Croatia

If there's ever a place you want to go on holiday and have clear blue water, it's Croatia. I think I said, "I can't believe how clear this water is!" about 51 times (510FS squadron...got it?) during our trip. Croatia is a great country and unfamiliar to many of us in the US. We think of the western part of Europe as the main place to go and visit, but there are many unexplored countries in eastern Europe which are really worth the time to see.

From our location in Italy, Croatia is only about a 2 hour drive away. We spent our first night in the town of Rijeka in the northwestern part of the country. It was a nice town, but mainly just a place to sleep before going to the beach on Saturday. The weather during our entire trip was perfect, and the water refreshing in order to cool off from the hot sun. After spending a good part of the day at the beach in Rijeka, we packed up and made our way to the town of Rabac by early evening stopping along the way to site see. Reaching the town we went to the tourist office to arrange a place to stay the next two nights. We found a nice room to rent in an individual's house within walking distance to the center of town and to the beach.

Now, when I say beach I actually mean a lot of big rocks...most of the "beaches" in Croatia are this way, but many have concrete portions for people lay on and enjoy the sun. We bought a snorkel set and took turns viewing the fish and rock formations below the surface...the water was so clear (that makes 51+2)! We spent Sunday and part of Monday in Rabac before heading back to Sacile. I had to fly on Tuesday early, so we were home by about 8:00.

I think Lana and I have traveled to about 5-6 countries since we've been married, and plan to do more in the months ahead. We're enjoying married life and the blessings we have!

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Croatia

Next Assignment: Kunsan Air Base, Korea

Over the past couple of months, Lana and I had been working on putting together our "dream" list of places we wanted to be assigned next after we found out we'd be moving sometime between Oct and Dec 08. This time frame was expected, although Lana and I would be more than happy to stay at Aviano longer! The assignment process involves filling out an online airman development plan (ADP) in which you detail your assignment preferences among other things. Depending on your current qualification in the F-16 (wingman, flight lead, instructor) you're eligible for different assignments in addition to those in the F-16. For instance, instructor pilots are eligible to apply for F-16 Fighter Weapons school, and highly competitive course only the top guys go to, as well as flying exchanges with a foreign country of some kind be it the UK, Belgium, Portugal and others. Being a flight lead like myself, my hope was just to continue flying the F-16 and not get an assignment to fly a remote controlled unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)!

When it came to F-16 assignments, our list went like this:

Spangdahlem AB, Germany
Hill AFB, Utah
Shaw AFB, South Carolina
Misawa AB, Japan
Osan AB, Korea
Luke AFB, Arizona
Kunsan AB, Korea
Nellis AFB, Nevada (aggressors for Red Flag)

In my assignment cycle at Aviano, there were three pilots and I was the only one not yet an instructor pilot in the jet. So, naturally when it came to rank ordering us I was at the bottom...this was expected and merely a timing thing; not a reflection that I'm a bad pilot. After the ADP is filled out, the squadron commander adds his comments before it's sent on to the operations group commander for further comments and rank ordering. After this process is complete, it then goes on to the air force personnel center (AFPC) to the F-16 assignments guys at Randolph AFB, Texas. Once the operations group commanders from all F-16 bases have sent in their info, AFPC then goes through another process of ranking the pilots up for assignment. It's a fairly long and arduous process as you can see. From the final ranking list at AFPC, the pilots are then matched up with an assignment as high on their dream sheet as possible.

For me, I'm going the Kunsan Air Base, Korea next to be part of the 8th Fighter Wing Wolfpack. Kunsan is part of Pacific Air Forces (PACAF). There are two squadrons at this base, the 35th FS and the 80th FS...I'll be going to the 35th FS Pantons with a report date in early January. In all honesty, I was about 95% sure I'd either be going to Osan or Kunsan this next assignment. Both are considered a remote assignment (no families allowed...although at Osan there's a possibility) and about 90% of all F-16 pilots will go to either at one point in their F-16 careers. I'm VERY glad to have stayed away from the UAVs which are sadly becoming more popular and guys are being taken from the cockpits to go fly them. From those I've talked to, Kunsan is a great place to fly.

