Drop!

Well the day we have waited for since January of 2009 has already come and gone! Erik started Pilot Training in January of 2009 and finally finished last Thursday. It has been a long process but as of last Friday it all paid off!

Erik dropped and got his career helicopter assignment. He will be flying the CV-22, the Osprey!!! We are beyond excited and I am so proud of him for achieving his dream. The Osprey is one of the Air Forces newest air craft and this opportunity only comes down the pipeline once and a blue moon. Mainly the Marines fly them; however, the AF now has its own. The CV-22 is a tilt-rotor aircraft which means that it has the ability to fly long-range and at high speeds like a turboprop aircraft but can rotate those two props and become a helicopter. Basically, it is half helicopter, half plane. :)

What does this mean for us? Well we will be moving again and training some more. We do not have dates yet; however, the earliest we would be moving from Alabama to New Mexico would be at the end of the summer. We will be moving to Kirtland AFB, New Mexico which is in Albuquerque. Once we get to New Mexico, Erik will be temporarily moving to North Carolina to begin training for the Osprey. He will be in NC for about six months, I can go but we have not decided if I will go. In North Carolina he will be stationed at New Rivers MCAS, which is a Marine base and he will be learning all about the Osprey and how to fly it. Once he completes this initial phase of training for the 22 he will then go back to New Mexico and learn how to fly it for what it will really be used for. I am thinking all this training will take about a year to a year and a half. We really aren't sure about much because we only know a handful of people who fly the Osprey and they are in the beginning phases of training and because the Air Force only started acquiring the Osprey to fly in 2006 and operational flying started in 2009, there isn't a whole lot of information out there.

Erik will now be apart of Special Operations, all the hush hush stuff, and he loves the idea. He has always wanted to be Spec Ops! Because the Osprey is so new and new for the AF they have only just started deploying. Before that they did a practice deployment to Mali, Africa and Honduras, South America and they are just now on their second tour over in the "sandbox." Luckily, with training means Erik won't be deployable and luckily when that time comes the deployments are like three to six months. I do not know how these Army wives can handle their husbands being deployed a year or even eighteen months! I could do it if I had to but luckily the Air Force has less of those types of deployment schedules. Other than that all we know right now is he has training in his near future.

As far as where our first base will be, right now the 22 is only at Hurlburt Field AFB, Florida but pretty soon they will open up at Cannon AFB in Clovis, New Mexico. We do not know where we will go and probably won't find out until the end of our time at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico....at least that's what we think, again we do not know. :) There are a lot of unknowns!!

Here are a few pictures!


Here is a picture of the Osprey at the Air Force Academy and Erik actually first saw the Osprey on this day and decided he wanted to fly helicopters. Now a few years later he is assigned to fly this 90 million dollar aircraft!!!


Here is an Osprey flying on the Florida coastline.


Here is one in Nevada at an air show.


Here is another Osprey flying around Florida.

For those of you who are real gun-ho...here is a fact sheet that gives the basics on the CV-22.