were suicidal, ya know.) Now you could begin to eat. But of course there is a method and standards. You sat at the position of attention on the forward 6 inches of you seat. Hands in your lap holding you napkin. You took your right hand, reached across your plate and grabbed your tablespoon, (also known as a WOC Shovel) Scooped up the largest amount of stuff you could from your plate, and then brought it up to your mouth. This sounds easier that it is because you were at attention, back straight, and you could not bend forward. You were facing ahead and looking down only with your eyes. If you took into account the placement of the plate, on the edge of the table, and your sitting on the edge of the seat, the plate was barely visible.

Now that you had managed to get food in the spoon, you opened your mouth and got the spoon in, closed your mouth and removed spoon. But wait, there is more!  You had to return the spoon to its resting place on the left side of the plate. Then your right hand to your lap to get your napkin, then wipe your mouth and return your hand to your lap, then you could chew. With practice, you could eat an entire plate of food in 30 spoons or less, hence the Tablespoon, not a teaspoon. While going through the serving line, you learned quickly to cut anything that needed cutting, and mix everything into one big pile of mush. This aided you in actually getting food to your mouth. There is no hand food, all had to be eaten with utensils. and each time, only with the right hand. The spoon wasn't mandated, it was just practical, you learn a lot about being practical.
Eventually, your long table filled up. When it did, and when the last 2 people had their dishes and equipment arranged, then they stood up, facing each other at the end of the table, did a facing movement to turn facing down this long table, and they started the meal rites. Meal rites went like this:

Candidate on the Left: "Candidates on my left, please stop eating."
Candidate on the Right "Candidates on my right, please stop eating."
Candidate on the Left: "Candidates, please take all orders from the candidate on my right."
The rest of the commands are given by the candidate on the right.
"Candidates, please sit at the position of attention in the forward 6 inches of your chair." Everyone sat up a tad bit straighter in response (You were already that way when you started).
"Candidates, please ensure your pistol belt and headgear are centered beneath your seat." You bent slightly to the right and glance down, you already had done this too).
"Candidates,  please ensure your tray is grounded to the forward leading edge of the table," (Again and with every succeeding command, you essentially feigned doing the task you'd already done when you sat down initially).
"Candidates, please ensure your main entree dish is centered and grounded to the forward leading edge of your tray."
"Candidates, please ensure you silverware is properly grounded to your main entree dish."
"Candidates, please ensure any auxiliary dishes are grounded to the forward right edge of your tray."
"Candidates, please ensure that you have 3 glasses of liquid, two of which must be water, grounded to the forward left, center and right of your tray."
"Candidates, please enjoy your (Morning, Noon or Evening) meal."

After the last command, the group sounded off in unison with a previously agreed saying, then you could finish your meal, get up, and head outside.

You quickly learned to time your seating to either be at the beginning of a table or the end. The absolute worst thing to happen was someone sit at the right end and not know the meal rights. With hassle from the TAC officers, it might mean sitting there at attention for 15 minutes while the candidate giving the commands was berated. So, whenever possible, I made sure I was the candidate giving the rights.

Not everything about WOEC was ridiculously hard. There was a bit of compassion, we had laundry service. You could get 2-day service, not free, but well worth the cost. Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings were the only time you could visit with family. While the training was hard, the isolation from family was harder. The only reason it was bearable was they kept us too busy to think about it too often.

Officially, the training day was 04:53 to 2100 because we had to allowed 8 hours to sleep. This sounds like a good thing, but it was more to force us to manage our time better. At lights out, you had to be in bed. Your only exception from bed is the bathroom. By taking 8 hours out of the day, we had much less time for preparation. Classes were 08:00 to 12:00 then 13:00 to 17:00. 3 hours for meals, 1 hour for PT and you lose about 2 hours going back and forth, so you end up with about 2 hours a day preparation time. Of course they didn't make it that easy, you also could end up doing penance marching up and down the company street in your Class A uniform for a hour or two as punishment for rules infractions.  I got lucky, I only ended up marching for 2 hours if memory serves me correctly.

