Photo By Kimberly Hackbarth | Pvt. Richard Jarus of Hanover, Penn., hurls an RQ-11B Raven, a small unmanned aerial...... read more read more
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BAGHDAD — Focused on his task, Pvt. Richard Jarus, guided a small unmanned aerial vehicle in circles around a landing area near the brigade headquarters on Camp Liberty, Nov. 7.
Steering it into a straight line, he used the hand controller to tell the RQ-11B Raven to quickly lift its nose into the air, causing it to stall and crash into the ground; pieces of the UAV scattering among the rocks. The landing was a success, by a Raven pilot's standards.
When the Raven "crashes", its pieces are designed to fly off, dispersing energy among them, to keep from harming the main body of the UAV, said Jarus, a native of Hanover, Penn.
Soldiers from every battalion in the 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division had new equipment training (NET) with the Raven during the brigade's rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, La., but most of the Soldiers who attended review training that day hadn't flown the bird in country before, said Chief Warrant Officer 3 Wayne Grimes, of Fort Lewis, Wash., a brigade Raven master trainer.
This training provided an opportunity to build the Raven pilots' confidence and evaluate their efficiency with the device. It also reinforced the skills they already learned as well as some tactics, techniques and procedures that they didn't necessarily learn during NET.
It's important to have extra time to execute flying techniques is to remind them of the skills they learned in previous training on Fort Lewis, said Grimes.
"It's so perishable since they just learned it."
The Soldiers know that they might not have many opportunities to fly the Raven, so they took full advantage of what the training day had to offer by asking questions and continually working on flying the UAV.
"The guy I went to training with [changed duty stations], so it's just me and it's hard to [fly the Raven] by yourself," said Jarus, who explained that since he's the only Raven-trained Soldier in his platoon, he may not get to fly it as often.
Grimes told a story about how he has flown a Raven alone, and how many others have had to do the same.
Training ended with everyone laughing and cheering as the Raven hit the ground one last time, another perfectly imperfect landing.
| Date Taken: | 11.07.2009 |
| Date Posted: | 11.09.2009 05:24 |
| Story ID: | 41295 |
| Location: | BAGHDAD, IQ |
| Web Views: | 392 |
| Downloads: | 350 |
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