Over the course of the contest, I received more than 400 unique page views, I was retweeted more than 15 times, including by some contest specific accounts, the post was shared on Facebook a couple of times, it was even written about on other popular blogs.

I received 7 qualifying entries.

7 people took the time to sit down and write a quick letter about why they thought they deserved a more than $350 laptop.  I guess the reason I was so surprised by this response was because of the prize.  I’m not talking about a $50 gift card or something like that, we’re talking about a computer.

I’ve decided to forgo the voting process and just pick a winner myself.  I’m going to re-read all of the letters this week and select a winner no later than March 6th.  The winner will be posted here – the only catch – I expect the winner to take a picture with their shiny new netbook when it arrives and email it to me.

This is a critical mission for the Hawaii wing, they are tasked with being ready to launch within 1 hour of being alerted and according to an article on the Civil Air Patrol media site, they were able to meet that goal.  Hawaii Wing Commander Col. Roger Caires said “I am proud of our members, they again met the standard of being ready to launch within one hour.”

Hawaii News Now posted this article with a really good video of Civil Air Patrol crews in action.

As more information comes in regarding the Civil Air Patrol response, I will keep you updated.

The first stop on our tour was the Command Post/Base Ops.  We had a chance to speak to Captain Kevin Thorsell who is assisting in what the Air Force calls “Stage Management”.  Stage Management coordinates the aircrews flying out, alerting them, briefing them and launching them.  Since the relief operations started, the team at Charleston has launched more than 140 missions.  This is above and beyond their normal ops tempo for OIF OEF.  The kinds of things they are moving range anywhere from water and MRE’s to vehicles and people, as the Captain said, “…That’s what the C-17 does, we carry everything.”  Charleston’s primary aircraft is the C-17, and currently they are operating 15 jets in support of relief operations – at the peak, they were flying 25 jets at one time.  Charleston aircrews aren’t the only ones flying these missions, because of the significant increase in ops tempo, AMC has brought in crews from all over the country, one of Capt Thorsell’s jobs is to ensure that those crews have everything they need, and are taken care of when it comes to some of the creature comforts.  A typical day in the life of an aircrew assisting in this operation begins with the alert, at that point they get rolling and have 3 hours and 45 minutes to be wheels up.  Once they’re alerted, they will typically prepare for the day, including getting whatever food they need – they’ll arrive at the Command Post and start receiving their mission briefs.  This includes an intel and tactics brief and flight planning, from there they “step to the jet” and take off.  A typical day can last up to 16 hours, but they can last as long as 20 hours.  Crews have to have at least 15 hours of rest time before they are “legal for bravo”, legal for “bravo” means that they can be alerted anytime in a 72 hours period for launch on their next mission.  A normal crew consists of 2 pilots and 1 loadmaster, because of the longer duration of these missions they’re using augmented crews which consist of 3 pilots, 2 loadmasters, possibly a crew chief, and 2 Phoenix Raven security forces airmen.

Our next stop was the Air Terminal Operations Center (ATOC), which is located above the Aerial Port.  The Aerial Port (AP) is the hub for all cargo in and out of Charleston AFB.  The AP is responsible for in processing all cargo, sorting it, palletizing it, load planning, and loading it onto the aircraft.  Master Sergeant Michael Davis is the superintendent of the ATOC – this includes the load planning section and the ATOC itself.  Once of the things I was most curious about was how significant was the increase in ops tempo was for the AP and how they’ve handled it.  MSgt Davis explained, that the ops tempo has “really increased in general with the Haiti relief”.  Because most of the cargo is being picked up at other bases, the role of the ATOC has primarily been one of crew logistics support, making sure they have all the supplies they need for the missions.  Charleston has sent cargo downrange to support the relief operations as well – they have sent everything from medical supplies to water.  In fact, the primary cargo they are transporting to Haiti right now is water.

