Frost Times

Seymour Johnson Air Force base was as beautiful of a base as I could have hoped. Going from the cold, lifeless, windy, dry, miserable Oklahoma base, to the most lush green grass and tall healthy trees was a dream come true. But before I get into the beauty of God’s creation here at the base I am stationed at we need to rewind a few days. 

I left Minnesota for North Carolina in a car that my girlfriend Kaydi was getting rid of and her family was generous enough to give to me for the steep price of $1.00 US. The car had 204,000 Miles on it when it was transferred into my name and I was the proud owner of a 12 year old Ford Contour! I loaded the Black Beast (as I like to refer to her as) full of everything I could find to bring, From a subwoffer for my sound system to a bag full of tennis gear to velcro to hang things from the walls. 

I was able to stop in Indianapolis for the night and stayed with one of Kaydi’s best friends Claire who had a couch for me to crash on. It was awesome catching up but had to be on my way early the next morning. I made it to Knoxville where I was able to meet up with my friend Tsgt Anthony Flores who was my mentor throughout my training from Lackland all the way up to before I left Altus. He was kind enough to let me stay in his spare bedroom and I had a great time catching up with him as well. The next day proved most challenging. The Black Beast in all her glory and power indeed had seen many years. 205 car years by this time and was struggling over the Appalachian Mountains….but she MADE IT!

I was greeted to Seymour Johnson by more green vegetation than I had seen since the summer before I left for Basic Training in Minnesota. It was awesome to actually see living things that were creating oxygen as God intended them too unlike Oklahoma which just boiled it’s air to make it unpleasant to breath. 

I was really lucky to be granted to live off base. Normally you must be in the Air Force for 3 years and have ranked up a few times before they let you live off base. However since I fly and need to be in a quiet place so that I can get crew rest and sleep during the day when I have a night flight, they allowed us to move off base into any apartment we could find (as long as it was approved by the Air Force) I found a few that I liked and went and checked them out. We are given a little over $800 a month for rent, and I found an awesome place I loved for $625 and another for $725 that I didn’t like quite as much. I went to the renting agency and told them I really wanted the $625 one and they regrettably informed me that as soon as it had opened up they got multiple deposits on it and they wouldn’t have another one of them open up for 4 months. So I put in my application and down payment on the $725 one that was much bigger, too big for my taste in fact and was a little cheaper and wasn’t laid out as nicely as the $625 one was. But I trusted God and just tried to find the good in the situation. A few days before I went in to sign the lease they gave me a call and told me that something had happened (God) and I had gotten the $625 apartment! I was thrilled and thanked God and ran over to their office and put a deposit down on it immediately. 

I recently moved into my apartment and have been blessed with a sweet desk, a great table and some beautiful glass tables from some of the other boom operators here that I work with. I found out that Beds are way more expensive than I had ever thought and I found that Jersey Style bed sheets from Target are the best thing ever. 

I have been so blessed by God in all my endeavors and He has not forgotten me now that I am here in North Carolina. Minutes before Kaydi and I were going to buy her $550 plane ticket to a city 3 hours away from me the Lord directed us to tickets that were $198 round trip to a city just 2 hours away. He truly is amazing and surprises us with blessings so often I’d be foolish not to realize it and appreciate it. 

I am still waiting for the Lord to direct me in which direction I should go when it comes to the Black Beast. She is now 206 1/2 car years old (206,500 miles) and he windows stopped working along with the transmission between 3rd and 4th gears. Living close to my sister Katie and her family (Virginia Beach, 3 hour away) I want to go visit them as often as I can, but I won’t be able to do it with the unreliability of the Black Beast. So I am hoping God blesses me with a newer car here in the next few weeks as I am sure He will. 

In the meantime, I am very happy here in my new apartment, and if anyone would care to visit I would be more than happy to see you. I will be gone a few months this year on deployments and Kaydi will be here for a few weeks in April but besides that I should be around to host any visitors! 

