Moving on in My Love Affair with the C-130H
Me preparing to drop supplies as part of Operation Christmas Drop.
Today is a very bittersweet day for me. After 7 years in the active duty Air Force, today is my last day on active duty.
It has been an incredible ride of ups and downs all over the world. I have met many of the greatest people I have ever known in this time. I have been mentored and taught by great minds who had so much to share and were willing to take me under their wing to help me become a better officer, aviator, and man.
I have witnessed the selfless sacrifices of countless other military members, and often the more difficult sacrifices of those we leave behind who keep life going while we go to serve others. It is an awe-inspiring site to take part in actions that serve thousands of people all over the world who are in dire need of help.
The C-130 is a military plane, but the greatest work that it takes part in is the humanitarian missions it performs. There is no other plane that can get into the places we can and provide the services we do. It is a strange feeling to watch natural disasters play out in anticipation of the opportunity to go and help those people.
While it breaks my heart to see the last C-130Hs leave active duty this week, I am equally rejuvenated by the fact that I am starting the next chapter of my career as a member of the 192nd Airlift Squadron in the Nevada Air National Guard. I do find it quite poetic that on the same day that the last C-130H will leave active duty I will also separate from active duty and move to the National Guard.
Swearing in as a member of the Nevada Air National Guard.
As I drove onto the base for the first time today it was a little surreal to me to think that I will stay here in Reno for the remainder of my career. No matter how weird it may have felt, when I looked out on the ramp and saw their beautiful C-130Hs I felt right at home.
The awesome thing about the two planes I could see from the parking lot is that they are the MAFFS (Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System) birds that are utilized for fighting forest fires all over the country. This struck me even more with the fires that ripped through California this past week, not too far from where we live. They are easy to distinguish if you ever see these planes because of the huge orange numbers on the sides of them.
I am incredibly excited to take part in this new mission set to help fight fires, and hopefully prevent as much damage as possible. I hate to sound like a broken record, but there is something special about being a part of missions that help people in trouble.
Preparing to fly in the Advanced Mountain Airlift Tactics School.
This is not my first time flying in the Reno area as I took part in the Advanced Mountain Airlift Tactics School shortly before I went to Japan. I actually wrote about it back then if you would like to learn more. Suffice it to say that it was the most useful flying course I have been through in the C-130 and provided tremendous insights into the intricacies of mountain flying. Becoming an instructor for that course is just one more thing that I am looking forward to in my new adventure.
One reason I haven’t written much on here for the last year is because I just wasn’t flying much, and the flying we were doing was not really exciting. While not every flight is meant to be fun and exciting, I am so looking forward to getting back to the flying that made me love the C-130. Flying in the amazing Sierra Nevadas in some legit mountains is going to provide some great pictures and videos that I look forward to sharing with you in the coming months and years.
Thank you for the support over the years, and please come back to see more about my exciting new adventures.
