The day schedule is going well. I have always enjoyed actual day flying over night flying for the same reason I prefer helicopters over airplanes – I like to see things from the air. For that same reason commercial flying has never appealed to me – I think it would feel way too much like a job. I love flying because it allows me to see more country and from a different perspective, but the country has always been the draw not the sky. Actually about a third of my missions since coming to days have been entirely after sunset. We have been much more accommodating than the last rotation in flexing our schedule to cover missions. Our times will shift 7 or 8 hours on successive days which is pretty extreme for flight crews. Our brigade has said we should be flying more hours because there are helicopter crews flying more than us on a monthly basis. This is true but they are also on a set schedule where they fly the same time slots day after day. We could do the same thing but then we wouldn’t have the flexibility to cover missions outside of that set window. So for the people actually tasking us are sticking with this schedule which we prefer – we would much rather be supporting mission than just logging hours. It is challenging with our mission because our effectiveness is based on a negative – the lack of attacks. So it is very tempting to use the most obvious metric (our flight hours) as a measure of our success. While hours may be easy to put on a briefing slide they have very little correlation to actual effectiveness.
On one of my most recent missions I was able to get a closer look at the country. Weather had pushed us quite a bit lower than normal and we were in the mountains so we were actually low enough to the ground to get a good look at things. I could see the scout helicopters covering the extraction site and watch the Chinooks come in and pick the guys up. Watching them circle out of the valleys and skim over the ridge tops really made me miss flying helicopters. It’s not looking like I will ever get a chance to fly helicopters in Afghanistan.
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I am happy that your schedule allows a closer country look. (: I am also happy that you might never get to fly helicopters in Afghanistan. I am all for happiness but that includes mine too and having sweaty paws, even vicariously, does not register as happy for me. Helicopters feel slow and close and large...definitely targets. That said, every time we see a Chinook we think "Ah...David!!!" Irrational but true. (: I was reminded of the many missionary forms we have filled out...hours logged "in meaningful contact". I refused to put down conversations with people who became my friends as check marks on a form. Your Dad was more cooperative and filled out "number of hours in ministry" sheets but I refused. As this refusal was entirely silent, it was pretty low key, like invisible, but still... (: I am glad you are allowed flexibility and are able to focus on the goal..ie. troop protection.
ReplyDeleteI like your analogy :). You can see where that urge comes from because people want to see results for resources expended. But it is very tempting to both look at the short term and the easiest result to quantify whereas neither one may be a good measure of success. I know charities are always plagued by this because the root of the problem is lack of trust. If the trust was there you wouldn't have to worry about the accountability.
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