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.