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!