Soloed the T-6!

This was a fairly eventful week, full of ups and downs (luckily ending on a high). It started off slow being weathered out on Monday, then had a really good flight on Tuesday to make up for the not good flight on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I felt like the procedures in the landing environment really started to become like second nature to me and my landings were really looking more than just "safe", they started to be consistently good. Then on Wednesday I had the chance to solo aircraft (mission C4201), all I had to do was land the plane three times and do a couple other maneuvers with the instructor before he hopped out and sent me on my way.

As you can imagine, putting a student in a plane all by himself after only 12 or 13 flights can be very dangerous if the student isn't completely ready. It is very important the student gives the instructor a "warm, fuzzy feeling" because he is the guy who will get in trouble if anything bad were to happen and of course he doesn't want you to get hurt, or damage the aircraft. I was on my last landing flying over the field at 2,100 ft getting ready to make my second to last turn before getting lined up for my final approach to land and there was someone behind me doing a "straight-in approach" (which creates a traffic conflict if I were to do that turn). Since you can't see behind you, the pilot has to be able to make a mental image of all the other aircraft just based off of the required radio calls/position reports. Well, to make a long story short I tried to make that turn with him behind me and the IP had to take the controls and do something else. Back on the ground, the IP debriefed me, went over the procedures to make sure I understood them, told me to go home and chair-fly and come with my game tomorrow.

That night of course I chair flew like crazy with Matt helping me by acting like traffic over the radios and I had to keep track of all the other aircraft while pretending to fly the jet in detail. Thursday came and I was the first flight of the morning. The weather was marginal but my IP told the supervisor we would we would go up and do a weather report when we first took off. We reported cloud ceilings of 5,500 ft, just enough for what I needed to do. I took the plane around and landed three times, one time I landed so smoothly that the instructor couldn't even tell if we had touched down! I was feeling good when he told me to come to a complete stop on the third landing. We taxied off the runway and parked on the parking ramp. The instructor jumped out, took off his Velcro name tag with his wings, took my wingless name tag and pulled it off and continued to punch on his name tag on my flight suit, upside down, and put my tag on upside down on his flight suit. As he was putting it on he said, "It's bad luck to be in a plane without a pair of wings, so I'm loaning you mine today!" At that point, My call sign on the radio went from "Panther 1-4" our squadron call sign, to "Pogo 1-4" because they instructors say we usually look like pogo-sticks bouncing around on the runway when we land. Also, that lets everyone know that a new solo is in pattern (so look out!).

The solo was great, the traffic was mellow enough that I got to do two "closed" turn which you can see on the in video and you got to do some pretty fun turning/climbing. The video quality is terrible because it was zoomed in using the "digital zoom", not the lens zoom. Basically. in the video you can see me coming in for my second landing, touchdown and take off right away (called a "touch and go"), then might be able to hear my radio call saying, "Pogo 1-4, request closed", shortly after you hear "closed approved". Right after that you see the little black pixels that are my plane become a silhouette of my plane with wings perpendicular to the ground. After I roll out of the turn I say, "Pogo 1-4, closed downwind" and say continue to the point where I make my final turn to line up with the runway to say "Pogo 1-4, [landing] gear down".


On Friday I had a instrument simulator and my third to last Phase II academic test! I was pretty happy to get it out of the way since it is the second to hardest test in the program, unfortunately we had a few failures in the class. I didn't get a 100 but passed and was more than happy for that.

That night we went to the town of Uvalde to hear some Texas country at a tavern, there were three other bands who opened up for Wade Bowen. I had never heard of him before that but he was really good. Tonight, our class sponsors bought us tickets to the annual "Wild Game Dinner" where wild dove, deer, wild hog and other wild game will be served while various prizes such as 4-wheelers, rifles, guns, and tickets for Dallas Cowboys games are raffled off. Who knows, maybe I'll leave with a shot-gun tonight???

Wow, after reading that last paragraph, I feel super Texan... Next thing you know maybe I'll be signing up to be in the rodeo!

Returning from a leave of absence

So it has been three weeks to the day since my last post and even though I still have a lot of studying to do today, I wanted to take a moment to update everyone just to try to get back into the groove of things.

