Approach articles from July 2006

Approach archives from July 2006

Taking care.(Admiral's Corner)
July 1, 2006... Are you taking care of your people? I realize this is a basic question that shouldn't need to be asked. But, are you? There are two topics I want to discuss with you: motor-vehicle safety and casualty-evacuation missions. Both topics...

ORM--moving forward.(The Initial Approach Fix)
July 1, 2006... Will you be involved in a mishap today? What are you doing now to prevent one from happening? The answers to these questions depend on how you manage risk. We're working to provide the tools and resources to help you. Here's an update on our...

The golden hour.(Focus on CAsEvac)(casualty evacuation)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... CasEvac stands for casualty evacuation. This term applies when injured military or civilians are emergency evacuated from a war zone. Air CasEvacs are almost exclusively flown by helicopter. The aircraft may have limited medical equipment, and...

A flight surgeon's perspective.(The Golden Hour)
July 1, 2006... The war zones of America's inner cities provide the training grounds for the battlefields of Iraq These settings offer the best preparation possible, with some limitations, for the horrors of modern war. Before I participated in CasEvac...

A corpsman's perspective.(The Golden Hour)
July 1, 2006... After checking in to HMM-161 for duty as a squadron corpsman, I was sent to Yuma, Adz., for the Desert Talon course. I was joined by another squadron corpsman scheduled to fly CasEvac missions for OIF-II. We were put on a regular rotation for...

Weather or not to press.(Focus on CAsEvac)
July 1, 2006... When the ready-room phone rings, the ODO answers and holds out his arm parallel to the deck, with his fist closed and palm facing down. Everyone and everything stops; there is instant silence as everyone waits in anticipation. A thumb up means...

The maximum allowed.(Focus on CasEvac)
July 1, 2006... I was the boot on a combat mission flying at 300 feet, 80 knots, with no engines, classic case of "What now, lieutenant?" Before I try to answer that question, let me provide some background information. I joined the "Gunrunners" of...

CasEvac in country.(Focus on CasEvac)
July 1, 2006... The Air Boss at our forward-operating base (FOB) just had alerted us of an urgent, casualty-evacuation (CasEvac) mission. It was an early February morning in western Irag when we began the information-gathering process, Our standard CasEvac...

Buffoonery.(aircraft mission)
July 1, 2006... Buffoonery--that's what's killing us these days. We've become quite good at taking out the bad guys, putting bombs through windows, and seeing it all on TV. We pride ourselves on projecting our power in a way that tells the world we're still...

601, are you ok?
July 1, 2006... My crew was ending a short detachment to Savannah, Ga. The five of us were scheduled as Dash 2 in a section of Hummers leaving that afternoon for a quick ferry back to our home field. We had assembled in the morning, ready to fly home without...

First order of business: "two new tires ... please".
July 1, 2006... Just one month after arriving at my first fleet squadron, I flew an offensive-counter-air (OCA) hop as Dash 4 of a mixed division with our sister squadron. The weather had been terrible all weekend, but it was sunny and warm on that Monday...

ORM corner: danger in the comfort zone.(Operational Risk Management)
July 1, 2006... Yes, I realize flying a helicopter from the back of a pitching and rolling small-deck ship at night, and in other-than-optimal weather, is an unnatural thing to do, but it's kind of cool. We all have this sort of intellectual understanding...

Whining and grinding.(naval aviation )
July 1, 2006... In naval aviation, the unwritten yet implied rule is that everyone in their career will encounter in-flight emergencies. As we briefed for a local, basic, aerial-maneuvering flight, our crew certainly didn't expect we'd soon face a compound...

Other end of the stick.(Instructor-pilots)
July 1, 2006... It was a typical week at the VT training command, that place we all hated until you actually got on the other end of the stick. Instructor-pilot (IP) duty was awesome for me as a helo bubba. The job was so drastically different from the e-mail...

Sharp eyes.(Crew Resource Management)
July 1, 2006... We were running to our E-6B for an exercise-alert launch to test our capability to "beat the threat." Our aircrew this night was very junior. I was on my aircraft-commander (AC) route check, my engineer was on his first flight since he...

Beware the ORM God's wrath.(Operational Risk Management)
July 1, 2006... As safety officer of my squadron, no one was more relieved than I when I made our squadron's final trap on USS Nimitz (CVN-68) during our 2005 WestPac deployment. After ORMing the heck out of the air-power demonstration for our tigers. I...

Deploying to Iraq: never a dull moment.
July 1, 2006... "We're going to do what?" That question was my initial reaction when I was told just a few weeks before cruise that my squadron was deploying to Iraq. Since VAQ-141 is a carrier-based CVW squadron, the concept of land-basing in Iraq ran...