52. Late for Bisquits

Written: June 7, 2003

Saturday, June 7th
Woke up at 9:08am. I jumped out of bed after I looked at my clock because I was late for biscuits. The cooks were making biscuits for breakfast and Fred and I had been looking forward to having some. We quickly got our shoes and socks on and ran to the chow hall only to find out that they closed 10 minutes ago and had no more food.

We walked back and just happened to cross paths with Matt Brewster! He was driving a HMWWV and was coming from our Battalion. He yelled at me and I turned around and saw him. I got in the HMMWV with him and we talked for about 15 to 20 minutes until nature took over and reminded me that I needed to get to the bathroom NOW! I abruptly left him and took care of business.

Glenn came over around noon and talked for a while.

Sam gave Fred, Chad and I a class on map preparation that he prepared. It was a good class and he will give it to the Company soon-definitely a good refresher.

Received a package from Stefanie!

Got dressed and prepared for tonight’s NVG flight with Phil and LT Camp. We went through our run up checks and started the aircraft. The rotor blades seemed to be a bit out of balance so we got a maintenance guy out there to check it out. Dave came out and said it looked messed up but to hover it if we felt ok with trying it. We continued our checks and took off. Phil was on the controls and immediately told me that it felt bad. The aircraft was shaking us around and vibrating almost uncontrollably. We were under NVG’s and it was like taking a green t.v. and shaking it in front of your eyes in the dark. It was hard to see and hard to control the aircraft. I took the controls and had Phil put me up the tower frequency so I could tell them that we were heading back to parking. We were kicking up a lot of dust and it was getting increasingly difficult to see but I turned down the runway and headed back for the taxiway. I landed and rolled forward to our parking spot. Unfortunately, to park, we needed to pick the aircraft back up to a hover. I picked it back up, had to do a 180 degree turn and then land again. The dust in this area was much worse than what we created by the runway. Phil said he couldn’t see at all but I had the ground in site and slowly moved the aircraft to the position it needed to be in and then landed.

We shutdown without incident. The crew chiefs climbed on top of the aircraft and found that two of the blades were installed in the wrong position and that is what created the vibration. When the rotor blades are installed, they are balanced based on their position. If you move the blades, you will upset the balance and this is the result.

Came back in, ate cereal with Phil then went to bed at 12:30am after writing Stefanie.

Just realized that tomorrow is Sunday. I told Fred and he was surprised too. He commented that the days of the week just don’t matter.

He is participating in a flight that is taking Ambassador Brenner around to a few sites in Iraq. Should be interesting. I gave Kenny my camera to take pictures.