Overall the impression I got of the operations out of Charleston was good, they are very well organized and are working hard to provide support to the people of Haiti.  This is a great example of the Air Forces ability to have global reach, a capability that I think is critical to maintaining our Air Superiority, whether that means supporting combat operations, or providing critical resources in times of disaster.

I leave you with a shot of water on pallets to illustrate the types of loads they’re moving out of here.

The EMEDS system can be delivered to a site in 2 C-17 aircraft and can be deployed in a very short time. Currently, the Air Force has deployed a number of medical resources including a number of EMEDS teams and as of Sunday, has also deployed an EMEDS-plus-10, which has a 10 holding bed capacity. The concept of the EMEDS is to flow patients through the system quickly for stabilization for evacuation. Within the week, they will upgrade that to an EMEDS-25 system in order to accommodate even more patients.

The Col also indicated that Air Force medical staff will be assisting on board the USS Comfort. I asked the Col if they would be sending any of their personnel to assist directly in any of the native Haitian hospitals, he said:

“At this point in time, we don’t have any plans to do that. That doesn’t mean that we will not be partnering with those folks, based upon wherever we decide to place those assets. And we could certainly be working very closely, hand-in-hand, and possibly, wherever we set up operations, in bringing some of the Haitian medical folks into our facility and working with them. Again, taking lessons learned from Indonesia, what you’re suggesting is exactly what we wound up doing in Indonesia. We set up that operation right next to an established hospital that was still functioning.”

I asked the Col where patients were being evacuated to, he said:

“In terms of where the patients are moving to, that has covered a number of locations. A couple of the patients were originally moved out to Guantánamo. There have been some patients that have moved back to Miami. The request from the government of Haiti was to actually try and build a bridge to Miami. That is being looked at as a capability and a destination right now. Some of that, of course, will certainly depend upon where our civilian medical systems will be able to accommodate the receipt of an influx of patients, if a large number of patients do begin to move.”

Photo provided by DefenseMilitary.mil.  US Air Force (USAF) Technical Sergeant (TSGT) Dewaine Olson (left foreground), Medic, 43rd Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron (AES), Pope Air Force Base (AFB), North Carolina (NC), and other 43rd AES personnel set-up their living area and work center at the Port-au-Prince International Airport (IAP), Port-au-Prince, Haiti (HTI), while participating in support of a multi-national peacekeeping operation.

The images captured by the Global Hawk are being compared to those captured during a bar camera mission that was executed this past June.  It’s important for aid workers on the ground to have relevant historical images to compare the current images to.  Most of the images captured yesterday were of what appear to be destroyed buildings.  The Col indicated that it’s difficult to see if some of the buildings in the images have been completely destroyed, even when comparing them to historical references.

The Global Hawk will launch again this morning and spend a total of 16 hours on station and will capture more than 1000 images of critical infrastructure.  The Col indicated that the use of Global Hawk in this manner is somewhat unprecedented, but the Air Force is committed to providing whatever resources are available and necessary to accomplish the mission.  The Col also mentioned that he assumed the Global Hawk would remain in it’s current role in Haiti until it was deemed no longer needed by the President.

As soon as the images captured by Global Hawk become available, I will post some of them here and post a link to the complete catalog.

UPDATE:
Here’s some of the first publicly available RQ-4 Images of Haiti:

An aerial view of earthquake victims gathering in a soccer field in Haiti from a U.S. Air Force Global Hawk unmanned aircraft Jan. 14. Aerial images are providing U.S. military planners valuable situation awareness as they coordinate U.S. military support to the Haiti relief effort. (Release by U.S. Southern Command)

An aerial view of the damaged National Cathedral in Haiti from a U.S. Air Force Global Hawk unmanned aircraft Jan. 14. Aerial images are providing U.S. military planners valuable situation awareness as they coordinate U.S. military support to the Haiti relief effort. (Release by U.S. Southern Command)

An aerial view of the damaged Presidential Palace in Haiti from a U.S. Air Force Global Hawk unmanned aircraft Jan. 14. Aerial images are providing U.S. military planners valuable situation awareness as they coordinate U.S. military support to the Haiti relief effort. (Release by U.S. Southern Command)

.