Last week we had three flying days. Our scheduler had said the Friday before that if you had soloed already, you wouldn't be flying and if you haven't soloed, plan on flying everyday till you solo. I still had 4 flights till my scheduled solo at that point so that meant I was going to have to double-turn (fly twice in the same day) one day and then have one flight the other two days to have 4 flights in three days. Monday came and I was scheduled to fly but the weather cloud ceilings were too low for contact (visual) flying so none of us got to go up. Then Tuesday came and I double turned which made me super busy but it sure made the day go by fast. Then Wednesday came and I had my end-of-block ride followed by my pre-solo, then solo. Unfortunately, I was not on top of the game and "hook-ed" that ride (got an unsat) and didn't get to have the second ride. It's not a big deal as long as I correct the things I didn't do well tomorrow. If these go well tomorrow then I should solo (fly the T-6 without anyone in it except me).

After that I started getting ready for thanksgiving. I had teamed up with some of the guys from our class and we divided the food that was to be made. The turkey had to cook a little longer than expected but the food was amazing. We cooked a 19lbs turkey along with all the traditional fixings. After we sipped eggnog and bourbon in the backyard with our fire pit going. Overall a really nice time.

Flying, adoption, and wake surfing?

Monday through Thursday of this past week went zooming by like the Aries rocket launch a few week ago. I had two flights, both of them with significant improvement along with a big academic test that I got a 94% on. It was busy but in a good way and I felt like things were going pretty well with a big "end of block" ride on scheduled on Friday. End of block rides are rides that check your progress to make sure you are at certain points of progress before going on to the next "block" of rides. Friday morning, the first thing we did was take the weekly Boldface and Operations limits test along with an EPQ (Emergency Procedures Quiz), which covered about 200 pages of random facts and numbers about the T-6. I passed the EPQ which I had been studying all week for but messed up the the boldface with must be done exactly word for word, coma for coma, dash for dash like the example. So I looked kinda stupid for that but luckily I wasn't the only one in the flight who didn't do them right so we both just retook them right after and passed them without any problem. So I thought that was all cleared and what reviewing my flight profile when the flight commander came out and said I owed him an additional 5 more Boldface/Ops limits test on his desk by the end of the day. So as I was filling those out, my assigned Instructor Pilot for the day's flight said that he was sick and DNIF (Duty Not Including Flying) and he was couldn't find another instuctor to go with me so my flight can been canceled. On top of that, a lot of the guys were having bad flights and one guy got in huge trouble for missing a simulator lesson.

After the duty day was over. Matt and I road our bikes straight to the O Club for dinner and a refreshing adult beverage to help ease our minds do a little "penguin punting". Luckily it was a "Drop" night, where the soon to be graduating class finds out what aircraft they will be flying upon graduation and also there locations. Its always a pretty exciting night since they make the even quite humorous by making fun of the students one by one talking about the strange, different, or just dumb mistakes they have made over the past year in training. After the even is over, I always enjoy socializing with individuals from the graduating class and sometimes rubbing elbows with the higher ups. At one point, I stepped outside to take a phone call and noticed a white and tan colored cat outside sitting on the sidewalk and meowing practically non-stop. He looked lost and didn't have a collar but I didn't really pay much attention to it other that noting it looked pretty sad and lost.

Some time later, as Matt and a few other friends stepped outside to get home, I noticed the same cat sitting there, and just as before, meowing up a storm! Matt picked him up and he immediately started purring. Matt looked at me and said just like a little kid, "Can we take him home?" Once we got home he went in our house and just as any curious cat would, explored. That night we had also received our new Cuisinart bread machine and were pretty excited about that so we just decided to name him "Art" for short. We think hes actually part dog because you can call him and he will run up to you, he loves to sleep in the bed with you and loves to jump up on the kitchen counter. Below are a few pictures of the new quite talkative, attention loving cat.

After that Friday, a couple of the guys in my class have really nice water skiing boats and we were invited to come along. We went out to the lake in a more secluded part where the water is much calmer and we went wake boarding. Then Matt, who brought a surf board along showed us how to find the sweet spot in the wake you can actually stand up on it and surf the wake without any rope after you get established. It was super fun and like I said, much needed after that Friday. Below is a video of me "almost" standing up, I think I'll get it next time.



