Wow 2012! - Travel - C-130's - Iraq/Afghanistan
 

Hope y'all (I'm traveling and picking up a little of the southern lingo :) ). I hope the New Year brings good things to you. I'm at Little Rock Air Force Base watching the C-130's in the pattern and marveling at the C-130 at the main gate that is famous for being one of the last airplanes (maybe the last) out of Viet Nam at the end of the war. It's particularly famous because it left with almost 500 people on board - yes, I wrote 500! I'm not sure how they all fit but I know it was quite a bit over gross. It was flown by a South Vietnamese pilot who is unnamed on the plaque next to the aircraft. Truly an awesome feat!

Anyway, here to welcome my son back from deployment in the Middle East. He's been flying a lot of missions to and from Iraq - mostly hauling people and stuff out of Irag and it reminds me of the the last days of the Vietnam war. Regardless of what our President has been saying it's still a pretty dangerous place. He's had to doge mortars while on the runway and comes back with holes in the airplane. He's also been flying missions into Afghanistan where they fly 200-300 feet off the ground at 250 knots at night with night vision goggles and throw supplies out the back to operators on the ground. Sometimes they fly a little higher and throw people out too - with parachutes of course :D .

Anyway, he's back for awhile and will get re-deployed in a few months - probably Afhganistan.

Thanks to all who have been supporting ROG. It's greatly appreciated. I just renewed the site hosting today. Still planning on upgrading the software to the latest version to fix some bugs and other improvements. It's a significant job since it's not plug and play and requires some programming. I've been delaying diving into it since once I start I have to stay at it until it's finished because the site will be down during the process.

Also, a quick reminder that if you become a donating member or renew and your access doesn't get upgraded immediately please be a bit patient. The ROG software is broken due to software changes our server provider made and no longer automatically updates when donations are made. I've not been able to identify exactly what's causing the problem so I must process each one manually. I try to do this daily but that doesn't always happen so your account doesn't get upgraded after a few days there is a chance I missed it. If that's the case please accept my apologies and please send me a friendly email about it by clicking on the "Contact" link at the bottom of every ROG page. I'll get to it right away and I guarantee you'll get a full year of access.

Thanks again to each and every one of you for supporting ROG!

All the best,
Ron