Any Future images can be found on the SOUTHCOM website in the photo gallery.

Another critical part of the overall relief effort is the transportation of all of the items necessary to support the ongoing relief operations.  Air Force Air Mobility Command is currently providing several of its C-17 and C-130 aircraft along with a number of its personnel to support this mission.  You can read all about the full effort of AMC and the 618th Tanker Airlift Control Center here.

Some other missions include:

• Deployment of Special Operations C-130’s
• Deployment of Special Operations Airman from Hulburt Field in Florida
• Deployment of C-17 aircraft from California

I’m currently working with AMC to see if I can get myself on a flight down there to cover the response first hand.  I will keep you updated as to my progress.  Also, for the latest updates on the USAF efforts to support the relief operation, I would follow @USAFPressDesk on Twitter.

Now that you’ve picked yourself up off the floor, it’s not what you would think of as a traditional Twitter contest.  I don’t care if you follow me, you don’t have to re-tweet something (although I’d appreciate it if you would, I’d love a lot of entries), all I want you to do is write me a letter and send it to me in the mail.

Here’s the contest:

1. Write me a letter explaining why you should win the prize (listed below)
2. The letter has to be hand written or typed on a typewriter
3. You have to include a return address (this is where I will ship the prize)
4. You also have to include your Twitter ID so I can congratulate you on Twitter for being the winner
5. The contest will begin today and all letters must be postmarked no later than February 4th

The prize is:
Asus 10.1 ATOM N270/250G HDD/1GB Win 7 Netbook

You can view the exact specs here.

My address is:
Scott F. Murphy
434 W Diversey Pkwy., APT 2B
Chicago, IL 60614

Once I’ve received all of the entries, I will judge them and post the top 5 letters.  Then I will post a Twitter based poll where you can select the letter that you think is best.  That person will be the winner.  Once the winner is selected, I will ship the Netbook directly to them.

Legal jargon:

• Void where prohibited
• Must be of legal age in your state to enter the contest
• I am not liable for anything bad that happens to you because you win this Twitter contest
• The prize is subject to change based on availability, but will be the same specifications or better than those listed here
• The prize must be shipped to an address with in the United States
• You must have a Twitter ID to enter – i.e. you must be a Twitter user, you don’t have to be active, you just have to have an account
• By entering, you agree to these rules and agree that you are eligible to enter

This contest is in no way associated with my employer Sears Holdings – it is completely my contest and no endorsement is implied or should be assumed.

1. Be Personal

I read an article recently about the best brands on Twitter, the quote that stood out most for me was:

“Be a person first, and a company second.”

Think of your Facebook page as a way for you to communicate conversationally with your customers.  While it can be a valuable tool for getting the message out about deals and discounts, it can also be an exciting and interactive way for you to get to know more about your customers – or at least the ones who are fans of your brand (and important thing to keep in mind).  Being personal means associating the brand page with the person who maintains it.  I do this by “signing” all of my comments.  This lets people know that there is a real person on the other end of this thing, who is actually listening to what they’re saying.  It helps to develop a personal connection with your customers.  Developing that personal connection helps to foster that “long term value” customer everyone is seeking.  Don’t make Facebook transactional — make it personal.

2. Know Your Audience

Facebook has a number of valuable analytics tools; the one I find to most useful to me when working with my “internal customers” (people within my organization who would like their message on Facebook) is the information about demographics.  I can see exactly who my audience is and tailor my message to them.  Specifically, for example, if my Facebook fan base is made up primarily of women ages 25-45, I’m probably not going to sell them a gaming system directly, but I might remind them that someone in their family might want one as a gift.  I’m thinking of them as the purchase decision makers, not the influencers.  If I’m talking to men ages 18-25, I might point out the great deals on gaming systems and provide them with a way to share those deals with the person who they think will be making the purchase.  It’s essentially the same message “buy a gaming system”, but I’m tailoring the message to my audience.  Overall, its valuable to address your message to the people you know are listening.

