PROFILE
him the same reply that the Air Force recruiter did — he needed a four-year degree. “But there is another possible path for you,” the recruiter told him. “Have you thought of being a helicopter mechanic? You could become a mechanic, and then apply for fl ight school later. Do you want to be a Cobra mechanic.” Slade signed on the dotted line and reported to Army boot camp at Fort Jackson, SC in July 1977.
THE ARMY LIFE
Slade tells us that one of the hardest parts of boot camp for him was dealing with the heat and humidity of South Carolina in the middle of summer. “I grew up in California,” Slade tells D.O.M. magazine. “I can still remember stepping out of the airport and getting hit with that hot, wet air. I remember going on marches in boot camp where guys were dropping left and right and the drill sergeants were yelling, ‘Keep going!”
AIT
After graduating from boot camp, Slade reported to Fort Eustis, VA for his Advanced Individual Training (AIT). There, he got specifi c maintenance training for the Cobra. Much of the coursework was self-paced. Slade says that the course typically took around seven or eight months. He completed it in 3 ½ months. “It was interesting to me,” he says. “The more I learned about helicopters, the more fascinated I was with them. I liked the self-paced aspect of it. A lot of times in a classroom setting, I am thinking, ‘I get it, let’s move on.’ The fi rst portion of AIT was self-paced computerized learning. The last part was hands-on.”
FIRST DUTY STATION After graduating from AIT, Slade went to Fort Campbell, KY where he started working on Cobra helicopters. Slade and his classmates started off in hangar studying under the supervision of other mechanics. Slade values the helicopter maintenance training he
received from the Army. “The Army has the best training for helicopters,” he says. “They start you off in a hangar setting working under the supervision of others.” When there was a crew chief opening on the ramp, the
unit’s crew chiefs selected Slade to fi ll the position. Slade tells us that as a Cobra crew chief, his helicopter had the highest- fl ying time. He was fascinated with working on Cobras. Slade was then assigned in the hangar to run a Cobra Phase team. Normally an E-5 position, Slade assumed the job as an E-4 Specialist. Under his supervision, his team performed Phase inspections on up to seven Cobras at a time, each in varying stages of its one-month maintenance inspection.
APPLYING FOR FLIGHT SCHOOL Although he had a passion for working on helicopters, Slade still wanted to become a pilot. During the last three months of his enlistment he started the paperwork necessary
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to apply for the Army’s fl ight school program. “There was a stack of paperwork around 18 feet high that I had to fi ll out by myself,” Slade jokingly shares. “It was a lot of work.” At that time, Slade was attending night school at Embry-
Riddle Aeronautical University to earn his A&P. He decided to put his dream of becoming a pilot on hold, get out of the Army, get his A&P, and get a job as an aircraft mechanic in the civilian world.
LIFE AS A CIVILIAN After he got out of the Army, with the ink still fresh on his A&P certifi cate, Slade went to southern California to stay with his sister while he looked for a job as a mechanic. The job came sooner than he expected. “It was a beautiful day one Thursday, and I decided to go for a drive,” Slade tells D.O.M. magazine. “I really wasn’t job hunting, I just wanted to enjoy a nice drive. I drove by the Long Beach airport and I saw McDonnell-Douglas had a Help Wanted sign out. I went inside and inquired about the job opportunities they had. They asked if I had an A&P, and I told them I did. 15 minutes later, I was sitting in a job interview. The interviewer talked to me a little while and then asked, ‘Can you start Monday?’ I took the job and started building DC-9s the following Monday, not even fi ve days out of the Army.
WORKING AT MCDONNELL-DOUGLAS Working at McDonnell-Douglas was a lot diff erent than maintaining Cobras for the Army. “I learned a lot of maintenance practices that I didn’t learn in the Army,” he says. “But it was diff erent. In the Army, I was working on maintaining machines that were already together. At McDonnell-Douglas, I installed the fl aps and slats. I would install all the pulleys and cables that went with them. I followed blueprints and worked with engineers to work out things if they weren’t quite right. “I was remembering the fun of working on helicopters,” Slade continues. “In the Army, the helicopters were running and you were fi ne-tuning them and working on them. It was a fast, fun pace. That was a far cry from working on an assembly line.”
BECOMING A HELICOPTER PILOT Eventually, Slade was let go as part of a company layoff . About a month later, he went to the Army recruiter and told him he wanted to be a pilot. The recruiter tried to talk him out of it, but Slade insisted. “I want to be a helicopter pilot,” he told the recruiter. A year later, after a barrage of paperwork and tests, Slade
was accepted to the Army’s fl ight program. Slade reported to Fort Rucker, AL for fl ight school. Slade
says his helicopter maintenance experience helped him out in fl ight school. He was way ahead of his classmates who had to learn basic helicopter theory from day one. Even so, Slade says fl ight school was the hardest thing he ever did in his life. It was like Army boot camp on steroids. “There were also a lot of mental games,” he says. “We would get
DOMmagazine
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