My penance was usually spending my time writing up memorandums requesting one thing or another. This was made even harder than usual, as I had no access to a typewriter, so all of these had to be printed in longhand, time consuming. It took me the 1st week or so to get the format down pat, then it was just the volume of paperwork I had to complete. Other team members started helping me and other leadership positions out as ones that didn't have additional duties or penalty laps. That made life a lot easier for me.

I'm not going to mention a lot about academics in WOEC, just because there wasn't a lot of meaningful instruction in the classes. I mean 12 hours of Ethics training really is meaningless. If you don't understand ethics by the time you get to WOEC, 12 hours of classroom training isn't going to help you. Like many other things, classwork was a tool to take up your time. I cannot think of any other classes we attended, what I do know is we had 8 hours of class Monday through Friday and I can't think of anything I learned during that period in classroom instruction that I hadn't already learned somewhere else in the army. For airforce types this may not have been so true.

What I will mention though is TAC alley. TAC alley was the 2nd floor of the of the WOEC administration building. The TAC officers had their offices there and by each office was a distribution box for information for the Flights. Just getting to TAC alley included its own set of challenges, like pull-up bars. Every time you passed these bars, you were obliged to do 4, 4-count pull-ups. (W-O-C-1, W-O-C-2, etc.) When I first arrived at WOEC, just 1 pull-up was a challenge. That didn't last long though. One of my duties as the ADMIN officer was to check the distribution box before class and after class, 4 times a day. This meant passing the pull-up bars 8 times every day and obliged me to a minimum of 32 4 count pull-ups a day. Needless to say, by the time the 6 weeks were over, I was pretty good at pull-ups. But that was just one of the TAC alley challenges.

The distribution box for my flight was at the far end of the hall, which meant that I had to pass the offices for all the other flights TAC officers en-route to my goal. It seemed to be a rite of passage that other flight TAC officers needed to ensure that I was squared away and healthy. The WOC Guide stated that if you were in TAC alley and a TAC officer entered from either the stairs or their office, candidates were required to brace against the wall at the position of attention with 4 points of contact on the wall. Head, shoulders, buttocks and heels against the wall. This had to be done immediately and you had to avoid any obstacles, like pictures, distro boxes, doors etc. The TAC officers then would generally question you on a myriad of subjects usually to the point of failure, or if you were very lucky their point of boredom. In most cases the former. Providing a wrong, incorrect or even timid answer generally resulted in some type of physical discomfort, the "Dying Cockroach" being a TAC officer favorite. (Lay on you back, arms and legs pointed to the sky until the TAC officer got tired, tired of watching you in pain,) Most days, I managed to get through unscathed, but I recall 1 day getting caught incoming and outgoing by a total of 4 TACs, that was a very tiring trip that lasted over 30 minutes. (Normal time about 30 seconds, get in, get out.)

WOEC was great at inspiring teamwork. It was also an exercise in cleanliness and organization. For example, taking showers. The building was a WWII standard barracks with some slight modifications. They nominally slept 60 people, roughly 30 per floor. 5 toilets, 5 sinks and 2 single person showers. that sounds pretty normal. Now cycle all 60 people through the showers after PT. Add a 20 minute time limit to get clean, dressed, have the barracks inspection ready and get out to formation. It sounds impossible but it is not, if you all cooperate. Showers are done in a Japan bath inspired way. You jumped in the shower and got wet, then jumped out so the next guy could get wet (There is a line of course) once out you lathered and scrubbed yourself and the line kept moving, this gave you about a minute to shuffle and scrub before you got back to the shower and rinsed off. If you were the last guy, you got to dry the shower and squeegee the floor to the drain, then dry the drain cover. In this manner, everyone got showered in say 3 - 4 minutes. Shaving was next. If you are speedy, then you got to use one of the 5 sinks. After most people were done, shaving was limited to the last sink while rest were cleaned and dried for inspection. Each squad in the Flight was tasked with a specific cleaning assignment that had to be completed before we left the building. Most days, things went pretty well after the first week or so.