That's all for now, I'm scheduled to fly tomorrow morning but it's raining right now so we'll see what happens. Here are a couple of pictures from the Halloween post I forgot to post up last time. I was Legolas from Lord of the rings.

Weekly Update

The guy in our class who was in charge of ordering our patches sent out scans of the finished product. They should be here in a few days.

The skull patch is our daily patch that we will wear on our right shoulder. The 10-15 is our class, 10 is for fiscal year 2010, the year we graduate and 15 is for the fifteenth class of that year. The planes in his eyes are the T-1 and the T-38, the aircraft that most of the will be going on to after we are done with Phase II and T-6s. The wings in his mouth are the wings we are going to get at the end of training "minus the XL", that's just the slang name for Laughlin.

If anyone would like a patch sent to them email me at daves1986@gmail.com and give me your address and I'll send one your way.

As for the other patch... well... that's called our "Friday Patch" because usually it doesn't have to be approved by the Commander. In our class has this saying that goes, "You can only fit so many penguins on the iceberg before you have to start kicking others off"; basically saying that your brain can only take up so munch information before you start forgetting something else. So on Fridays our class 10-15 goes "Penguin Punting" at the O-club to make more room for next weeks material, as indicated by the adult beverage in his hand.

Halloween was pretty low key. One of the guys hosted a class costume party at his house on Friday night and there were a bunch of house parties on Saturday but I was pretty drained by then so I stayed in. I went out as Legolas from Lord of the Rings with the blond hair and all, I'll post up a photo when I get one from my friend.

I'm not scheduled to fly tomorrow at this point but that is always changing. I should be flying on Tuesday and might even have an instruments test which I spent most of today studying for.

4002 Flight

I had my second flight today. It went pretty well but landings are way tougher than previous aircraft if for no other reason then the fact that you are going so much faster. Tomorrow is our last day of sounding off Notes, Warnings, and Cautions from the Dash 1 and we have a bunch to memorize for tomorrow as we have had for the past 5 days.

I'm scheduled for another flight tomorrow so we shall see if I figure something else about landing the darn thing.

On a lighter note, the photo is of a class patch from long ago, fiscal year 2002, 8th class (0208), I found it pretty humorous. The top reads "Training the World's" my finger took off the "s". enjoy...

Dollar Ride and MWS Day

So on Friday I had my first ride in the T-6, is was amazing. Having that extra thousand horsepower (than my last plane) sure makes a difference. The instructor pilot I few with was a first lieutenant who was probably at most 3 years older than me. We call the first ride a "dollar ride" because you really don't get to fly the entire time as he is mostly just showing you everything you have been practicing in the simulators and the books. In return for his "chauffeur services", it is tradition to give him a dollar for flying you around. Since the IP doesn't just want another dollar, you are expected to do something creative. I am thinking about trying to get a crutch, spray paint it gold and wrap a dollar around the arm pad with a note saying, "Thanks for being my crutch". But I don't know who is just going to have a crutch laying around so we'll have to figure something out.

As far as the ride itself, yes Mom I did go upside down, and yes, I was wearing a helmet. The weather was beautiful, not too hot, not too cold, calm winds and clear for a million as far as clouds. The airplane was basicly brand new from the factory and had only been flown for a total of 85 hours. When I opened the canopy, a fresh "new car" smell flew into my nostrils. All the gauges, switches were shiny and the exterior hadn't even been needed to be washed yet.

We took off a little late because a C-130 had just flown in for MWS (Major Weapon Systems) Day that was on Saturday and they had accidentally taxied down a taxi way that wasn't big enough for them so they had to go down our runway instead. As soon as we got off the runway you could feel the immense amounts of torque from the propeller trying to roll the plane to the left and requiring a BUNCH of right rudder. Luckily, this is also the first plane that has rudder trim and didn't have to hold it in the whole flight to maintain a straight flight path.

