Well, after doing my Air Force tanker flight for Red Flag 14-1, I went back to Nellis Air Force Base, and did the Red Flag 14-2 exercise a few weeks later. Not much difference, except the Saudis and United Arab Emirates were participating.
Things slowed down quite bit for me, except I was able to get out to sea quite a bit and shoot a lot of Naval vessels including Cruisers, Destroyers, and Submarines.
In late March, I covered the Marine Helicopter Squadron, "The Purple Foxes" as they did a
commemorative flight with their CH-46's, before transitioning to the MV-22 Ospreys later this year. My story was published in the Military Press Newspaper, Vertical Magazine, and Photorecon.net.
On April 16th, I went to MCAS Miramar, and interviewed the Major in charge of the F/A 18 simulators. this was a pretty cool experience to see these machines and how they operate.. The story will be out soon.
April 17th and 18th, was suppose to be days of really cool experiences. I was scheduled to fly with the Marines at MCAS Yuma in Yuma, Arizona. So I show up on the 17th, ready to fly in a RC-130, and refuel F/A-18's, but then I'm told that it has been cancelled due to having an inexperienced mixed community crew onboard and they feel uncomfortable with a civilian onboard. I reminded them, that I'm a former Marine and have plenty of flight time in C-130's, but it didn't work. So it wasoff of the base and out to the fence line to shoot whatever was flying.
It turned out okay, as I saw and photographed my first Russian Hind helicopter, my first Israeli Kfirs, and I saw a lot of Marine aviation.
On April 18th, I was scheduled to fly in a UH-1 Huey Gunship that was to support a operation at a local park, but the winds had kicked up, and the Huey;s were cancelled, so after much debating back and forth, I found myself in a RC-130 heading for Twenty-nine Palms, CA, to refuel a squadron of MV-22 Ospreys. 30 minutes into the flight, and the Ospreys scrubbed the mission due to weather conditions. Oh well there's always the fall WTI's.
Now, I'm just waiting for the Planes of Fame Airshow, and working on two other stories for the near future.
