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ModeratorPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on October 13, 2008 at 9:45am

For those of loath to click on PDFs without knowing more, it's nine pages, looks very interesting and starts as follows:

"29 PALMS, CA - The desert sky is a clear and clean blue. Temperature is hovering
around 85º with the promise of higher to come. Time is approaching 1230 as I stand just
outside of the Visitor Center near the main gate of Marine Corps Air Group Combat
Center (See Addendum item #1), just a short distance from
my own home near the high desert town of Twentynine
Palms, I had arrived early as I am to meet with Public
Affairs Office (PAO) Director, Jennie Haskamp prior to
my visit to VMU-1. She is to coordinate my rounds of the
facilities being used by VMU-1 for their training and
operational readiness preparations, and will act as liaison
for me. VMU-1 will be deploying again to Iraq soon, for
the 7th time now. Each deployment is proceeded by months
of training operations for their personnel and preparation of
all of their equipment to insure that not only are the troops
ready, but that operationally they can meet (or exceed) the
needs of their mission. In the past they have operated in support of ground troops in the
areas of artillery spotting, tracking of ground targets, as well as location of IED sites with
great success."

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Permalink Reply by Patrick Egan on October 13, 2008 at 7:35pm

Sorry to put you through all that angst... I was in a hurry to get to D.C.

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Permalink Reply by rocketaholic on October 17, 2008 at 9:08am

Great Article. I am glad that VMU-3 is being established. The deployment cycles have been taking a toll, but all of the Marines I worked with there at VMU-1 are dedicated and always did an outstanding job.

Semper Fi

JET

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Permalink Reply by Patrick Egan on October 18, 2008 at 6:33pm

Sounds like the Marines rolled out the red carpet….

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Permalink Reply by Joe Bennett on October 19, 2008 at 10:07am

Chris and all,

The Marines of VMU-1 did greet me with open arms during my time there. The officers and enlisted personnel I interviewed were open and informative, knowledgeable and eager to talk about what they do and how they do it. The article is 9 pages, and yes it is in PDF format. That seemed to be the best way to release it short of creating it fully as its own web page. I have another request in with the CO (LtCol Jordan) to visit again with the intent on observing flight operations, but as VMU-1 will be deploying to Iraq soon, not sure if there would be time to set up that visit. Wish I could have got more photos of some of the details of the Shadow 200 (RQ-7) that was there, but I personally was only able to take a few of the outside area of VMU-1 as the PAO had assigned me a photographer to take most all of the other photos during the interview. Did get a CD of about 40+ photos from him afterwards though, and will be posting others as time goes by. If anyone else has an interest in learning more about the Shadow 200, there is also an article about it at the Reporter too. Thanks for the comments, and look for more articles about many subjects, including the FAA and other AP and FPV related things to be made available at the Reporter in the near future. Later....

Joe

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