Since the first portion of phase two is focusing on Contact flight, or flying visually as opposed to mainly just flying off the instruments, he flew out to the auxiliary field and pointed out the visual references since the simulator just has satellite imagery for the ground and doesn't do that great of a job of showing you all the details and changes. After we got out to the other field, called WIZRD (pronounced wizard). He showed how the traffic flow worked once and then said, "You have the aircraft, lets do that again". I said "I have the aircraft", and shook the control stick to let him know that I have positive control and he could let go. I then took the plane around the ground track and landed it. As soon as the two main wheels touched the ground, I punched the throttle back to "Full" and took off again, doing what is called, a touch-and-go. We basically do this to reduce the amount of time it takes to come to a complete stop, taxi off the runway, taxi back on the runway, and take off again.

Then we flew out to the MOA, or military open area, where we do all our maneuvers. Once we got up there, he said again, "You have the aircraft, do whatever you want". We were at 10,000 feet, which is the low MOA, the one above me went up to 22,000 feet. From the low MOA we could see clear in the Mexico for hundreds of miles and see the Rio Grande as the only way on knowing I was about to enter another sovereign nation with a military aircraft, which just doesn't sound like a good idea.

The throttle is actually computer driven and when you are moving it, you are actually just "asking" the computer to give you more power but its job is to make sure you don't exceed any limited for the turbine. I played around with that for a while, trying to get certain torque settings, then found myself in full throttle, decided I liked the feeling of that and pitched the nose about 10 degrees high and shoved the stick to the right till I was looking "up" at the ground. I started chuckling and flipped it back upright and leveled off. Then the IP asked me how my stomach was feeling, surprisingly, I was feeling really good and then told me get get up to about 220 knots and pull the stick back to 30 degrees nose high. I did as he said and then performed a loop!

Here is a link to a video that shows kinda what was going on from my the pilots view. Notice when the ground is seen he is going vertical on the way to inverted flight. It doesn't really show what the plane is doing very well though.

Yesterday was WMS Day where they had a really good show of all of the aircraft that the AF has been handing out at graduation. They had 3 F-15s, two F-16s, a C-130, a C-17 (the photos are the inside of the C-17), and they had two of the new Special Forces planes the U-28 and the PC-12, which have a pretty cool mission. They also had two UAV pilots come talk to us from Nevada and two U-2 pilots from a base in the Sacramento area come and give a presentation.

Well, I'm off to study!

First Day of Phase Two!

The Weather test on Tuesday was a nail-biter for sure. Things came out alright but we had a guy fail his third test so he will be going to through commander's review. Chances are good he won't be continuing since about 15% of people make it out of commander's review.

Today starts formal release. Which means even if all my events for the day are completed, we don't get out till our flight commander releases us (which is usually 12 hours). I don't think I'm scheduled to fly today but that can change at anytime so you just have a be prepared for anything. I'll bring my camera at any rate.

Well I'm off, I'll let you know how the day goes this evening.

Phase 1: Winding down, Phase 2: Gearing Up

The past few weeks have been flying by and I haven't even been 'flying' yet! This week, phase two of the three phases starts. This means academics will start winding down and the main emphasis will be on daily flights and check rides. This is both good news and bad new due to the fact that yes, I will finally start doing what you could say I've been training for the past 6 years to do, but also my personal life will go down the drain. Yes, I know we have already done quite a few 12 hour days so far in Phase 1, but they were the exception, not the norm. Now that Phase two is starting, we will be on formal release meaning that 12 hour days will be normal, and getting out earlier must have been we kicked butt in our flights that week or the instructor pilots just really want to get to the squadron bar before it closes on a Friday evening.

It also means that in addition to being fully prepared for our flights, we will be doing more academics, formal briefings, and the dreaded stand-ups. This is where you are standing at attention in front of your whole class, all the instructors and your flight commander and are giving an emergency scenario where you have to talk, with very meticulous detail, how you solve the situation.

This weekend was the roommate's birthday so we did a quick trip on Friday night up to San Antonio to check out a dance hall called Cowboys. It was massive, half of it was a huge hall with a live band and the other half was an indoor rodeo. In the morning we drove up to Austin to be in a bike parade that Fat Tire brewing on, called Tour de Fat. It was a fun 23 hour trip. We returned saturday evening, ate dinner, then went to bed to get a full day of studying in today.

