"Unrecovered" Recovery Flight and Last Day

The weather did not improve much for our Recovery Flight yesterday.  We did manage to make it into one destination, however the other was still socked in pretty good.

Another classic example of "Cumulo-Granite" hiding in the clouds.

Arrived At Our "Minimums" And this was what we saw.

The weather reports are quite terrible over here.  That layer that you see above, was supposed to be only a few clouds above us at this altitude, with a few more in another layer slightly above that.   The ceiling was supposed to be about 5000' higher than our current altitude there.  The local "tower" fellow was calling the ceiling at 8000' broken.  We are 2000' off the ground here and still on top with absolutely NO clouds above us.

The biggest issue is that they have no weather equipment at the vast majority of these outlying stations.  So they simply look out the window and "guess" most of the time.  Winds are estimates, proper altimeter settings are almost unheard of, so it's anybody's guess what might happen.  A very high degree of precaution over here is ESSENTIAL to safety.  Both crew members must agree on the safest course of action and not deviate from that whatsoever.  Brings me back to my days in the "bush" but with quite a few more safety nets in place now.  There's no reckless abandonment of the rules or safety over here.  Today is NEVER a good day to die.

Well, it has arrived, our final day together as a "front end" crew is today.  Tom departs Kabul tomorrow for home.  He'll be making about a week stopover in Europe to visit some family before he leaves.  It was an absolute RIOT flying with him.  Haven't laughed that hard in a long time!  Cheers Tom!  Safe Travels Home and here are some pictures going into our favorite valley (Bamiyan) as a salute to the past couple of weeks!!!