Soaring With Sagar - October 2011

Air Mobility Rodeo 2011

Story and Photos by Sagar Pathak

Every two years, the best of the best from across the Air Mobility Command get together at Joint Base Lewis McChord, Wash., in an undisputed, winner-take-all competition that pits more than 50 aircraft and 2,500 airmen from across the world in a skills competition to crown the best of the best. This year, I had the chance to observe the March ARB Team as they participate in the Air Mobility Rodeo 2011.

First held in 1945, the AMC Rodeo is a weeklong competition that has featured more than 2,500 competitors from across the globe. More than 50 aircraft (C-17, C-5, C-130, KC-10, KC-135, T-1, C-37, C-32, etc.) fill the ramp at McChord Field and compete in contests such as air-to-air refueling, on/off loading cargo, aero-medical evacuations, low-level flying and air drops.

As we took off from March ARB, our team was already in the first event of the competition and would be judged on our landing. We had to land at McChord Field at exactly 10:05 a.m. and within 3,000 feet of the end of the runway. And delay in flight or lack of accuracy on the landing would cause our team to lose points. After the few-hour flight to McChord, the team landed one second early and right on the mark. It was a great start to the competition.

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Soaring With Sagar - July 2011

Real World Refueling

By Sagar Pathak

Boom Operator SrA Shawn Racchini peers through a hydraulic fluid soaked window and still manages to fly the boom to the awaiting F-16. (Sagar Pathak)Laying on my belly in the back of the KC-135 from March ARB at 20,000 feet, I stared out into an ominous grey cloud. I couldn’t see the ground nor had any sense of depth or movement even though we were going 315 knots. It was as though we were in a grey void hanging in the sky. And to compound my fear, there was a thin coating of hydraulic fluid all over the boom’s window. It was like looking through a window coated in Vaseline. Knowing that there was going to be an F-16 just 10 feet away from us, both of us bouncing around due to turbulence from the clouds, and the boom operator not clearly being able to see the plane was less then comforting. 

But out there somewhere in the void was eight F-16s from Luke AFB that needed fuel to complete their training. And one way or another, SRA Shawn Racchini, boom operator for the 912th Air Refueling Squadron, was The crew from the 912th Air Refueling Squad conduct a pre-flight briefing before take off. (Sagar Pathak) going to get them that fuel. With nearly five years under his belt as a boom operator, SRA Racchini has been deployed oversees five times and knows how to get the job done. 

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Soaring With Sagar - June 2011

Go for Launch!

By Sagar Pathak

(Sagar Pathak)With half open eyes, and in a semi-awake state of mind, I spotted the now familiar, 52-story Vertical Assembly building at the Kennedy Space Center. It was three a.m. eastern time, and I had just flown in the day before. My body was wondering why I was just waking up when normally I would be falling asleep at this time. It was confused and for a fleeting second so was I. But then I saw the innocuous sign on the side of the road. “Days till Count Down: 0.” And a small smile crept across my face. This was finally the day I would get to witness history and create some of my very own. 

Seventeen days prior, a small, but important group of components in the Aft Load Control Assembly No. 2 (ALCA-2) caused the cancellation of the STS-134 mission launch four hours prior to launch, disappointing not only me, but hundreds of thousands of spectators and especially six eager astronauts strapped into the worlds largest bottle rocket. But as I heard someone at NASA say, “we may not do it fast, but we do it safely.” Knowing that a faulty ALCA would put the six astronauts in possible danger should have been an easy decision to ward off the disappointment of traveling half way across the country and spending hundreds of dollars on airfare, rental car, and hotel nights. But along with those hundreds of thousands of others, I knew that their safety was more important then witnessing one of man’s greatest accomplishments…a space shuttle launch. So I put my disappointment aside and re-booked my tickets to come back again for the next launch attempt. 

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Soaring With Sagar - May 2011

Air Force One

By Sagar Pathak

(Sagar Pathak)How does the most powerful man travel around the world? Any way he wants. And in the case of the President of the United States (POTUS), he travels aboard one of two specially modified Boeing 747-200s,  affectionately known as “Air Force One.” Operated by the 89th Airlift Wing out of Andrews Air Force base, these fortified aircraft are tasked to transport President Obama and the White House staff all over the globe and allow him to execute the full powers of the Office of the President of the United States.

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Soaring With Sagar - August 2010

Fear of Flying

By Sagar Pathak

As pilots we often take for granted the luxury of being able to jump in a plane and taking off on a whim. What we believe is a sense of freedom is a grip of fear to others. While physics and science reassure us that our steel bird will stay airborne, to others it’s a steel cage of death waiting for gravity to take over and plummet to the ground.

Even to this day, when I am lined up on the center line, barreling down the runway approaching my rotate speed, I pull back on the yoke and for a split second wonder if we are going to leap towards the sky or stay locked to the earth. But for many, this fear is more pronounced and a lot more debilitating. A few weeks ago, I had a chance to help a friend and fellow writer, Jean Dupenloup, out with his own fear of flying. I asked if Jean would be kind enough to share his experience with our readers in the hopes that others who are afraid can use this and overcome their own fears.

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