Oh yea, If you are interested in reading a little background information about the squadron I'll be assigned to you can find it here.

Quick update...

Just wanted to let everyone know things are going well, but extremely busy as you might imagine. I've had two big emergency procedure simulators this week. One was yesterday and the other was today. The first one was a little rough because although I knew how to write the bold face and ops limits, it was much more difficult to physically apply them in a fast but accurate style. Today's went much better and I had a great instructor. We also had another academic test today which, despite my anxiousness before the test went really well. I'll have more time to write tomorrow after another big sim. Untill then, enjoy these photos I took as I was biking home from work yesterday.

4 Day weekend!

After a seemingly unending Monday through Thursday, the week finally came to an end. This week we had 2 academic tests and two simulator rides. Both the tests went well, although not 100s:( The great news is that Friday was "Wingman Day" where the base commander decided to have a no-fly day with a base-wide picnic. In the morning we had a commander's call where out squadron commander talked about some issues that the base as a whole has been having, and how we need to look out for each other in those circumstances. On Fridays a locally owned restaurant flies out fresh fish from Hawaii so some friends and I decided to try the shark tacos, they were excellent.

So that was yesterday. Today a friend and I went back to the Pecos River for some more jet-skiing. The photos attached aren't ones that we took (although they do make me want to look into an underwater camera), but are the exact same areas we were exploring/spelunking, looking at different Native American drawings and scaring the mountain goats on the banks as we roared up the mighty river.

Well I'm off to enjoy some salmon and stir fried squash, have a great weekend!

Putting the fires out, one at a time

So things are going at quite a rapid pace now. It seems just as you get used to one thing, they add another on top of it. An instuctor pilot once told me, "it's time like this, you just have to put the fire out that is furthest up your leg!"

This week are learning about flight fundamentals in the classroom, which is all about procedures and how things go around the airport. In addition to that, we have started a new block of simulators that are getting more and more demanding, taking away from possible study time. The sims are pretty neat and supposedly cost as much, if not more than the airplane but allow us to practice all the emergencies (like ejecting) and other things that you really can't practice in the air. They are also much cheaper to maintain because of no gas, and are of course, much safer, and are pretty realistic from the cockpit with all the gauges and gadgets working the same way they would in the plane.

I am really looking forward to this weekend due to the fact that it is a 4-day weekend! Friday is a "no-fly" day because the whole base is having a picnic. Monday is Columbus day so we will be off as well.

Tomorrow morning is another academic test for the flight fundamentals talked about earlier. But after the simulator in the evening, the weekend has begun! Then the class will be going to a "drop" party at the Officer Club, where the senior class finds out where they will be going to and what MWS (major weapon system) they will be going to after training.

Getting ready for the Aerodynamics test Friday. My first big simulator will be tomorrow. Off to bed for another early start. The wives are making breakfast for us tomorrow morning. Made Thai curry tonight for dinner. It was quite tasty!

Systems II Test!

So Yesterday we had the systems 2 test. I was a little worried that I didn't understand some of the concepts as well as I did for the systems 1 test last week. When I finished the test, I had about 3 that I wasn't sure about and had to make the best guess possible. When I submitted my scores in the computer, the screen went blank and at that moment I thought all the answers were going to be lost! Then a message come up saying, "calculating score". It felt like it must have been minutes (but was probably actually 3 seconds) before another message came up saying 47 out of 47, 100%! I was pretty happy, but more importantly, hungry!

We road our bikes home shortly after and decided to grill some pork loin and chop it up into Matt's homemade fried rice recipe. I guess Matt thought we had a huge amount of meat to cook so he fired up enough coal to cook meat for an entire football team. Seeing the small pork loin and the huge amount of coal being used, we tried to think of something else to cook. Since we hadn't made a recent trip the store, we were running a little low on veges and other fresh foods. Matt ran over the the freezer and pulled out some mystery meat that had been in our freezer for so long we couldn't even remember what it was. The result may have very well been the most "manly meal" in the history meals! Pork chop, pork fried rice, and a whole clove of grilled garlic topped with a ice cold import German bear. It was a victory feast to say the least. (Note: the butcher's clever and huge fork were added for presentation and were not actually used to eat with).