Let's talk about clean. This wasn't your normal, you lived in a barracks, kept it clean enough to be healthy clean. This was on the border of ridiculous. If it could be polished, it was polished. Did you know that the shiny nickel plated drain pipes are mostly copper with nickel plating? they are. And if you polish them daily for years at a time, the nickel plating wears off, but you can really make that copper gleam. Same for floor drains. They are made out of brass. The screws that held the drain plates in place were long gone when we arrived, and both the bottom and top of the drain cover and the brass drain itself had a bright golden sheen that had to be maintained, daily. This place was anything but low maintenance. In the bays, each bay had an open center section that no-one except a TAC officer walked upon. We polished the floor with Turtlewax until it gleamed like a 57 Chevy in the sun. Walking on it got you the privilege of buffing it, for the next week, or until someone else was caught transgressing the sacred portion of the floor.

I'd mentioned before that everything in your wall locker was inspectable. Well when it came to cleaning up, this made for some more "how can you use this item and still pass inspection" quandaries that some smart people figured out. Your bar of soap for example. It had to be in the basic clear plastic soap holder. But for inspection the soap had to be dry and the holder immaculate. Pray tell, how does one shower with their soap (you had to use the bar that was inspected) and have it dry, hard and not leaving soap residue on the tray?  Simple, you never get it wet. You take your washcloth, lay it on your desk flat and unfolded and then rub the soap real hard on to the washcloth. It rubs on the to the terrycloth pretty easy and then you put it back into the dish and position it for inspection in the drawer. Then take your washcloth and towel with you for a shower. Your towel and washcloth were the only 2 display items that could be on display wet.

Barracks inspections. These happened generally every day and on you desk was the demerit list. Demerits were all listed in the Warrant Officer Candidate Guide. The TAC officers amused themselves with creative demerits. They would stack them (Give multiple demerits, each having a higher point score to where a minor infraction could rack up 50 or more demerits). So you could get something like -1, -7, -13, -21, -25, -31 for mud on a boot. Translated is came out something like this:

-1 Dirty = 1 demerit
-7 Inattention = 2 Demerits
-13 Failure to follow instructions = 5 Demerits
-21 Not in accordance with FM/AR or WOC Guide = 10 Demerits
-25 Gross Misconduct = 15 Demerits
-31 FLAGRANT NEGLECT = 25 Demerits

So a spot of mud would get you 57 demerits

The 1st inspection, the average candidate had 1000+ demerits, and the really talented ones had 2500 or more. I avoided being really talented in the demerit department. I knew all about this because as the ADMIN officer, I got to add it all up, and post the roster for the bottom 10% who got to walk the company street for 2 hrs that night in their Class A uniform.

About the 4th day, (About 3:30 AM actually) we got our start for Hell Day.

More to come, this just touched the surface.

Adventures in becoming a Helicopter Pilot Continued.

Once I'd dealt with the Medical Clearance issue, my next obstacle was overcoming my fear of flying itself. The morning of my first training flight in a TH-55A (Osage) training helicopter is a day forever burned into my brain. Your first flight in flight school with your instructor is called "The Nickel Ride". It is tradition, that on your first training flight, you give your instructor a nickel minted in the year of your birth. This first flight is also the only "freebie" you get while in flight school. There is no grade, no expectation, no criticism, just a fun time getting familiar with the helicopter, your instructor & the landscape of southern Alabama.

My "Nickel Ride" started out with high expectations, as I'd been waiting to fly for 9 months while on "Medical Hold" status working as a clerk in the company supply room. I met my instructor, Mr. Hugh Rhodes, at our desk in the flight briefing room. He introduced himself, & we went downstairs to operations, checked the weather forecast, & got our aircraft assignment & keys. The weather was good, partly cloudy, minimum ceiling of 10000 ft, 39 Degrees F & a light wind from the southwest. We walked out on the tarmac & for the first time I got to see up close 300+ Orange Bubble canopied helicopters.

We located our bird, & began our pre-flight inspection. I could hardly control my excitement & concentrate on my following Mr. Rhodes around the helicopter paying close attention to how he performed the inspection. The pre-flight completed, we strapped into the helicopter. We'd had one discussion about the helicopter configuration, fly with the doors on, or with the doors off. Since we were both wearing jackets, we opted for doors off. Mr. Rhodes read off the checklist while I performed the startup steps & soon we had the engine started, the rotors turning & I turned the controls over to Mr. Rhodes. Transfer of the controls is done verbally with 3 steps, then followed by a visual check. (ME) "You have the controls." (Hugh) "I have the controls." (ME) "You have the controls." Then I look & confirm he has hold of the controls while I let go of them. My mission at this point was tuning the radio frequencies for Ground Control & Tower & to enjoy the show.

