Alleycats make AMC Rodeo 2007 history Published Aug. 1, 2007 By Capt. Matthew Humphrey 14th Operations Group COLUMBUS AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. -- The Rodeo 2007 at McChord AFB, Wash., is the Air Mobility Command's international competition that focuses on improving the skills of air mobility professionals. The weeklong competition, which ended Sunday, included airdrop, air refueling, aeromedical evacuation, security forces procedures, short-field landings and related ground operations. During Rodeo, aerial refuelers and airlifters demonstrated capabilities, improved procedures, compared notes and enhanced standardization for worldwide operations. This year T-1 teams from the Columbus AFB, Miss., Laughlin AFB, Texas, Vance AFB, Okla., and Randolph AFB, Texas, were also successfully added to the mix. The members of 48th Flying Training Squadron team included Maj. Steve Cochran, Team Chief, Capt. Jared Paine, pilot, Capt. Matthew Humphrey, pilot, and Capt. Luke "Polar Bear" Borer, Team Umpire. Despite being exhibition teams only, the T-1 aircrews demonstrated their abilities in three demanding sorties and a fit-to-fight challenge while also aligning their training more closely with AMC directives. The first sortie required a timed arrival +/- 1 minute, allowing little room for error due to the fact that heavy aircraft were scheduled to land every five minutes for more than six continuous hours. Team Columbus departed Travis AFB for McChord AFB, over a 530NM flight, and landed within 10 seconds of their scheduled time. The next two graded sorties were even more challenging. These two sorties included "top-to-bottom" mission planning of a timed departure, an unfamiliar low-level simulated airdrop, a rendezvous for simulated air refueling with another T-1 and a graded full procedure instrument approach. The shear length of these sorties stretched the limits of the T-1's range causing difficulties in fuel planning. Moreover, all aspects of each sortie were graded with exacting detail marking time to the second, airspeed to the knot and altitude to the foot. When the competition wrapped up at the end of the week, the 48th FTS finished in second place overall among the T-1s and were the only team with a perfect score in a flying event. In addition to the competition, the initial pre-sunrise takeoff each day was delegated to a T-1 aircrew. Here the T-1 was utilized as a weather-ship to provide valuable pilot weather reports to the McChord AFB Command Post increasing the overall safety of the competition. The real value of the competition was summarized nicely by General Duncan McNabb, AMC commander. "The purpose of Rodeo is to take our air mobility forces to the next level. There are a lot of things that go into that. When you think about the air bridge, the tanker bridge, the Aeromedical Bridge, you think of 900 sorties a day in defense of this great country and freedom around the world. And you think always of how we can make it better. How do we take this great enterprise that we've been entrusted with and take it to the next step? By bringing the best of the best together here in competition, and allow them to learn from each other, to talk to each other, and maybe have some fun together. And what you find is, it builds on itself. And that is the spirit of Rodeo."