Today we start the aerodynamics block of instuction. it's mostly stuff I already but must have been made by the same engineers that designed the T-6 because they make way to academic with all sorts of formulas and junk. But whatever, I guess they have to test you on something...

Lastly, Happy Birthday to my brother Nate! 21 Today!

All Caught Up!

So the last two items of interest are the Altitude Chamber and the Ground Egress training.

The Chamber is a air tight room that simulates the partial pressure of oxygen (and other gases in the atmosphere) at altitudes other than the altitude you are at. We were taken the altitude of 25,000 feet and got to take off our masks and experience hypoxic hypoxia. They did this so that we might know our individual symptoms and be able to correct for it before loosing consciousness and blacking out. Some people feel euphoric, which is actually the most dangerous since you don't want to correct for it since it feels, well good. Me however, I just felt really tingly, like when you wake up after sleeping on your arm, except all through your body. They gave us some worksheets to work on since your cognitive thinking really goes downhill fast and some of the results were pretty funny. One of the questions was, "how many three cent stamps are in a dozen?" It must have taken me about 45 seconds to figure that one out!

This last picture is of the class practicing ground egress (or escape) training. Here they had a mock T-6 cockpit where we had to get out as safely as possible in as little time as possible. We were simulating a an aircraft fire. One of the former B-52 Navigators in our class actually showed us a much faster way to do it and our times quickly dropped.

Well that was pretty much the first few weeks in a nut shell. It's much harder to recall all the little details that you can remember when you right during the same day. Knowing this, it's a good incentive to keep on top of the writing!

Special Insert: Week 2

The second week things got much more interactive, well, once we finished all the academic lessons of course. This week transitioned from the Survival part to the Physiology segment. We had lessons on the Atmosphere, pretty standard since that's where the Air Force is hoping most of the flying I do happens. Then we learned about the various threats that altitude pose and how the partial pressure of the oxygen being breathed changes. We learned about spatial disorientation, noise and vibration, effects of acceleration on the body, stress awareness, parachute familiarization training, and finally the altitude chamber flight and rapid decompression.

As you can see by the photos, the parachute part was a lot of fun! We started off by simulating that you had just touched down and were being pulled by the parachute and needed to disconnect from it before you got pulled over a cliff. The picture shows me on the left in the black helmet acting as the "wind" with 3 other guys.

Then we strapped our harnesses into a tower, climbed up the stairs and jumped off! We were on the pulley system as you can guess and we hung there while we simulated various difficulties you can have while falling to the ground. Hanging there however was pretty much a man's version of mammogram and as you can tell by the photo I didn't look to happy about being there for an uncomfortable 5 minutes.

Almost caught up! Just a few more items worth mentioning for the last installment of the recap.

Special Insert: Recap From The Begining

It's about 1:30 and I needed a study break so I decided now would be a good time to play catch up on the posting.

Week 1 (8-11 Sept):

As with most events in the Air Force everything is began with a briefing. The trend I've began to notice is that the bigger the event, the longer the briefings. The start of UPT was no exception. We officially started on 8 Sept, the day after Labor day. We had multiple commanders come at talk to us telling the class how this would be the most difficult year of your life, so far. Then we had every on-base organization come and give us their spiel about how they can help us get through the year. These briefings pretty much went on for the next two days. Most of the briefings had already been given when I came here last fall so there wasn't too much new information.

On Thursday we started Aerospace Physiology. This is the part where they scare you by telling you all the effects flying can have on your body. We started off by talking about personal survival; basically talking about how to survive if you had a crash landing and had to survive for a few hours or a few days while a rescue team came for you. It was fairly straight forward and they even make the equipment (radios, signaling mirrors, beacons, ect. ) "Army proof". Army proof simply means the instructions are written on the specific piece of equipment, making its usage, "So easy, the Army(caveman) could do it!"

