Posts Tagged → AFB
Memories
We went on our vacation a couple weeks ago and had a great time despite being dominated by a poison ivy breakout from an unmentionable place. Among the many things we did while on vacation, we went back to one of our Air Force homes at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona. What can I say? I loved that place so much but was only able to stay there for 16 months before being moved to RAF Bentwaters in England. Davis-Monthan AFB is a great base to be stationed as they are a training base for A-10 pilots. I was a weapons systems mechanic when I was there. I worked on MAU-40/MAU-50 bomb racks, triple ejector racks (TERS), and LAU-117, LAU-88 missile launchers, and AIM-9 launchers. Lets not forget the massive powerful GAU-8/A Avenger Cannon, gatling gun.
This gun system is an amazing piece of machinery that I have torn down to the smallest piece and put back together again. This gun system is an ugly monster though when it jams up and I have been involved in a number of them as well. Although I worked on the A-10 at three different bases (Davis-Monthan, RAF Bentwaters, and Eielson AFB), it was Davis-Monthan where I got my start. People affectionately refer to this great base as DM. Amazingly I still have a remote connection to this base even today as I continue to work in a system program office (SPO) for a different weapons system that occasionally requires parts to be pulled from the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) at Davis-Monthan AFB.
My wife and I have some wonderful memories of this base and my oldest son was born here just prior to the start of the Gulf War. Of course we had to make a point to come out to the base and take some pictures. The above A-10 is one of the planes that was there when I was there. We did not have a lot of time to stay because we had to be somewhere that evening but it was a great time. The weather was cooler than normal and only hit 93 degrees one time during our entire vacation. This is almost unheard of for Southern Arizona this time of year. During our combined trip we took 722 pictures and during our Tucson portion I took 266 photos. Although most of the pictures are uploaded onto the Flickr site, some 60+ did not make it on their server and I am not sure which ones that did not make it. All of them did however make it onto my Windows Live site located here. It is very time consuming to go through more than 700 pictures to verify all the photos especially when many of them are very similar. I hope you enjoy the vacation photos as much as I did taking them. Again, I had a bad poison ivy break out as you can see in some of the photos. It was still a good time despite that.
Remembering the Air Force Days
I was going through some important documents that I had saved from my time in the U.S. Air Force and stumbled on some interesting things. In the picture above, I show the cover page for our base newspaper at RAF Bentwaters in England. I was there from 1991 to 1993 and my youngest son was born while we were there. If you click on the image you will be able to go to Flickr and see the entire paper. It was called the Forum and this one was dated November 13, 1992. The title story was “Farewell Buzzards”, a reference to the departing of the 510th Fighter Squadron. The base closed down in September 1993 and units were leaving one at a time and this was the time my unit was leaving. The 510th went to Spangdahlem AB in Germany. I have heard they have since moved to Aviano Italy.
I was assigned to the 510th Aircraft Maintenance Unit (AMU) of the 81st Aircraft Generation Squadron, of the 81st Tactical Fighter Wing. It was this squadron that I was assigned to when I was deployed to Operation Desert Storm at King Abdul Aziz AB in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. We stayed in the Khobar Towers housing facility before the bombing there. This was a very stressful time for our family since we were very low on income as an Airman First Class with a newborn. We do have some nice memories there. At the time I was a three man on a weapons load crew for the A-10A aircraft. I also worked back shop weapons release work while in the 81st Equipment Maintenance Squadron’s Gun shop and weapons release. I loaded many variances of the MK-82’s, CBU-87’s, CBU-89 bombs, AIM-9, AGM-65 missiles, and the GAU-8/A gatling gun. Below is a video of the gun in operation. By the way, this video was made at Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, Arizona, which was my first base.
I have some pictures of me loading MK-82 500 pound bombs on a B-1/B later at Dyess AFB in Abilene, Texas in 1998 here. There are also some pictures of my Operation Desert Storm in 1991 here.
We will always have some wonderful memories of the Air Force and I thought finding this paper would be a good way to share some of those memories. I scanned the entire paper so I could upload it on Flickr.
Technorati Tags: United States Air Force,U.S.A.F.,RAF Bentwaters,Bentwaters,Dyess,Davis-Monthan,AFB
Update October 17, 2007
This week I decided to change the look of this blog, and although I liked the other look, I also like change. It has been a busy week with work and family, a family that I am blessed to have. In fact today while I was visiting my dad, my kids were in church. This Friday my work is having our annual Squadron picnic at the Midwest City Joe B. Barnes Regional Park. Each year we have this as a big “Thank You” to the employees of the 76th Propulsion Maintenance Group at Tinker Air Force Base. This is a large group of several thousand people. They have food, and events for the employees, both military and civilian. I will take some pictures and post them soon. I think my wife Sunday will be coming as well. that should make it much more fun.
School work has been taking a significant amount of my time as one my have guessed. I have a couple papers to write this weekend. I am also planning on watching the University of Oklahoma Sooners play the Iowa State University in football on Saturday. The Sooners are ranked number five in the first Bowl Championship Series (BCS) poll this week. The way this season has been, all the top ranked teams have been beaten. I am reluctant to be too confident this year. The Sooners should win this weekend soundly since Iowa State has only won a single game this year. Then again, we are just as capable of being beat just like the other top ten teams that have been beaten.
As most of you know, I love severe weather and I cannot explain it. Ever since I was around five years old, I have been fascinated with thunderstorms. Today, the weather people were talking about how many storms that we were suppose to have but I missed them completely. I know it is just a coincidence but it seems that the only time we have storms are on work nights at 3:00 am or during the day when I am at work in a building with no windows. I was so disappointed to come home and the sun was shining. I know people think that I am crazy but I just love rain. I will take a rainy day over a sunny day any time. Maybe one of these days it will rain when I am off. I think that just about covers everything for today.
Technorati Tags: Tinker AFB , Tinker , AFB , Sooners , University of Oklahoma , picnic , thunderstorms
Happy Anniversary To Us!
It was 18 years ago today at 11:00 AM when God blessed me and Sunday and I got married and the time has gone by really fast. We got married in 1989 and shortly after that, left for the Air Force and stayed in for ten years. While we were in the Air Force we had two sons, Kevin and Jordan out of state. Kevin was born in Tucson, Arizona when I was stationed at Davis-Monthan AFB. Jordan was born in England at RAF Lakenheath when I was stationed at RAF Bentwaters.
There are times when people tell me about how miserable married life is and how their wives are so bad. I cannot relate to them when they tell me those stories because my wife is as close to perfect as they come. After 18 years we have still not had a serious fight even one time. Sunday is a dream wife and anyone would be happy to have her but God blessed me to give her to me. She does things for me and I do not even ask her. There have been times when I was in the Air Force and worked swing shift (nights) and come home at midnight and she would get up and make me something to eat when I didn’t even ask. I have insomnia really bad and she has lost sleep trying to comfort me in the middle of the night many times.
There are so many examples that would take me 20 pages to tell but I can honestly say without hesitation that I have the best wife in the whole world. I can hardly wait for 2009 because that year will be our 20th anniversary, my son will graduate high school and I will graduate OU. It is 6:30 AM and the kids are leaving for school. We took off work today and plan to have a great anniversary.
Technorati Tags: Anniversary , Bentwaters , RAF Bentwaters , Davis-Monthan , AFB , DM