Today was a tough day. It didn't start that way. I was able to sleep in a bit after staying up too late again last night. I enjoyed a 4 mile treadmill run before I had a lunch of two protein bars. A little paperwork this afternoon and then a 1600 brief for a day into night plane guard and GUNEX flight. We had two AW's shoot the M240 and GAU-16 machine guns for the first time tonight. Those are always fun flights. We dropped a "smoke" in the water for a target. It's a flare, really, that just makes a lot of smoke for about 20 minutes then burns out and eventually sinks. We flew a race track pattern to present the door gunners a target on straight runs for their initial qual. There's nothing like the sight of tracers going by the side window toward a target. Going down, that is. Fortunately, smokes don't shoot back.
After we landed, we had a bit of an aircraft shuffle on the flight deck due to some poor planning earlier in the day. We ended up delaying the next fixed wing launch by about 10 minutes (not a good thing). I received some "debriefs" on the incident and learned some hard lessons. As the senior guy involved in the decision making process that led to the errors, I bore the responsibility. I know my description is vague, but I'm not sure what else I can say about it. I'm going to go down a go for a bike ride to blow off some steam and hopefully catch a little moonlight on the Lido deck.
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3 comments:
I'm sorry your day did not end well. It's hard to be the guy where the buck stops. Don't beat yourself up too much; I'm sure you'll apply the "lessons" learned. The moonlight bike ride sounds like a great way to blow off steam. Take care. We're all thinking of you.
Love,
Aunt Lucy
Scott, Hang in there. As you know some days are just not as good as others. Nobody got hurt, and as Aunt Lucy says, lessons learned the hard way do not get forgotten the next time around. We love you very much and are so proud of the job you are doing for your family and your country.
Love, Nana and Papa
I really hate those days. Unfortunately, I don't learn things the easy way, so most of what I know came the hard way. Most of time it was my own fault though. It will get better.
I'm home for the weekend (department didn't want to pay for 2 extra hotel nights in VA Beach, so I had to come home before going back down. I depart home tomorrow for Big "E". Nothing but good times. Take care. I will have some catching up to do. I will miss reading your daily adventures.
Take care,
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