Many years ago when I was a Chief Warrant Officer and helicopter pilot in the Army I and a fellow officer made a memorable weekend trip in an Army UH-1H Huey. The flight was special to us because there was no direct military mission involved- it was a sanctioned personal trip. A flight of this type was infrequent but not unusual back when I was on active duty and similar flights still occur in today’s military. Aviation units budget for a fixed number of flying hours by quarter each fiscal year and strive to fly off all of those hours. If those hours are not used then the next year’s budget is reduced accordingly, so the Operations Officers get creative with their flight schedules, especially toward the end of the year.

And so my colleague from one of the other aviation units on the base approached me to tell me he’d been assigned a Huey for the weekend and ordered to put at least twelve flying hours on it. He asked if I was interested in going along. The only restriction was to limit any fuel purchases to those from government contract suppliers. Of course I agreed to accompany him but asked what destination he had in mind. We were stationed in central western Louisiana and his folks lived in Arkansas- he wanted to visit them.

Best of all, his parent’s lived on a small ranch with room enough for us to land our helicopter. Come that sunny Saturday morning off we flew to Mountain Home. We arrived in the early afternoon after a quick stop for fuel- his father, a retired Air Force colonel, snapped this picture of us landing out in the pasture. For dinner his folks prepared a wonderful meal of shish kabobs cooked on the grill and in general treated us like the prodigal sons. Their home and property were beautiful and the setting bucolic. It was a wonderful and special visit for all of us. The next morning we were off and on our way back to Louisiana by a somewhat circuitous route- after all, we had to get twelve hours on to that airframe.