Assignment Night

Assignment Night is March 7.

Graduation is March 21.

I had some counters on the side of the blog that were counting down the days until Graduation and Assignment Night, but apparently they were wrong. We are very excited for both nights. On Assignment night we will be finding out what type of helicopter Joe will be flying, and where our first assignment will be. Joe has been training on the UH-1 "Huey". They are huge and old school. Some of the instructors here flew the Huey in Vietnam, I could do an entire post about those old guys.
Anyway back to assignment night. Joe fills out a "dream sheet" and ranks the location and aircraft in order of what he wants. Your assignment is given to you according to what is available and class rank.
The Huey is our first choice, Joe would like to continue to keep flying it. The good thing about getting a Huey would be that later on, Joe would probably have the opportunity to switch to different helicopter. Say in a few more years when there are more Ospreys available and they are looking for pilots with experience, Joe could try for that.



For Hueys the choices are:
1. Fairchild Afb, Spokane, Washington
2. Andrews Afb, Washington DC
3. FE Warren Afb, Cheyenne, Wyoming
4. Malstrom Afb, Great Falls, Montana
5. Minot Afb, Minot, North Dakota
6. Yakota Ab, Tokyo, Japan
It was a tough decision for us, because lets face it I don't want to live where it is cold. Plus none of them are really that close to Arizona, and they don't really sound that exciting. I mean did you ever dream of living in Great Falls?(No offense to Great Falls or Montana, I'm sure it's a wonderful place.) I know I never did. I have decided to have a good attitude, no matter what we get. I did tell Joe that if we get Minot, there will be tears. You know, just so he could prepare himself. I would get over it and then get excited for our new adventure in North Dakota. (No offense to Minot or North Dakota, I'm sure it's a wonderful place.)It would be cool to live in Japan, but it is so far away. I wonder if I could do it, I mean I know I would be able to, but am I ready for that?


The other choices are a UH-60 "Pavehawk", it has guns and does combat, search and rescue. It is the Air Force's version of the Blackhawk.

The locations for the UH-60, Pavehawk seem more exciting to me, but Joe would have to learn to fly something new(Joe just spent9 months learning the t-6, then 6 more months learning the huey, we're ready to stick with one thing) and there is a greater chance for deployment with these.
1. Davis-Monthan Afb, Tucson, Arizona
2. Nellis Afb, Las Vegas, Nevada
3. Moody Afb, Valdosta, Georgia
4. Kadena Ab, Okinawa, Japan
5. Lakenheath Raf, Suffolk, England

The final choice is CV-22 Osprey, this one is still pretty new to the Air Force and it is rare to get one of these. They are cool because it is like a plane and a helicopter together.

The two locations for the Osprey right now, Hurlburt Feild in Fort Walton Beach Florida or Cannon Afb in Clovis, New Mexico. Joe's instructor already told them that there will not be any Osprey given to his class, so we aren't really concerned about this one.


The order that they are listed here is the order Joe is putting on his sheet,at least that is what he told me;). It is different than a "fixed wing" (not a helicopter) drop night.(Is anyone still reading this?) With fixed wing they find out what is available first and then, fill out their sheet according to what is available to them. Since helicopter classes are so small they just have the students rank them by preference. Our friends in Mississippi got their "drop" and it lists what base is available and how many spots they need to fill. So you know if what you really want is even an option or not, but that is not how it works here on the helicopter side of things. For example in the last class of helicopter students, our friends, who were second in their class, put Osprey first and then all of the 60 locations, then Hueys. They ended up getting assigned Hueys to FE Warren in Wyoming. It just like that here. So we have no clue, what we will get. Lately Joe has been making list of what assignments have been given in the past few classes. (seriously, is anyone still reading this?) and then trying to guess what will be assigned next. So far there doesn't seem to be any logical order to the assignments given.

Joe has ten "graded" flights left. Which means more than ten flights, some of them are freebies. This past week he has been doing night flights. His schedule is more conducive to my routine and I like it better than him being gone when I wake up. He goes to work at about noon and comes home around 11pm. He studies some when he gets home, sleeps late and studies, more before he goes to work. The cool thing about night flights is that he is training with Night Vision Goggles. I think it is pretty cool, he says it's not as cool as it sounds and that you would only fly at night if you had to.

So for those of you who made it to the end of this post here are some pictures of Joe at "work."

This is Joe and his classmates.
Jeremy, Monty, Annie, Joe


Getting ready to fly.

Flying the Huey.
Here is a field of cows. They have to practice landing in fields of cows a lot.
Could this be more awesome, Joe playing fooseball while President Bush in on the TV?

P.S. I don't think you are supposed to tell people exactly how you filled out your "dream sheet", because then it is really obvious when you don't get what you want, and people judge you because you might not have a very good class ranking. It's not really that big of a deal to me. There are only four people in Joe's class, when there is only four it's not that hard to figure out where you fit in the ranking order. Even when you are first in the class here, you don't know if your first choice is available. Plus, it's not like we really actually get to choose where we are going. It is out of our hands.