Dictionary>Sorry I haven’t sent an update recently, I plan on getting on that Blog that David set up and putting a website on MAC with pictures and stuff. I’ve flown a ton in the last week, and so far have over 20 hours as Aircraft Commander time, which is pretty cool. Pretty soon I’ll start briefing and leading sections on missions in and around Baghdad and all of western Iraq. The other day we almost flew around the Prime Minister of Iraq, but instead we took around a lot of Sheiks, and one American journalist that didn’t like the American Flag we had tied to the top of the inside of the aircraft. I’ll try to get some pictures of it to you. I’ve gotten sick again in the last few days so I’m coughing up a lung and I sound like I’ve got a frog in my throat, but I’m still doing ok. I’m on duty this morning, till about 1800 tonight, so I should be on line. Unfortunately the new MEF and MLG have made the filters on our NIPR network very strict and now I can’t get to the Campfire chat website David set up, but I’m going to put in a request to get that unblocked, and I’ll be able to get on line to it when I’m in my can. We’ve started running hard lines into the cans, because I don’t think the wireless routers support enough people per, and so we’re using network switches in conjunction with the routers to provide better service… but most people are really happy, and we should be able to upgrade once April rolls around. Right now we were able to finally get a lock on the satellite, we had some serious problems finding it, but we moved it over right next to some Army guys’ satellite and get a lock. I tried using iChat with Maria but it said the bandwith wasn’t good enough, but I just heard our XO was able to use Skype and video chat with his family last night, so maybe skype uses less bandwidth, so I’ll try that eventually. Oh, the reason for waiting to upgrade, is that the satellite we’re pointing to right now is at full capacity according to the company, so we’d need to change satellites to upgrade or someone on the satellite would have to change. I’m hoping for the latter, because it was so hard for us to find the satellite I don’t want to go through that again. I need to write the guy though and ask about it.
Anyway, I’ll try to do a better job of writing more often, and David you’ll have to forward my e-mails to everyone until I get some sort of dist list set up on all my e-mail accounts. There’s many people I need to write that I just haven’t had time to. When you are in the aircraft for 8 hours flying for 6 and planning for the flight 2 and try to do a ground job and eat and sleep, and get a run or workout in, it gets hard to find time to write, but I’ll do my best. Our crew day is 14hrs, and we’re not suppose to go over that. We’re also suppose to get at least 8 hrs rest, the other 2 hrs are usually spent in transit. No complaints here though, we were talking yesterday, this will probably be the highlight of our careers.
I’ll talk to ya’ll later.
Peace,
Adam