Bat-Shit Weather

As-Salaam Alaiykum.

Just got on the ground an hour ago. A solid 8.2 hours of exciting wartime flying. Actually it was about 2.3 hours of exciting wartime flying and 5.9 hours of flying in circles wondering how close to the contrail zone we are, and if we found it and it happened to be in our block altitude exactly how we'd set the FMS up to make a giant penis in the sky. Don't judge. Every pilot has at least thought about it.

But the 2.3 hours on the front and tail ends were some of my favorite flying: bat-shit weather! It was starting to rain (in the desert, again, I thought I'd only see that once but no) as we were starting engines and a downpour started. We were supposed to do some more black-ops tactical shit all night but then found out that it canceled and we were rescheduled to escort F-16's into-country and keep them topped off so they could play hall monitor in some airspace in the middle of nowhere. We took off at around 6pm, right at GCC rush hour and HOOOLLY SHIT was Qatari Departure not prepared for it. There were storms absolutely blanketing the Gulf with about sixty A380's from Doha, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai all trying to just get the fuck out of there.

And then our poor F-16's who took off with us and were were clearly not used to this type of thing. Fighter pilots are all macho until they get the least bit uncomfortable and then they turn into baby ducks and cling to the tanker like a mama bird. I was flying the deparutre, dealing with crazy vectors and turbulence and hail and St Elmo's Fire. Since I was pilot flying I didn't have to worry about dealing with ATC on the radios but I was responsible for COMM1 and directing the formation of F-16's. Traver, my AC, was too busy dealing with a controller out of her skill level to have time to help me, so I was on my own leading the formation and to clear in the F-16s and steer them onto us through the weather. So that was fun, I love departures like that; every single person in the air over a metropolis is too busy to think about anything other than flying and getting out safely. Too busy for pictures, no glareshield GoPro vidoes; just you, your memory of it, your crew and a formation fighting through it.

Then coming back in it was more and more of it. I was still flying when we FENCE'd out and at this point Traver trusted me to exclusively own and operate COMM1 to run the formation. The F-16's were very concerned about weather over the Gulf. We normally don't even think about that sort of thing because, to us, either we'll get in and dodge the weather or we'll hold for 20 minutes or we'll divert. But F-16's are single cockpit and single engine and have like an hour of fuel. They get concerned quicker. So I agreed to get the weather for them. But we couldn't use datalink (like we'd usually use to get weather) because of the security protocols. I asked our controller for some weather info but Baghdad Center doesn't have WiFi so they couldn't help. I told the fighters that we're struggling with resources for getting weather. They asked us to please keep trying (MAMA BIRD cough cough). So now we're looking up classified frequencies of US Navy ships in the Gulf and trying to contact them. One finally worked and it sounded like an 18 year old girl on the other end. She said "Weather? In Doha? Uhh yeah I can get that for you!"

We spent the next five minutes debating whether she was contacting the weather squadron on base, or just googling "Doha weather" on her iPhone. She finally came back and said it was scattered at 15,000ft, light winds (it was not). We eventually got on frequency with a company 135 about 150nm ahead of us on the arrival. It actually happened to be a MacDill crew, Ryan and Rizvi, both of whom I'm good friends with, so I was able to get some weather updates through them.

"Yeah dude it's like fucking Independence Day out here."
"Oh." I said, and then called the fighters back. "Nickel flight, Python."
"Yeah we heard that. Do you guys mind if we stick with you and arrive as a formation through the weather?"
Not at all. So we dragged them almost all the way through the crap. It was worse than when we took off. Once we broke through and had a clear path to the base we worked their IFR approach clearance for them, I cleared them off ("Nickel Python you guys are cleared off Doha 123.63 squawk 8231 good luck getting in CYA!") and we let them rocket ahead to shoot the approach first so they could make terra firma.

Upon further debate once we were all on the ground, we mostly agree that the chick on the Navy vessel just went outside with binoculars.

For this next segment I need to explain some background. When I was packing my uniforms for the deployment, I put my three separate covers (uniform hats) aside to bring each variety: a normal OCP patrol cap, an OCP baseball cap, and a boonie...

"Why are you bringing a fishing hat?" Karen asked.
"It's not a fishing hat. It's a boonie. It's tactical. It's supposed to make it look like you aren't a person wearing a hat."
"But... it's a fishing hat."
"No... Vietnam veterans may HAPPEN to wear them when they go fishing, but that's because it's so tactical. You can jump in the bushes to hide from commies and the boonie will make you blend right in!"

Anyway. Today my flight was supposed to be some black-ops cosmic-top-secret shit (and it was gonna be TOTALLY BADASS until it got canceled and we switched to drag the F-16's). So since I was gonna be fighting the war all blacked out, I knew I needed to pack my equipment to match. I needed to dress tactical. So I dug the boonie hat out of the very bottom of my suitcase and was ready to go to war. I sent Karen and picture and then left for the crew van.

As soon as Traver saw me, "Why the fuck are you wearing that."
"We're doing black-ops! To be honest I'm surprised you're not wearing it. It's tactical."
"It's a fishing hat."

Then when we lost our cool mission Traver said it was because I wore the hat.