Today I blog for the whole of the weekend, which began with me showing up on Saturday to prepare aircraft to launch in bad weather (bad meaning stuff we're not supposed to fly in). Now I am comfortable with flying in weather well worse than what the army allows and I'm even ok with losing my weekend, I got comped later anyway. What annoyed me was the indecision of people making decision about whether or not they were comfortable with pushing through a little fog. We ultimately after having four mind changes on the ground and two in the air we pushed through with absolutely no problems or issues at all.
Refuel at our first stop was another issue entirely. Our aircraft wouldn't take fuel in one of the tanks through the pressure line, which was easy enough to fix because we just had to have the fuel truck gravity feed manually into the tank that wasn't taking fuel, basically filling it the same way you do your car. We flew the next leg of our trip and landed to find that the flight before us had stolen part of the pizza we had ordered so it would be waiting for us when we got there. We couldn't complain to much since we found out the airport had paid for it for us and ordered us some more. There was a custom chopper at the airport built on an airplane theme, I really kinda wanted to take it for a ride and see how weird it rode. It was kinda cool though.
When we got done eating and our aircraft got done being fueled we took off from that airport and headed south again. About five minutes into that flight we started smelling fuel. We made the decision that if we started to have problems or if the instruments started to show us losing fuel abnormally fast we would land at the nearest airport but if not we would go on with the flight and check out the problem at our next stop. We all wound up light headed loopy and sick, apparently it was even showing in the way our pilot was flying. I don't recommend huffing jet fuel for a cheap high.
We landed at college station and quickly discovered a fuel spot that was not supposed to be there forming under our aircraft, apparently the issue with the pressure refuel was a valve that slammed closed and then blew out all it seals. Leaking fuel all over the wiring in our floor and risking a cabin fire. The aircraft had to be authorized by people way higher up than me for a one time flight from there to the nearest station with the ability to fix the problem. One time flights require an MTP and the minimum possible crew so me and one of my pilots got moved off of that aircraft and onto a different one. After all the time taken diagnosing and hashing out what needed to be done with that problem, we all were at the point at which the army limits the length of our duty day for safety reasons, so we stayed the night there.
Sunday morning we woke up early, grabbed breakfast and headed to the airport to take off, leaving behind the three people who were one timing the broken aircraft to a different place. The preflight was kinda hectic moving crews from one aircraft to another but not too bad. The flight from college station to port was a little under two hours total. When we got to port we had to get serial numbers and history recorder readings off of every engine on every aircraft then unload them and run all the stuff to about half a dozen different places then load a couple of connexes and once everything was unloaded/reloaded/read we were done for the day. Which meant we got to go change into our normal civilian cloths and get on a bus for the sixteen hour ride home. The commander authorized alcohol on the bus since we were technically off duty, which meant that out of thirty six passengers thirty two of them got drunk. In all honesty though I have never heard over thirty drunk people stay as quite as that group did so it wasn't so bad. I slept through about half of the ride and we all got home at about noon yesterday and were informed we have today off.
Having the day off today worked fairly well since last night was Tristan's night off as well. We decided to meet at a club that was the easiest place for me to give him directions to in Topeka. So around the time I was getting there he called and told me he wasn't coming. So not wanting to go alone I turned around and headed back, then when I was about half way he called again and told me he was on his way. So I turned and headed to meet him there. After I was already inside waiting for him he called again to tell me hes was lost, and I wound up being there for about an hour and a half before he finally found his way there. Apparently for some people I-70 is really hard to find in Kansas City. By the time he got into town the place I had wanted to go grab dinner was already closed, so we grabbed some burger king instead and headed back to the club, where I wound up spending more money than I ever have on one night at the club and managed to get Tristan to front some for me too. When the cash started running low we decided to take off and call it a night, but not before having the lovely miss Cami dance once to Slow Ride by Foghat.
To finish up the night we left club Orleans found a good stop light and satisfied my curiosity about who's truck was faster. The answer was mine by a no contest margin, but I think it would have been a little closer if Tristan could drive. We stopped and B.S.ed about that for a few more minutes then headed home and called it a night. I'd say it's been an OK couple days.
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