My excitement was building, Mr. Rhodes radioed for taxi clearance & we were cleared to the nearest takeoff helipad on the west side of the airfield. It took about 5 minutes as there were numerous other TH-55a's all trying to leave at the same time. Finally, we're hovering just short of the helipad & we frequency change to Tower. Tower clears us unto the pad, gives us the current wind & altimeter information & clears us for takeoff & a departure from the airfield to the Northwest. We're hovering at about 3 feet, & Hugh starts us moving forward & at about 15 miles an hours, the helicopter starts to climb. The takeoff path is over pastures & we fly over fences & cattle as we continue the climb-out. As we pass through about 50 feet, I have a revelation. I'm scared of heights. This isn't just being nervous, I'd been nervous all morning. This is irrational, overwhelming, total panic. This helicopter is SO SMALL, there is SO LITTLE to it, it seems SO FRAGILE, I have no confidence in the aircraft at all. The design of the helicopter is very basic, a bubble canopy, on top of a 6 cylinder air cooled engine (Similar to a Volkswagen engine) 2 skids & the tailboom. The entire craft, passengers, fuel & all weigh a MAXIMUM of 1570 lbs.

We climb up to our cruising altitude of 600ft AGL (Above Ground Level) & are flying generally north bound & I'm trying hard to suppress my fear. I haven't said anything to Mr. Rhodes & he seems unaware of any problems I'm having. The flight itself is simplistic, straight & level flight, simple standard rate turns, nothing aerobatic or unexpected. In short, nothing to fear, just a walk in the park. Hugh is pointing out landmarks I'll need to learn for navigation, & for a moment I'm not too scared, as I'm astonished about how FLAT southern Alabama is when seen from above. Then I looked down, (bad idea), as I could look between my feet & see the ground. Cattle look like ants. Railroad tracks look like thread. Fear rears it's ugly head again.

While I'm dealing with renewed panic, Mr. Rhodes decides it's time for me to take the controls. I'd been warned that on the 1st flight, the instructor might have you steer using the cyclic control, or use the pedals to maintain the aircraft trim, or the collective control to maintain altitude. Hugh says: "You have the controls." I reply: "Which one?" Hugh says: "All of them." then repeats "You have the controls." Slowly, with great trepidation, I ease my feet onto the pedals, grasp the Collective/throttle with my left hand, grasp the Cyclic with my right, & squeeze the intercom trigger & say: "I have the controls." Hugh says: "You have the controls." At this point he lets go & I am flying the aircraft. Hugh, sits back & Crosses his arms! Ahhhh!

I'm amazed that we haven't died yet. I've maintaining straight & level for the most part & even manage a couple slow turns left & right. We fly on for 8 maybe 10 minutes (It seems like forever) without major mishaps. We do encounter on effect that is to say the least, unnerving. The TH-55a has a horizontal stabilizer opposite the tail rotor. It is about 2 feet long, & angled upwards 30 degrees. This has the disconcerting effect, when you have a tailwind from the Left-Rear, of causing the aircraft to porpoise up and down if you aren't pro-active in preventing it from occurring. We got into this effect twice, each time Hugh would put his hands on the controls just long enough to stop the oscillations, then sit back again.

While all this is occurring, Hugh is complementing me on my calm demeanor, & how measured my actions are while flying. Finally, I can't take it anymore, & tell Mr. Rhodes that what he is perceiving as calm, cool, & collected, is actually a controlled panic! I'm too scared to move. He takes pity on me, takes the controls & has me try & site back & relax for the balance of the flight. The flight is soon over, we complete our post-flight inspection, & return to the briefing room for the debrief. All my classmates are yelling & screaming & excited, while I'm quite & depressed. I'm wondering "What did I get myself in to this time?" After a long day of reflection, long into the early morning hour the next day, I decided to give it 2 weeks to see if I could deal with the fears that had overwhelmed me. After 2 weeks, it wasn't so bad, the fear was still there, but the panic was gone. Fear I could & did learn to deal with as a pilot, though I'm still afraid of heights to this day.

