How to clean a Blackhawk helicopter: 'Grab a giant toothbrush and start scrubbing'
By Cali Bagby for KVAL.comALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Oregon soldiers training to make medical evacuations in Iraq over the next year woke up early this spring to take a bus to the airfield to spend the morning washing dirty Blackhawk helicopters.
“We actually went to Albuquerque looking for dirt,” explains Sgt. Jason Westlund, a flight medic. "Landing in Iraq, that fine dust blows up and it completely cuts off your visibility and you can't see anything, so you are basically making a blind landing." After a week of practicing dust landings in New Mexico, dirt has settled into every nook and cranny of the helicopters, including the pilot’s instruments and windows.
Westlund said the Blackhawks normally need to be cleaned every 30 days. In Iraq, that schedule will bump up to every week. To maintain visibility for the pilots, crews wash the helicopter windows daily.
Even the medics help with the general cleaning, but helicopter maintainers do the technical work to remove equipment from the aircraft that cannot get wet.
Overall the task requires teamwork. “They get a whole lot of people on them, you know, it just makes it go a lot faster,” says Westlund. "We don't know the technical stuff, but we can grab a giant toothbrush and start scrubbing."
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Cali Bagby is embedded with the Oregon Army National Guard from Charlie Company, 7th Battalion, 158th Aviation, a Medevac Unit based out of Salem, Ore., for KVAL.com. Her work has been published in the Washington Post and the Eugene Weekly.
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