My first soldier love...

When I first joined the Army, I wanted to fly and I wanted it to be on Blackhawks.  When I enlisted, there was only one aviation related job that was open and it was an admin job, so I figured it was at least a step in the right direction.  When I arrived at my first unit, it was an air assault Blackhawk battalion.  Over the course of the next eight months in gearing up for deployment, I watched them take off and land, tracked them while they were out flying and had a few chance opportunities to go out on training flights.  I was in love! 

About two months into our deployment, my re-enlistment window opened but an option to reclass to 15T (Blackhawk mechanic) wasn't.  So I waited...  A few weeks later, the retention sergeant contacted me and said that only a few slots were opened for reclass and I jumped at the opportunity.  On Christmas Eve 2006, I raised my right hand again and became Army property for six more years, with a reclass to 15T.  Since we were only three months now into a 15 month deployment, so it would be over a year before I would start my reclass, at least that's what I thought.

Within two weeks after my re-enlistment, I headed home for midtour.  When I returned our Battalion Standardization Instructor (SI) let me know that I would be starting academics within a few weeks.  For ten straight days, I started learning the ins and outs of how the Blackhawk worked and everything that came with flying as a crew chief.  During those ten days, the SI was about ready to go crazy with all the questions I was asking.  I had to know how everything worked and why it worked that way, etc, etc...  Given that the other five people in the training were all already 15T and had been for at least a couple of years, most of the information came easy to them - I had to work very hard to understand everything.

After we completed our classroom training and completed the initial tests and evaluations, it was time to start the flying part of our progression.  I continued on with question upon question and I think there was some days that the SI was wondering what he had gotten himself into.  He picked on me about it from time to time, but he was patient and took everything in stride.  Those first flights consisted of circling around in the training area, but I was right where I wanted to be.

Waiting while the other trainee completed his slingload training to start my portion of it.  The SI is in this picture too...