Afghan lessons

An update! Micah has deployed to Afghanistan for a year. In the meantime we are living in Idaho near my parents and doing some work on a house. The house isn't quiet ready yet so we are staying in a friends basement. We expect Micah home in about 11 months and 2 weeks or so. He does have a mid-tour when he will come home for 2 weeks time. While he is away I will be posting our adventures as well as some of his.

Micah sent me an email the other day. Thought I would share it:

"Ok, so these pictures stink, but there is a good story behind them. I took the first picture of the Mi-17 we were flying with in formation with. I then decided that it would be a good opportunity to get a picture of me flying so I tightened up the formation to about 3 rotor diameters and told my Afghan flight engineer (FE) sitting in the middle seat to take a picture of me in the left seat. The idea being to get a shot of my face with the other Mi-17 and the mountains in the background. I then gave the controls to the Afghan pilot sitting in the right seat so that I could look back while the FE took some pictures. The Afghan pilot had flown very well earlier in the sortie but as soon as the FE started yelling at him to make flight adjustments ( I think that is what he was saying anyway) the other pilot started getting really jerky on the controls. Then the Afghan pilot started yelling back at the FE and this went back and forth for about two minutes. Again, I can only assume what these guys were saying and in their defense most Afghan do raise their voice in normal conversation. Anyway, the lone picture the FE took during this two minute ordeal was when I was looking back over at the other aircraft to make sure that we were still in formation and not about to run into something. After I took the controls back the two guys continued their 'conversation' and a couple minutes later they started laughing when I started shaking my head and laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation."