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.