My adventures in becoming an Army Helicopter Pilot

I've been told, that I need to write down some of my experiences, because they need to be published. I find that a bit of a stretch, but I'll try & do it anyway.

Most of my "interesting tales" have to do with my experiences as a helicopter pilot in the United States Army. I guess the first of such tales should be how I became a helicopter pilot in the first place. I was a sergeant in Alpha Battery, 1st Battalion of the 37th Field Artillery,  172nd Light Infantry Brigade (Arctic), stationed at Fort Richardson, Alaska. The year was 1986. I'd always wished I could be a pilot as long as I could remember, & had been especially interested since 1984 when my older brother Richard had tried to become a helicopter pilot. (In a sense, he blazed the trail for me, but that is later) I was reading a post newsletter & read an article that reported that the Army was accepting applications for the Initial Entry Rotary Wing Aviator Course (IERWAC) "Helicopter Flight School" in English, & that I had one window of opportunity to apply before I would be too old to go to the school. This was a rhetorical comment since my wife Anna had stated years earlier that she'd never be married to a pilot. To my astonishment, she told me to apply for the school. She said (Accurately) that if she stopped me from trying, that this issue would forever be between us. So she said, increase your life insurance & apply for flight school.

After taking the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) a 4th time, taking & passing the Flight Aptitude Selection Test (FAST) & the most grueling physical I've ever had, I submitted my packet to the Department of the Army (DA), then I waited. The waiting seemed to go on forever, but eventually, I was informed that I was selected for training, & was given orders to report for Duty in April 1987 to Fort Rucker, Alabama. Between my acceptance & my departure from Alaska, I was notified that my flight physical has some irregularities & needed to be repeated. This was done with a little trepidation, but no big deal, since I'd already done it once. The physical is a big deal becoming an aviator, as failing the physical is the way most people who are otherwise qualified are booted from the program. In preparation for my reporting for duty as a Warrant Officer Candidate, I started an increased physical training regime with the Scouts in my new unit (I had been transferred from the Artillery to the 5th Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment during the application process). The Infantry Scouts are the most elite of the infantry in Alaska, & their physical training routine was very intense. They allowed me to train with them & by the time I left Alaska I was in the best shape of my life. Little did I know how much I'd need it.

Arriving in Alabama in April after leaving Alaska in March is traumatic. My last day in Alaska was -20 degrees (that was the High) my arrival in Alabama it was 70 (That was the Low). The change in climate was grueling. I had to pass a Physical Training test (PT Test) within 30 days of arrival. Acclimatization to the southern Alabama climate was a bear. I passed the test the 29th day, at age 29 at sic O'clock in the morning. My next challenge was the Warrant Officer Entry Course (WOEC). WOEC was the 1st six weeks of the 9 months I was going to spend in flight school training. I'd already spent an additional two weeks as a "Snowbird" awaiting an active training class. (Students are assigned to the snowbird platoon as a holding assignment until there is space in an active training platoon. Classes start every two weeks & there can be up to 250 people assigned as snowbirds.) One lesson I learned quickly was that any time on hold was in addition to the nine month total for the training course. More on that later.

There were three platoons in rotation (Red, White & Blue) in the entry course. My training platoon was the Blue Platoon. I'll discuss details of WOEC later, but I managed to graduate WOEC without any major problems one way or another. Oh yes, did I mention that once you got to Ft. Rucker, you got another Class 1 flight Physical? Seems the flight school staff doesn't trust physicals done at other locations, even though they were reviewed by the medical staff at Ft. Rucker. This 3rd flight physical nearly ended my flying career.

I reported to Bravo Company (the flight training company) after finishing my WOEC at Alpha Company. I was now part of the Rainbow platoon. (Rainbow is the same status in B Co. that Snowbird was in A Co. Waiting to start training) The first thing that I learnt upon my arrival in B Co. was that I'd been placed on Medical Hold. I was told this was no big deal (about 10% of students get at least 1 medical hold) & they are usually resolved in a week or two. The biggest disappointment of this hold, was that most of my friends I'd made in WOEC were now starting training ahead of me.

