I've been meaning to start this thread for a while now because I get PMed questions about it every few months, but this is the first time I've had more than a few hours to commit to it. Plus I've been waiting the last 2 1/2 years for W0X0F's thread to die out because I can't compete with that, but I realize now that will never happen. I don't think there will be too much overlap between the two topics anyway.

Qualifications: I've been in the US Army for over 9 years and accumulated nearly 1,500 hours piloting Black Hawk helicopters. I've been deployed to Afghanistan twice with a third round coming up soon. I've seen just about the entire country in that time, at least all of it with any significant population. I've flown nearly every mission type that a Black Hawk can be asked to do to include personnel and equipment transport, tactical insertions/extractions of both conventional and special operations forces, downed aircraft recoveries, VIP movements including generals, politicians and celebrities, direct engagement with enemies in defense of ground forces, and medevac.

Background: As of about 10 years ago I never had an interest in any branch of the military. I grew up expecting a career in computer programming because I had gotten into it at a really young age, I was good at it, and I assumed it paid well. My personality is definitely more in line with the typical programmer than the typical soldier. I started college in 2000, right around the time the dot-com bubble burst, and throughout my first year all I heard were horror stories about the tech job market. That made me really analyze my long term plans and I realized I wasn't going to be happy in such a grind of a career anyway. I made a fairly hasty decision to try something completely different. I tried to think of the most exciting career I would have a chance at obtaining and this is what I came up with.

I enlisted into the Army in early 2003 as a Black Hawk maintainer with the intent of applying for a flight school slot as early as possible. By late 2003 I had arrived at my first unit and started the long application process. It took until early 2005 to finish but my application was accepted on the first submission and I was starting flight school by the end of 2005. I graduated and moved to an operational unit at the beginning of 2007 and I've been doing my thing here ever since.

I'll answer any questions that won't get me in trouble or my security clearance revoked.

And here are a few pictures, in case you weren't aware how awesome Black Hawks are:

How does it feel to be a dirty, nasty leg?

If you remember what walking was like with healthy knees, kind of like that. Pretty good imo.

Craziest "oh ****" moment you had overseas? How hard is it to become a pilot, are their strict pre-requisites, ie: 20/20 vision etc.

What is the liklihood that a completely untrained and unprepared yet reasonably smart adult would be able to get a blackhawk off the ground, travel one mile, and then land it relatively safely, given effectively infinite time to either succede or give up?

"Relatively safely" means no giant explosions.

Why did you choose army over other branches/do you regret it? Are you staying in for 20+ years or do you want to fly as a civilian? Do take maniez from other military guys in home games or is that not allowed?

Coming into an LZ where there was known enemy to my left, so I was expecting some small arms fire maybe. But I see some absolutely huge rounds impacting a hill maybe 100m away on my right. I thought it must be some kind of anti aircraft gun they had and were shooting at me. I was pretty sure I was going to die. Turned out the Apache we had overhead who was supposed to be firing at the enemy didn't really know where the enemy was and just started shooting into that hill instead.

Not very hard. You only need 20/50 vision as long as glasses correct it to 20/20, and even that you only need on your initial physical. After you start flying it can deteriorate even worse than that. I'm at 20/100 right now and still flying with no waivers. You can get laser surgery to correct it too. There's a long list of other medical requirements but most healthy 20-somethings have no issues passing.

Pretty high I would think. If that person was given a 5 minute brief on how to start it, the best techniques to get it flying, and the aerodynamic effects it will experience in flight, I'd say near 100%. The Black Hawk has a lot of systems to make it easy to fly. The only things I would worry about without that brief is if you'd ever figure out the proper sequence for starting (I guess you could with infinite time, but it would take a while), if you'd try to fly it in a way that doesn't take advantage of the systems available, and if an unexpected aerodynamic force would catch you off guard.

Edit: Most other helicopters, 0%. If you have to fly every axis manually there's no way anyone figures it out before crashing.

I thought Air Force initially because my goal was to fly, and you would think the Air Force would be the place to go for that. But when I went to the AF recruiting office he wasn't there. The Army recruiter next door scooped me up and somehow convinced me to give him 5 minutes of his time, despite me telling him there was no way I would consider the Army. In those 5 minutes he pointed out that the Army has more helicopters than the Air Force, and I had zero chance of flying for the Air Force until I finished college. Most pilots in the Army are warrant officers, which didn't require a college degree (technically it still doesn't, but good luck applying without one). So no regrets picking Army, it was the only way I was going to get to fly.

Not sure if I'm staying in 20 years yet. That was never the plan, but I'm approaching the point of no return and don't have anything much better lined up. I probably wouldn't choose to fly as a civilian. There are very few civilian helicopter jobs that pay anywhere close to what I make in the military.

I've taken money in home games before, but after grinding a couple million hands online I don't like the game all that much anymore. The idea of playing home games for micro stakes literally gives me a headache.

What other type of plane or helicopter would you most like to be able to fly?

After sharing a flight line for 6 months with some Ospreys I'll go with that. I'm not convinced it's all that practical and definitely not worth what was spent developing it but those points aren't relevant to how awesome it would be to fly one.

How many loops and/or barrel rolls have you done?

keepin opsec in mind, how often are you placed in cas role in a blackhawk?

Dream civilian copter?

Ever fly fixed wing?

Thoughts on UAVs in general?

More about the selection process to get to your position.

I'm glad you decided to do this, for the country and for the board. Hat's off.

have you ever yelled 'GET TO THE CHOPPA!'??