3. Respond and React

People are going to come to Facebook to comment about your brand, some of these comments will be positive; many of them will be negative.  Facebook gives your customers a voice that they haven’t had since the days of the family owned store, where if you had an issue, you could just go to the store owner.  Now, they can come to a public forum and voice both their positive comments and their complaints.  It’s important that you address both.  If someone compliments your brand, make sure you respond so that they know you’re listening and you heard their comments and appreciate them.  This will encourage other people with nice things to ay about you to post them as well; again, this is another way to create a personal relationship with your customers.  If someone comes to your brand with a complaint, don’t just respond: react.  I comment on every negative post,  and if I can, I also reach out to the customer directly and try to address their concerns.  I have created a special profile that is tied to my corporate email address and has limited personal information.  I use this profile to directly reach out to customers with issues and try to help resolve them.  The number one thing I hear from customers I help is “I’m just glad there’s someone listening who cares.”  If I can’t respond to a customer directly (due to privacy settings), I direct them to a special customer service email address that they can reach out to for help.  Being direct goes a long way to continuing to develop that customer relationship.

4. Have Fun

Not everything I do on the fan page I maintain is all business.  During the holidays specifically I asked a lot of easy to answer fun questions that resulted in a lot of customer engagement.  One example was:

“Parents, where do you hide your kids Christmas gifts?”

That post along received about 500 comments.  It was a simple question, easy to answer and a fun conversation between the brand and the customer.  The most popular question I asked during the holidays was both fun and beneficial to the brand.  I asked:

“What is your favorite Christmas movie?”

The far and away winner was “A Christmas Story” — the question received over 700 responses.  The next day, I worked with our Online Business Unit to discount the DVD to $10 and was able to post the discounted product to Facebook be 4pm the next day.  This kind of fun question turned into an opportunity to give our customers a product they wanted at a discounted price.

5. Try New Things

Because Facebook is such a new platform (in the grand scheme of marketing channels), it affords you an opportunity to try new things with your customers that you normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to because of cost or lack of support from the enterprise.  An example of this for us was a photo album of some of our most popular Jewelry products.  We showcased 18 of our most popular products with direct links to their pages on our ecommerce platform.  This allowed our customer to “shop” directly from Facebook and it foster conversations about our Jewelry line.  IT also allowed us to feature some “rich” content in the form of photos.  This is just one of the many ways we have experimented with Facebook.  Not all of your ideas are going to be well received; some won’t get any reaction at all.  Keep in mind anytime you’re trying something new, does it help you build better customer relationships?

These are just some of the best practices I use to keep the content on the Facebook pages I maintain, fresh and interesting for the audience.  Do you have any best practices you’d like to share?

One of the reasons I was so excited about this portion of my trip, besides another opportunity to fly in a C-130 (this was my first time in a “P” model) was this slide from the wing briefing I received earlier in the day:

“The Combat Shadow flies clandestine, or low visibility, single or multi-ship low-level air refueling missions for rescue or special operations helicopters, and infiltration, exfiltration, and resupply of rescue or special operations forces by airdrop or airland including politically sensitive or hostile territories”

In other words, these guys are some of the most bad-ass Hercules drivers there are.  Think: low, fast, in the dark and potentially hostile.  Those are the kinds of missions they fly in support of CSAR (Personnel Recovery) operations.

My flight began, as most of my experiences have with the Air Force, with a briefing.  Now, I feel comfortable saying that I’ve seen my share of briefings.  Between my trip to fly with the Hurricane Hunters and all of my time in the Civil Air Patrol, I’ve seen all kinds.  I have never been more impressed or interested in a briefing in my life – these guys are 100% professional and probably the most buttoned up I’ve ever had the “pleasure” of experiencing.  There clearly was an agenda, and the entire thing had a flow and pace that I hadn’t experienced before.  Each section of the flight crew gave their portion of the brief and everything had been written out on the white board before we got started.  They briefed on every aspect of the flight, who should be where when and any additional safety considerations.  The Lt Col who ran the briefing conducted it as if he was conducting a major symphony orchestra.  Needless to say I was so impressed, that the briefing has been the one story I have told everyone that I’ve talked to about this trip.

