Micah's Latest

I really need to update my Micah stories, but here is his latest photos. The first two are from doing rocket training the last two are from sling hoist training.

Nothing happens too fast here but I finally got my rocket training

accomplished yesterday. It was very cool and I actually hit the target
every time unlike the first batch of guys who launched a rocket over the
target backstop while they were trying to figure out the sights.

Micah.

Here are some photos from the sling training he organized.  To his knowledge he is the first (in recent history) to do this with the Afghans.

 We had a momentous occasion yesterday here at the Afghan Air Force Kandahar Air Wing. For the past couple of months we have been gathering equipment, expertise, and doing training so that we could perform sling loads. A sling load is when a helicopter carries a fixed external load in a large cargo net that is attached to the helicopter via a sling cable. There are many advantages to performing sling loads. In our case we are often limited by the space inside our aircraft. On a given day and location we may be able to carry 6600 lbs of cargo but we run out of space inside the cabin before reaching our weight limit. In the first picture our guys are loading 2 boxes (called tri-walls because of the triple thick cardboard the box is made from) in our cargo net. In addition we loaded another tri-wall in the cargo area. Normally we can only carry a total of two in the cabin. So in this case we increased our cargo by 33%.  Another advantage of a sling load is the added measure of safety. If we had some type of emergency or if we were engaged by the enemy we push a button and the cargo drops away instantly. Good for us and good for random nomads if it doesn't fall on top of them.

In the second picture I am standing next to the Afghan pilot Abdul Wadoud on the left (Abdul the Dude or Wolfman for short) and the crew chief Shapur in the center. (Micah told me that the Wolfman was conscripted to fly for the Taliban way back when...he was told to fly for them or his family would be killed.  Micah says that he is one of the older pilots who really tries hard.)We don't have official mentors for the crew chiefs yet but it was a positive experience being able to work closer with them. Unlike our older pilots they sucked up the info we gave them like a sponge. The crew chiefs play a critical role in cargo sling ops.
They act as our eyes on the load and we count on them to talk us over the precise location where the load needs to be dropped. They stepped up their game and were nearly flawless. It makes me want to work with
them more and push for some younger pilots as well. The old hat pilots might be able to hold things together for a while but the Afghan Air Force is really going to takeoff when we start getting new pilots out of the training base that opens this month.