For Lana and I, it's a good time to go since we don't have any kids currently and she's currently working for Lufthansa. At this point, the plan will be to buy an apartment in Munich for her to live in while I'm in Korea. Thankfully the Air Force pays us a housing allowance for this since she's not allowed to live in Korea with me. She's currently working part time and this will give her the opportunity to fly standby Munich direct Seoul and see me as much as possible...it will cost about 120 euro round trip for her to do so. Praise God! A year is a long time without the wife, but we're blessed she has the job she does.

Lana and I are planning to make the most of our time left here in Italy before we leave with as much traveling as possible, and our next trip is planed to Croatia in a week or so. Fly safe and check six!

Athens, Greece Jet Pickup

I mentioned previously our jets have been undergoing the CCIP upgrade at Tanagra Air Base, Greece. Well, I've since been to Greece twice to flight test a jet and then fly it back here to Aviano. The first trip to Greece ended up being almost one week long due to maintenance issues with the jet on a Friday before a long weekend...the following Monday was a Greece holiday. Even before leaving Italy we were told there was a good chance the jet wouldn't be ready to fly home on Friday. So, I had Lana fly to Athens with me hoping we'd have a long weekend together in Greece; our plan worked! Early Thursday morning, Lana and I took the train to the airport with me and bought a ticket on the same flight I was taking. With her Lufthansa flight attendant job, it only cost about 40 euro. Another pilot from the squadron met us there and we were on our way about 9:30. After arriving in Athens, we picked up our rental car and made our way to the hotel. After checking in we went to a nearby restaurant for some Greek food and then called it a night early so we were ready for the next day.

Tanagra Air Base is about one hour north of Athens. After arriving, we met the USAF personnel working there and finalized paperwork prior to the test flight. A few weeks prior to this trip, I had completed what we call the functional check flight (FCF) upgrade. Essentially, there are times when certain types maintenance is done on a jet that requires a flight to test all systems are functioning property. It's a jam packed flight ranging from flying supersonic a 1.4 mach to putting the jet basically out of control to see if the digital flight controls function as they should. I was ready to fly when in the early afternoon they noticed a slow air leak in one of the main landing gear tires...this was not going to be fixed until the next week, which started on Tuesday due to the holiday. So, we left the base and headed to our 5 star hotel a little further north on the beach in the town of Eretria. The price was under our cap for hotel costs and was a nice start to our time in Greece. The next day we took a ferry across the bay, and the caught a bus to Athens to see the Parthenon on Mars Hill and some of the nearby Greek ruins.

Mars Hill is one of the exact places Paul traveled to on his missionary journeys almost 200o years ago! As we made our way up the hill, one of the signs had a portion that read, "In the niche formed by southeast corner of the precinct wall were found the remains of a small roadside shrine of porous stone. It was dedicated to an unknown deity..." Now, if you read Acts 17:23 written by Paul it says, "For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, 'TO AN UNKNOWN GOD'!" Lana and I both felt reading this on the sign and from the Bible made everything more real...the truth of God is real!

On top of Mars Hill is the well known Parthenon dating back to well before Christ, sometime during the 5th century BC. It's amazing the structure is still standing today after so many years. Thankfully, archaeologists are taking the time to preserve what is left today. We spent a good hour or so there and spent some more time reading from Acts before finding a nice cafe for a drink. We caught an afternoon bus back to our hotel just in time to get another great tasting Greek salad before the hotel restaurant closed for the evening! We spent Sunday and Monday at the hotel pool and beach relaxing and getting some sun before heading back to the base on Tuesday. Thankfully the jet was ready to flight test, and all systems checked good. After I landed the maintainers put the external wing tanks back on, fueled the jet and I flew home before sunset that evening. The other pilot on the trip sat in the tower during my test flight with the emergency checklist to help in case I had any problems. He took a commercial flight back home later in the evening, and Lana flew to Munich to work a Lufthansa trip to Los Angeles.