That’s not to say that the flight wasn’t exciting – quite the contrary – it was one of the most exciting flights I’ve ever been on and that’s saying a lot after my limited acro experience with the Lima Lima Flight Demonstration Team this summer.  Like I said: low, fast and in the dark.

We launched after dark, the in aircraft safety briefing included some talk about air sickness and distribution of sick sacks.  I’ve never been air sick before and I didn’t get sick this time, but it always give me pause.  Anyway, we were briefed on where we should be when and who would give us the thumbs up when we were cleared to move around the aircraft.  I was issued a set of training NVG to use for myself and I was actually able to get some interesting iPhone shots using them.

After our first take off, we circled out over the bay for a while to let some inbound traffic headed into Moffett Field land.  Once they were on the ground, we began our fist low level 10 mile final.  I was given the chance to experience this first landing from the flight deck.  This was pretty exciting, I got to experience the landing via the FLiR display that was immediately to my right.  It was one of the most flawlessly executed C-130 landings I’ve ever experienced – and it was lights out via NVG.  Once we were on the ground, the flight crew in the cargo area did the first of a few infiltrations of the Pararescue Jumper on the 4-wheeler.  I didn’t get to see this one as I was still on the flight deck waiting for the takeoff.  One thing I noticed about the takeoff compared to my flight with the Hurricane Hunters was, with the HH’s I felt like we took off in a lot shorter time and with a more significant climb rate than this particular flight, but I could be wrong based on the fact that it was night and not as easy to see the angles – it just didn’t feel like the “bat out of hell” take off I had experienced before.

Once we were in flight again, I made my way back to the cargo area.  We were already inbound for a landing to pick up our PJ.  I got to see the entire process in reverse basically.  We landed, one of the loadmasters made his way down the ramp to signal to the PJ that we were ready for him.  This whole process was a lot less exciting than I had anticipated – in fact it was better that way – methodical and well thought out, not “movie action” style like I had imagined.  The PJ approached the ramp in reverse and was guided in by the loadmaster – slowly.  Somehow in my head I imagined him racing in and coming to a screeching halt as we rolled down the runway just about ready to lift off.  Thanks for that Hollywood.  I guess what I learned from this is that safety is king in everything these guys do – everything is done with a sense of urgency and importance, but never at the expense of safety, I’m assuming this is even more so in a training environment.

Once we had loaded the PJ and 4-wheeler and it was secured, we began our take off roll again.  We climbed out, circled around, and did the whole dance again – we land, the loadmasters lower the ramps, the PJ rolls out of the cargo area, he signals when he’s clear, the loadmasters stow the ramps and we take off again.  We did this a couple more times and finally we left the PJ behind for some general night flight training.  This included a number of additional approaches and some general low and fast nap-of-the-earth flying.

Unfortunately our flight was cut somewhat short due to an equipment issue, but overall, I have never had the opportunity to fly with a more professional group of pilots and crew.

One interesting side note: we had a bird strike in flight (I’ve added the picture below), I didn’t knwo this at the time, but the take a sample of the “material” and send it to the Smithsonian for analysis.  Very cool.

Next week I’m going to tell you all about my time with the 131st Rescue Squadron – the Pararescuemen of the 129th Rescue Wing.

Because I learned so much about each of these units, I’m going to break each one into a separate post, beginning with the 130th Rescue Squadron and my flight on the MC-130P.  I’ll be adding a new post each week beginning today.

Have you had an experience with any of these units?  Have you had a chance to fly in a C-130 of any kind?  Leave your story in the comments.