Love to all 

Dan

My training was finished and my time in Altus was done, I headed north with everything I had and as I drover further north I expected for the conditions to get worse and there to be snow and freezing air where I could see my breath with each cycle of my lungs. I was however to be very disappointed with the harshness of winter 2011/2012. February has been known to be one of the snowiest months, however I was in Minnesota for it’s entirety and no snow was to be found floating from the heavens during my visit to Minnesota. 

When I was home I was on leave, since March 15th when I left for basic training, till now I had accrued 29 days of leave (time off). When I came home, I was able to take Recruiters Assistance Program (RAP). RAP is a program where after training new graduates can go back and work for the recruiter near their home for two weeks and not have any of that time charged as leave. I was able to come home for the entire month of February and only have to spend around 14 days of leave which was awesome. 

Being home during this time was awesome because I got to hang out with my friends and family a lot, got to watch the Super Bowl, enjoy Valentines day with the love of my life Kaydi Ring, and enjoy my birthday with all my loved ones! It was truly and awesome time and I thank God for every moment of it. While home Kaydi and I got to go to three Timberwolves games and that really sparked an interest in the NBA again which has been fun to pay attention to and to have some sort of allegiance to Minnesota no matter where I am. Sadly I had to leave Minnesota for North Carolina at the end of February.

Another Chapter in the adventure of Air Force Dan

January 30th, I flew my check ride and my last flight in Altus Oklahoma. It was a pretty eventful flight, and before I start getting into the details of it there are a few things I will explain so the things I write here in these next few paragraphs make more sense and hold some sort of meaning to you all. 

Check rides are the final flight in your training to see if you are good enough to be considered a qualified boom operator or pilot which ever career you are in. Myself being a boom operator had another evaluator boom there watching me throughout my flight. My check ride was on a Monday morning, however there is a ground evaluation portion which is accomplished the day prior to the flight (which in my case was Friday, 3 days before my check ride). During the ground portion you are asked a multitude of questions which range from emergencies to general knowledge of the aircraft and the mission. 

I found out a few days prior to my check ride that my evaluator was going to be our squadron’s (120 students at the time) superintendent and that he was actually a pretty tough evaluator because he was the most seasoned and the best of the best when it came to evaluators. (I will refer to him as Master Sergeant D or Msgt D) 

There are 4 grades you can get for a check ride. Q1, Q2, Q3 and less commonly an EQ. The Q stands for qualified and the number is associated with the level of qualification with 1 being most qualified, 2 requiring some assistance and instruction and 3 being unsatisfactory and resulting in a failure. The EQ is reserved for Exceptionally Qualified individuals who exceed expectations and prove themselves to be exceptional at their job with knowledge, situational awareness, control and overall ability to perform the duties of a boom operator. During my time in Altus I saw 2 students out of a few hundred get an EQ and quite a few more get a Q3 resulting in a failure and a recheck after some remedial training.

On Friday, Msgt D and I sat down and started my ground evaluation. He started by asking some general questions which gradually got harder. I had been very well prepared by my instructor who on many occasions I very much hated for being very hard on me and treating me much worse than all the other instructors treated my fellow student when it came to the hours I had to spend in the classroom and how much studying I was required to do. When Msgt D would as me a question, I would quickly answer it and the start explaining why it was correct and some of the reasons it is correct and what other things coincide with that answer which would on multiple occasions answer his next question or two. He was quite impressed that I not only knew the answer to his question, but was able to dive into the question and show my expanded knowledge. Out of the 30 or so questions he asked me I knew all of them except for a few, which I knew right where to find the answer in our regulations and publications which guide us in our job. 

