Helicopter touches down Thursday on USU campus
It rolls in from a distance like a storm cloud, slow and thundering.
When the Black Hawk helicopter touches down, the first group of 10 cadets duck their heads, run underneath the roaring propellers and jump in.
In a gust of wind, the chopper lifts off. It’s gone just as fast as it came.
For the Utah State University ROTC, the purpose of Thursday afternoon’s swing-load training drill on the HPER field is two-fold: First, it gives cadets a chance to experience the speed and adrenalin rush of a helicopter ride. Second, it’s a chance for the ROTC to show off what it does and attract new recruits.
Traditionally, the ROTC has used the Quad as its landing pad for the demonstration. But because of noise complaints during class time, Capt. Jeff Dula said the exercise was relocated to the HPER field for the second year – a move that has hurt recruiting efforts.
Aside from the cadets and officers, there are a few onlookers sitting around the berm of the field, but not nearly as many as the centralized location of the Quad, he said.
“The difference is night and day. The Quad is 110 percent better,” Dula, the ROTC’s recruiting director, said.
His voice gets loud as the Black Hawk returns from its first trip up Logan Canyon and down Green Canyon. The first group unloads in single file and the second group of cadets loads in.
Thursday’s exercise is a walkthrough for the cadets, MS-4 Josh Dawson said. Normally, the landing, load-in and takeoff would take less than one minute, he said, but since it’s the first flight for some cadets, the speed is a little slower.
“In real combat, you don’t want to be on the ground any longer than that because you’re getting fired at,” Dawson said. “The less time the bird’s on the ground, the less causalities.”
The cadets won’t have to experience a full-speed swing load until they attend an advanced camp, said Dawson, who spent part of his summer at a camp in Ft. Lewis, Wash., where he planned and carried out a mock raid of an ammunition cache.
Still, even at a walk, the experience is intense.
“It’s a little scary,” Lt. Cadet Logan Curtis said. “The liftoff is quick and your stomach comes out from underneath you. You can’t get on a helicopter and not feel an adrenalin rush.”
In all, four groups of 10 cadets took the trip up Logan Canyon Thursday afternoon.
“I wasn’t nervous before, just excited,” MS-1 Theo Mathews said after his first helicopter ride. “It was awesome.”
Dula, who spent 14 months in Iraq, said the Army actually has more aircrafts than the Air Force and uses Black Hawk helicopters as a sort of taxi around the country.
“They’re very good for getting around,” he said. “They’re fast and they fly low to the ground.”
Dula said USU offers an excellent program for cadets who want to become pilots in the Army.
“Every USU cadet that wanted to fly has been able to,” he said, including USU graduate Lt. Justin Card, who flew the Black Hawk helicopter on campus Thursday. “I don’t know of any other university that can say that.”