By GARRICK FELDMAN
Leader executive editor
We’re taking off from Little Rock Air Force Base and flying over the wide-open skies above Jacksonville on a beautiful Friday afternoon.
I’m sitting in the pilot’s seat on the right side of the cockpit and holding on to the throttle as if my life depends on it.
Col. Mark Czelusta, commander of the 314th Airlift Wing, is my co-pilot. I know he’ll keep us airborne.
There are others flying with us, including Lieut. Col. Chris Kennedy and Maj. Alex Miller, who reach over my shoulder and move switches and knobs on the instrument panel to keep us on course.
To the right is the All-American Drop Zone near Camp Robinson. We’re heading south toward downtown Little Rock over Hwy. 67/167 toward I-40 and I-30 and the Arkansas River.
We turn right near the Little Rock airport and the downtown skyline and fly north toward the base, 1,500 feet in the air at about 350 miles per hour.
Lake Maumelle is down below. We’re flying back toward the drop zone. Czelusta will drop a pallet weighing 14,000 pounds. Software directs him toward the target down below. It’s a direct hit. Bullseye.
“This is very realistic. It looks pretty much like this,” Czelusta says, referring to real missions he’s flown.
We’re sitting inside a $20 million C-130J simulator made by Lock-heed-Martin and its Canadian partner CAE. The simulator is about as wide but much taller than the huge pallets crews on cargo planes drop in war zones in Asia and the Middle East.
Placed inside a two-story room, the simulator is on top of a hydraulics system that allows it to move as if it were in flight. With the help of digital photography, the scenes outside the cockpit are exact replicas of the Arkansas terrain and beyond. There’s also fog and turbulence.
The base has eight C-130 simulators and one for the avionics modernization program for older planes, worth about $180 million. Six other simulators are spread across the country.
The training goes on almost around the clock and lasts four to six months.
“Two weeks after graduation, students can go into combat,” the colonel said.
“Little Rock is truly choice number one for training,” he said. “We have the entire package.”
Before we went inside, Czelusta walked through the sprawling campus where the nine simulators are housed. Some of the buildings are more than 30 years old, while others look more recent.
They’re several blocks from the flightline, near the $9 million gym where airmen can work out just about any time.
Few outsiders know about the buildings or have seen the simulators. I hadn’t been inside one in the 24 years I’ve been at The Leader.
More than 40 countries send their teams to LRAFB for training. Belgium, Canada, Denmark, India and Norway are training here now.
Last year, nearly 2,000 students trained on the simulators.
“We can do all the training on the simulators,” Czelusta said. “They’re as good as flying. The quality is exceptional. There are 50 courses and infinite scenarios.”
Before the simulators became the predominant mode for instruction, the air base used 50 planes for training. Now it uses 18 planes.
Simulators are much cheaper than real flying. Fuel savings are phenomenal: The machines cost about $1,800 an hour compared to $5,500 an hour in a cargo plane.
Czelusta said 520 civilian contractors do most of the training — 370 on the older C-130Hs, 161 on the new Js and 20 on the avionics modernization program. They all have combat experience.
Czelusta, who has been assigned to LRAFB several times since 1995, is in charge of the world-champion wing that won seven trophies at last summer’s air rodeo competition at McChord Air Force Base, Wash. The wing was named best Air Mobility Command wing and the best airdrop wing in the world.
The 314th was also named best C-130 team, best C-130 airdrop wing, best C-130 maintenance skills team, best C-130 maintenance team and best overall maintenance skills team.
The best C-130 airdrop crew award went to LRAFB’s 19th Airlift Wing.
Czelusta’s crew flew a C-130 E-model, the oldest plane used at this year’s competition. The C-130, built in 1962, was recently retired to “a boneyard” out West.
It’s a well-run operation: Charles Hyde, Czelusta’s predecessor, is now a brigadier general who commands a wing at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
When we fly to Kandahar in the simulator, we approach the desolate mountains surrounding the airstrip. You think you’ve flown back in time. Czelusta and most everyone in the cockpit has flown there in a real C-130.
“It’s all yours,” Czelusta said.
I take control of the plane and approach the flightline. It’s not a straight path. I’m zig-zagging toward our target, still awed by the experience of flying to Khandhar, which might as well be on the other side of the moon.
I become complacent. The crew inside the simulator must be wondering how close I’ll get to the flightline. I’m still thinking of Afghanistan, but we’re back in Jacksonville.
I crash, and a red screen blocks out the cockpit’s window. A buzzer goes off, but everyone’s OK.