The photo is of our class practicing using the MK-13, a signal flare, early one morning during the survival section of Aerospace Physiology.

Once we got through all that they gave us a multiple choice test, which I was a little disappointed in because when do you have to multiple choice in the wilderness? I later wrote in the course critique that they should drop us off for the weekend outside of Del Rio city limits and make us survive on our own for a night or two. If we survive the weekend without needing help, we pass. If you have to call for help on your cell phone, maybe you should just be a Finance Officer.

The Weekend is Here!

At last Friday arrived, it seemed to take longer to come this week than last week. Friday, we learned more about the propulsion and environmental systems on the plane and had another review with the instructor.

After we finished our classes, we took the weekly Boldface and Operations limits test. This tests our knowledge of "critical action items (like loosing your engine immediately after takeoff) from the aircraft operating manual that students must memorize perfectly for safety of flight". Once we were released, Matt (my housemate) and I went downtown for happy hour to meet up with the few other friends of mine.

Today is studying for the Systems II test coming up Monday, at 1 some of the class is going to meet up to start learning about the procedures associated with flying around the airport (known as flying the "pattern", since everyone flies the same route for traffic reasons). After that we are going to take Matt's two new jet skis out to the lake (well, new to us, not to the world). After that we are going to get back to studying till maybe 9, then watch the Soloist with some of the guys on my block.

The recap I talked about earlier is still coming... Hopefully tomorrow

Getting Up To Speed...

Today I figured out how to post photos on the blog so hopefully this will lead to me taking more pictures and bringing my camera around again. I know for those of you that are new to my blog I started in a really random place. Understanding this, I've decided I will need to do some back tracking of the past few weeks and let you know about all the fun I've had experiencing hypoxia in the altitude chamber, doing the Fighter Aircrew Conditioning Test (FACT for short), practing PLFs (Parahcute Landing Falls), and all that other good stuff I've been doing over the past few weeks. So my goal for this weekend, besides studying, is to get you all caught up.

You are able to write comments at the bottom of each of the blog entries and can ask questions or leave thoughts and words of wisdom (for the elderly folks who wish to enlighten us). Also, for those of you that want to, you can subscribe to the blog on the left side which will send you a notification when I've updated my blog, and more importantly, let me know people are actually interested in reading ;-)

My sister, Katherine asked me what the focus of my blog was going to be last night. This blog is mostly going to be about my journey through Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT) with the Air Force out in Laughlin AFB, Del Rio, TX.

Now that I've got the admin stuff out of the way; today was mostly uneventful (in a good way though!). Since we had no test failures in the class yesterday, no one had to show up for the test make-up early in the morning. Because the make-up was still a was a scheduled event, that pushed our first CAI (Computer Aided Instruction, the UPT name for dreaded CBT's in the rest of the Air Force) to 9:30!

As previously mentioned yesterday, we had our Systems I test. This covered the Flight Controls, Hydraulics, Flight Insruments, Communication Systems, Navigation Systems, Global Positioning System, and the T-6 Cockpit Familiarization(T-6 Texan is the name of the aircraft I'm going to be flying starting Oct 21). Today we started the other half of that course, Systems II. Specifically we studied T-6 Electronics and the fuel system in the morning and had a instructor led review in the afternoon with another Propulsion CAI in the afternoon.

Well I'm for a jog before I start studying. See you all tomorrow!

Start of UPT Blog

So I was talking to a buddy of mine who mentioned he was doing a blog to keep his friends and family posted. I've decided to try writing my blog again (notice my last attempt while I was in Europe last October).

I probably won't have anytime to write anything fancy except if I really get into it on the weekends but I will try my best to take 5 minutes a day to talk about what has happened and try to put it into context.

Tomorrow will be the start of week 3! Today we had a 3 hour Systems 1 review, a T-6 walk around (see the photo!) where we got to see the systems in person and make sense off all the reading/talking we have been doing about these supposed aircraft 'innards' we have been learning about, and then we had our Systems 1 exam. Happy to report I got a 100%.

After the test went for a quick jog to the gym, weight lifted, then went to Wings and Rings with my class. It was chaos as it was there first night in business, but we got comped so who can complain!