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Well gents, after a long long, long time, I am finally back home with the family.

Got back a week early from Airborne School, and regret to say I am not parachute qualified. Had a medical issue while down there and got released early. Docs gave me 500mg of Naproxen (anti-inflamatory) before I left for a heal spur I neeed to have cut out later - long story short, 500mg is like a mega dose of the stuff and I acquired ulcers in my stomach and esophagus!! Didn't eat or drink for 8 days (couldn't keep it down). Lived on the occasional IV and some drugs. Docs finally figured it out and sent me on my way home, said I can come back in 6 months at the earliest. Not sure will go back though, more on that one later!

But all is well now and I am eating like a horse! Amazing what you take for granted when you tell the wife your not in the mood for that food tonight - man, I will eat anything now!

Will be back in here more normally in a few days!

DANG glad to have you back Hunt even if it's earlier than you'd hoped....can't think of a better way for you to enjoy Easter Sunday than by being back with your family again!!!!

Happy Easter and welcome back Hunt!
sounds like a helluva outing ya' had there, I guess thats if you classify airborne school as an outing. I can only imagine what you go through for something like that. Sorry to hear about the bad luck as we all knew how much you were looking forward to this venture, not much a fella can do when the body wont co-operate.


anyways bud, glad your back, wish I could say I look forward to some cfs3 with ya' but I am having major issues and am hoping a full re-install of the game will sort it out.


welcome back Hunt!

A. You're safe and OK now and home with family for Easter.

B. You ain't 19 anymore.

C. You can always take another crack at it later if so inclined.

D. You're M.I., so it's not like it's a mission critical skill for your MOS. Tabs are nice and all, but they aren't what make the soldier.

E. You're JG300, and it doesn't get any better than that! Airborne/Ranger/Pathfinder eat your hearts out, we have more fun! (and the food is better)

^---- WHAT HE SAID. DAMN STRAIGHT!!!!

You only get one guess who mighta' modified this poster slightly to better suit his first assignment as a scout.

Since we weren't allowed anything other than uniforms and boots (no wedding ring, watches, cameras, etc..), I grabbed some excerpts from the Airborne Page to document the journey and some file photos:

GROUND WEEK - WEEK 1

"During Ground Week, you begin an intensive program of instruction to build individual airborne skills, which will prepare you to make a parachute jump, and land safely. You will train on the mock door, the 34 foot tower, and the lateral drift apparatus (LDA). To go forward to Tower Training Week, you must individually qualify on the 34 foot tower, the LDA, and pass all PT requirements. "

What they leave out the the basic training environment of mass punishment, a lot of running in boots and more pull-ups than you can shake a stick at! The runs were only bad after chow, nothing like running on a full belly in 85 degrees with 90% humidity!!

Here's some pics of stuff I got to do:

This is a mock-up of a C-130 we used to practice moving around and exiting the plane:



This is the 34-ft tower. Basically you have a harness and they tell you go to which you just jump out and free fall for a second before the leg straps cinch up in the painful places if ya know what I mean, they you go the rest of the way down the "zipline" so to speak. Used to practice form on exiting the aircraft. Only thing missing is propwash at 130mph!:



Used to practice landings, you hang from a zipline about 4 feet from the ground. When the instrcutor yells clear, they give you a push from the platform. When he says land, you drop yourself into a pile of rocks (not the most comfortable or natural feeling in the world - lotsa bruises!):



----------------------

TOWER WEEK - (Made one day of this one )

The individual skills learned during Ground Week are refined during Tower Week and team effort or "mass exit" concept is added to the training. The apparatuses used this week are the 34-foot towers, the swing landing trainer (SLT), the mock door for mass exit training, the suspended harness, and the 250-foot free tower. Tower Week completes your individual skill training and builds team effort skills. To go forward to Jump Training Week you must qualify on the SLT, master the mass exit procedures from the 34-foot tower, and pass all PT requirements.

This is where pull-ups come in handy - you suspend from this harness and then practice pulling the risers to "slip" whichever way you want to travel:



This is the Swing Land Trainer - You are on a high platform, jump off, swing around while your "buddy" has a rope holding your dumb ass up, then they drop ya onto the rocks to practice falling again - I was in line for this when the illness got the better of me!






Well, in a nutshell, I enjoyed part of the time I was down there. Weather sucked, it was physically exhausting, and I didn't get to finish, what else to say.

And Ascout, I comepletely agree with all of the above. Only bad thing is it is a requirement to stay in the Special Forces world, even as a support guy - They make exceptions from time to time, so we'll see how that goes. Would really hate to end up back in big Army again!

Good to see ya back Hunt,


fled

All those fancy-schmancy back-riser slips...back in the good ol' days, we just took out a soldering iron, applied it to our surplus T28 parachutes and did something like this to make 'em steerable (until we could afford the pinnacle of sport parachuting, the Para-Commander Mk1)
Of course, it did tend to hasten your decent.

Oh, we practiced our PLF's off the back of a moving pickup truck in what was then the big empty field across from what was then Charlotte Motor Speedway, now Loews Motor Speedway.

Double-L and Seven Gore TU mods

Welcome back Hunt!

Actually, aside from airborne school and some older hard core units, we're using toggle controlled chutes that land so soft you have to remember to PLF to make it look good!