Hurricane Season

There's a hurricane, so we need to move our aircraft to the other side of the state. It's going to take us two days to do this. Two days, two lifts, five aircraft each lift. This is the first lift of five aircraft on the first day going out. I'm on lift number two. Once we drop our aircraft off, we all hop in the back of a Blackhawk and we ride back to get the rest. I'm going to tell you a secret. Army helicopter pilots hate being in the back of the aircraft, especially when we're going through the clouds. 6 a.m. showtime on day two to move the last one. I'm on the earlier lift today. Today should go pretty quick. This one is the one I'm taking. We do a brief talk about how we're going to do this done. Everybody goes out and preflights their aircraft and everybody's ready to take off by 8 o'clock. It's kind of cool seeing you and all the boys getting ready to go. We're getting ready to confuse the hell out of air traffic control because technically we're not multi-ship. Each aircraft has their own flight plan, but we're trying to head in the same direction at almost the same time. We stagger our takeoffs by about 30 seconds. That way we're flying same way, same day, and we land at about the same time, but we're not causing too much chaos. The good part about today is Army airplane... Good morning, Tampa. Army airplane boards are supposed to come pick us up as soon as we land, so we shouldn't have that much time on the ground waiting to come back. Flying at 500 feet with the boys across the state is probably one of the best parts of the job. We land, we tie these aircraft up, because hopefully the hurricane doesn't do too much damage over here, and the Air Force gives us a ride to the terminal. It's not too long before the Army fixed-wing guys lands to pick us up to take us back to base. Everyone's always asking, does the Army have airplane pilots? Yes, we do. This is them. And their job is to kind of support however they're needed. A lot of times it's VIP, but sometimes missions like this is a good change of pace for them. We call them C-12s, but the civilian version is called a King Air. Not gonna lie, they're nice. Usually after you've done your time flying helicopters and beaten the crap out of your back, you hop over and you fly C-12s. We're trying to get into Tampa, everyone else is trying to get out. It's a quick 30 minute flight and we're pretty much back at the base. This steep approach angle is pretty interesting. And it's a little bumpy on the way in. I lied, it's a lot of bumpy on the way in. Once we land, these guys will drop us off, drop our gear off, they'll take back off and get out of here too. It's a long day for us and a long day for them, but it would be an even longer day for us if they didn't show up. Look at the ramp, how empty this thing is. Once a year, during hurricane season, the ramp gets this empty. The boys dropped us off. Now they're turning and burning back to their base. See?