Medical hold ended up being a nine-month endeavor of its own for me. I had been flagged due to my blood & urine chemistry being abnormal. Specifically, high blood & urine calcium. four months of testing, & three trips to Eisenhower Army Medical Center in Ft Gordon, GA. Finally resulted in a diagnosis of 1st Degree Hyperparathyroidism (isn't that a mouthful). This determination was made after 90 blood tests, A nuclear scan (Inconclusive) & evaluation by the Endocrinologist. What was the treatment? Exploratory surgery of my neck! Needless to say, I wasn't excited by this prospect. My throat was basically going to be cut from ear to ear, then opened up to expose the Thyroid Gland. On the back side, at each corner, is a pea sized parathyroid gland. The surgeon would look for a tumorous gland, & remove it.

I spent Friday night (after being admitted as an inpatient) & the entire weekend trying to research the condition I'd been diagnosed with to help me make my decision to have the surgery. I'd already upset my intern (Dr. Tuttle) when he was telling me the surgery & it's risks when I'd mentioned that if I was still in the hospital on Tuesday morning, they could do the surgery. As luck would have it, cable TV came to my rescue. The Learning Channel had a program called Surgery Update & of all things that week, the topic was Hyperparathyroidism. It seemed unbelievable, but it is the truth. The show told me all I'd been trying to learn in vain (my access to information was quite limited in the hospital & there was no Internet in 1987. My condition was normally found in Women over 50, rarely seen in Men, almost never seen under 30. Only one treatment, SURGERY. Now all I had to deal with was possible complications. Just little things, a 10% chance of losing my voice, a 50% chance of a major change in my voice & of course the ever present I might die in surgery.

It is hard to describe the terror I felt those four days. I’d had surgeries before and the process of going through a surgery wasn’t the issue. This was the first time that I didn’t have a cut and dried prognosis of a remedy to my need for surgery. Hernia repair, that is pretty clear. Having a small tumor removed from the bicep, again, pretty clear. The was no assurance with this surgery on either what they would find nor if the procedure itself would cause me other problems. My army career also depended on the results of this surgery. (More than I knew at the time, but that is addressed a bit later.) But I was laying there, away from my wife and family. This was before the Internet and cell phones and easy long-distance communication. I was isolated and feeling very alone sitting in a four-man ward on the 11th floor. I both dreaded Tuesday’s arrival but also welcomed the end of the waiting.

Surgery went well, voice intact & blood chemistry normal. I then had 90 days of postoperative testing to confirm I have been cured, then, since I'd never finished my third flight physical, it was time for a fourth. After passing the fourth flight physical, I was finally given the cherished "UP SLIP" officially known as a medical clearance to fly. Armed with this, I was assigned to Royal Blue Flight, & began my flight training.

Three and a half weeks later, I received a message to visit the Consult Clerk at the hospital. This was a fairly routine event as I'd visited the clerk (Mrs. Barnett) about once a week for 9 months to pick up test results for Ft. Gordon to be placed in my medical file. This visit was different. As I entered her office, her normally bright smile disappeared as soon as she saw me enter. I looked at her and said: "I've been medically DQ'd haven't I?" She told me that I had & went on to explain that I should have never been given flight clearance at all, since the tumor I'd had was clearly a disqualifying condition. She showed me the regulation, just one sentence. "Any history of an Endocrine condition" is class 1 disqualifying. The rest of the conversation was friendly but a bit muted, & as I turned to leave she made the comment: "it's just too bad that you haven't flown yet." I halted in the doorway hearing her comment, smartly performed an "About-Face" drill movement, & smiled like a Cheshire Cat. She saw me grinning from ear to ear behind my aviator sunglasses, and she asked if I'd flown yet. I replied that I had twelve hours of flight time & was nearly knocked to the floor as she ran from her office her skirt flying in the breeze as she ran down the hall. Two minutes later, she walked back in the office smiling & told me: "Never mind, your waiver will come to you in the mail." As it turns out, once you fly, you don't have to meet Class 1 flight standards, but Class 2. In class 2, my condition could be waived. So with my waiver in hand, flight training continued.

I was asked: Do you have a Blog?

Today has had some interesting events, one of which was: Do you have a Blog? I answered YES, & surprised myself by remembering where it was, & my username/password. Then I noted, while I had created the Blog, I had neglected to post anything. So here I am rambling on with my "Old Thoughts"

Maybe later, if I have something important to say, I'll remember how I posted this one.