My second trip to Greece was only two days and there wasn't much time for additional site seeing. I had some time to check out the 2004 Summer Olympic Park, but that's about it. Yet another country and culture to add to an ever growing list! It's good blessed with a job in the US Air Force!

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Athens, Greece

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Wingman / Flight Lead Of The Quarter

About one month ago, I was selected as the flight lead of the quarter for the 510FS and also for the 31FW where both squadrons compete against each other. It's nice to know my hard work in the scheduling shop and being assistant projo for the Zaragoza trip has paid off. Also, the cross-country I lead went without any problems, so that may have been a contributing factor as well. Back in the fall of 2006 I was selected as wingman of the quarter right before going to the desert, but I don't think I ever mentioned it. These awards help when it comes time for my officer's training reports to be written, and it gives guys the motivation to keep working hard. I'm not writing this to brag on myself, but just to let everyone know that hard work has its benefits. Check six!

Berlin Airshow

The Berlin Airshow was a very enjoyable week. My wingman, Garrett, and I landed early Monday morning at Schoenefeld Airport about 1 hour before the show started. The support personnel quickly fueled our jets and towed them into position with the rest of the US Air Force aircraft. The USAF had a C-5, C-17, KC-135, 2 B-1s, an F-15C and E and our 2 F-16s. There were also fighter from Germany, France and Hungary. This event was more than just an airshow. It was also an international trade show for countries around the world to attend and see the latest and greatest technology as they consider buying new military equipment as well as show off what equipment they had to offer. Many countries are considering upgrading their fighter aircraft and those up for consideration usually are the French Rafale, US F-16 and Swedish Gripen. The Eurofighter is also a player, but it's more expensive then the other three. It did give quite an impressive flight demo along with the Dutch F-16 demo team. In the years ahead, the F-35 will be the new fighter around and hopefully I can make a transition into flying it.

With this being the case, Lockheed Martin (maker of the F-16) had many of their potential buyers stop by our jets for some "show and tell" time. I'm probably not the best salesman there is, but having flown the jet quite a bit I could offer my fairly credible opinion. Lockheed paid for our hotel rooms and even put on a big dinner for all the USAF personnel staying at the hotel.

In addition to the potential buyers, there were some big wigs walking around. General Brady, USAFE commander, the US Undersecretary of Defense and a couple other generals stopped by. The German chancellor attended the show too. So, needless to say it was important we were ready at all times. Once the important people would move on, it was then time to show the local attendees the jets and let them take pictures. Many young kids had a great time being so close to a fighter jet, and I put some of the smaller ones in the cockpit so they would have a great memory in the years ahead.

As most Americans know, Berlin was the center of a mass airlift operation after WWII by the US and British Air Forces to supply the local population with food and supplies since the Russians had cut off all supplies to the city...it was called the Berlin Airlift. Temelhof Airfield was the center of this effort and over 5,000 tons of goods a day were flown in. As we traveled around Berlin, we saw remains of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie and a bombed out church left standing in order to never forget what happened during the war. Reading the stories of families being split by the wall were very sad, and many we shot trying to escape East Germany. It was great to travel to another part of Germany with Lana, and she enjoyed the fact I was able to learn more about her country.

Besides the historical things, we saw Alexanderplatz where a few scenes from The Borne Ultimatum were filmed and many other interesting places around the city. Lana and I took a day trip to the Potsdam Palace, which is located to the southwest of Berlin. It was completed in 1769 by Frederick the Great. Over the years it had been used by the royals and kings of the region...a very nice area.

The airshow finished on Sunday with Monday being a US holiday. So, our squadron director of operations wanted us to get some extra flights by flying somewhere in Europe. Our plan took us to Leeuwarden Air Base, Netherlands for one night and then through Garons Air Base, France on the way back to Aviano. It was my first time to the Netherlands; another new and interesting culture. This wrapped up a great week and another great experience for Lana and I as we continue along in our Air Force journey. Enjoy the pictures!

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Berlin Airshow