Friday, February 18, 2011

Fort Wolters Remembered

Recollections of Flight School at Fort Wolters
by
Brian N. Bagnall

Where I Solo

I stumbled on this and I'm sure others who cycled through rotary wing school at Fort Wolters will enjoy reading it.  Bagnall was a commissioned officer; I was a WOC (Warrant Officer Candidate) fresh out of basic training. The people at Ft. Knox urged me to go to Benning OCS first, for the reasons the author states (get the harassment over with). But, oh no.  I thought the Army trying to gyp me out of flight school, and refused.  That's me landing on my final military check ride.  Don't ask.

2/18/2011 09:21:00 PM 7 Comments

"If the number of Islamic terror attacks continues at the current rate, candlelight vigils will soon be the number-one cause of global warming. "
Argus Hamilton


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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool! And funny you should bring up rotors as I was just reading the history of the XV-15 tilt baby from concept to flight. Get your free copy here, http://history.arc.nasa.gov/xv15.htm

Col. Whiskey

2/18/11, 11:22 PM
Virgil Rogers said...

I grew up in Ozark, Alabama outside of Ft. Rucker, the son of an Army Test Pilot, and was a little too young to enlist and fly in Vietnam, but almost every house in our neighborhood in the 1960's had a son or husband like this guy who wrote the story.
.
In addition to the H-21, SkyCrane, OH-6, UH-1 Huey, and A/B model Chinook, my dad and I together and individually worked on the S model flat panel Cobra program development and the Apache and Blackhawks in pre production.

Thanks for the memories... people that weren't there don't understand...

2/19/11, 2:37 AM
Skip said...

My bro took the first buncha Cobras over there.
Walt Wosiki.
First flop wings could go 300+ mph.

2/19/11, 5:28 AM
toadold said...

I need to stop reading military stories. I get this craving for "a delectable blend of meat and gravy served tastefully over a shingle."

2/19/11, 10:12 AM
Anonymous said...

This reminded me of a story my regular crew pilot once told us (I was a dustoff medic back in the day) about his training in Huey's at Ft. Rucker. Seems the training field ramp was paved over with asphalt, that tends to get soft and sticky in the hot Alabama summers, with small concrete pads for the UH-1's, so they wouldn't get stuck. These pads, he said, were just slightly wider than the skid spread, so it was challenging to get positioned right just so on them.

You also should know at this point that the com switch on a Huey's cyclic has two positions, first dentent back is intercom, all the way back is radio. And the year he was training was the first year they had female air traffic controllers.

One windy day he was having a lot of trouble getting lined up just right on the pad, finally settled down and clicked the com switch to tell his instructor how much room he had on his side of the helicopter, "I've got about six inches over here."

You guessed it, he had pulled the com switch back to the second dentent, and moments later a call came back from ATC, a sweet female voice saying, "Well, that is about the national average."

2/19/11, 3:55 PM
DougM said...

Fat, dumb, and upside-down is no way to go through flight school, son.

2/19/11, 6:51 PM
Anonymous said...

My boy the helo pilot says "Always keep the greasy side down and check 6".

2/19/11, 9:32 PM

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