My ground evaluation had gone pretty well and the day of my check ride came. I woke up around 0515 AM and headed to the squadron around 0545 to arrive there by 0600. I prepared all my paperwork and met up with my crew. We were out at the jet getting everything preflighted and ready to go when I found a couple of things wrong with the jet. According to some of our recent regulations we were not allowed to have certain cargo equipment on board and I was the only one in our crew to catch it so right off the bat I impressed Msgt D. We finally got airborne and did quite a few touch and goes (training for out pilots which involves landing and taking off again without stopping) during this I was very involved with the crew and caught multiple errors by the pilots which I was able to call out so they could correct. (now this is actually part of my job as a crew member to help back the pilots up, it’s not to make me sound cool or for me to be cocky, however the pilots have to constantly maintain a certain altitude, pitch angle speed, aircraft configuration (flaps and gear) and a multitude of other things, therefore I am there to help back them up on the things they ask me to watch for)

Our flight after the touch and goes went somewhat smooth, there were a few times we had to delay and coordinate with the receiver aircraft. The receiver finally came to the refueling position and the Air Refueling (AR) went absolutely flawless. The receiver was pretty much all over the place but thank the Lord I was able to maintain control over the entire situation and deal with it in a very effective and efficient manner. We had one close call toward the end where the receiver got a little close and I had to call a breakaway and that got a little exciting but besides that I had completed the hardest part of my check ride and was one step closer to getting out of Altus. 

The rest of the flight was uneventful and went smoothly. We landed and packed everything up, turned the jet over to the ground crew and returned to our squadron. My instructor (Staff Sergeant P or Ssgt P) was there and eager to see how I had done. I went and got a debriefing room and waited for Msgt D and Ssgt P to arrive to debrief me on my flight. I felt pretty confident I had done well enough to earn a Q1 but was still quite nervous to hear the outcome. Ssgt P and I waited for awhile, and I told him how I thought I had done and he seemed pleased, but still we were both anxious for the decision on my grade. Msgt D finally came in about 15 minutes after he had said he would be there which concerned me because that only happens when an Evaluator has to talk to the squadron commander about failing a student by giving them a Q3 which requires more training and another flight. He came in and started going through his notes from throughout the whole flight and kept on giving me praise for how well I handled myself. Being okay with the trend of accolades, I started to be less worried about whether or not I was going to get a Q1. As he came to the end I continued to catch smiles from my instructor Ssgt P which was a complete rarity and kinda started to scare me a little bit, but I decided to ignore it and keep on listening to Msgt D finish his debrief. 

As Msgt D ended his debrief with the last of his notes, he looked back and forth at both myself and Ssgt P a few times and said, “I had to talk to some people much higher ranking than myself to make sure it was alright, and I’ve never given one of these before, but after watching you perform your duties exceptionally well and without flaw when faced with challenges that are abnormal and that you had never faced before it was easy for me to decide to give you an EQ” (if you don’t remember meaning Exceptionally Qualified). 10 months of hard work and training had finally paid off more than I could have hoped. Msgt D had been giving check rides for years and years and had never given out an EQ to a student before and I have never felt so proud in my life. Ssgt P was especially excited to see his hard work and time that he put into me pay off. It was an amazing moment in my life. 

Getting the EQ was the highlight of my day, Monday the 30th of January did still have another sweet moment, the moment seconds after I was given my check ride grade when I realized I was done with training and going to be leaving Altus, Oklahoma. I started packing my things and finished out processing, and the next day, Tuesday the 31st of January at 1 PM, I left Altus for the frozen tundra I call home, St. Paul, Minnesota……to be continued….

On Monday the 30th of January, I’ll be flying my last flight in Altus *currently knocking on the wooden desk I’m sitting at* and I can’t wait to finish my training here. I had my ground evaluation to test my knowledge of the aircraft systems and emergency procedures. It went extremely well and I knew everything I was asked by my evaluator. It turned out I got our Boom Operator Superintendent as my evaluator and he was really cool. We have a flight scheduled for a 9:30 AM take off and hopefully after the flight I will be a qualified boom operator and done with my training here. I am planning on renting a car and driving home on tuesday and get home sometime wednesday. I can’t wait to see everyone and spend a few weeks at home with all my loved ones. I’ll post after my flight to tell you how it went. Wish me Luck!

Love, Dan