One week check-in

** This was written on the June 30th but just now getting around to posting it**

Well after one week I am happy to announce that this place is a blast. Everywhere I go I meet new people and make new friends. For example, I walked into Jamaican restaurant for a jerk chicken sandwich and noticed a group of people wearing badges and asked them what event they were attending. It turned out they were actors in a play that was going on later that afternoon. They told me that the play started at 5 and if you were late that we would not be allowed to enter. We showed up 30 minutes early and saw a bunch of young Japanese Okinawan (some of them don't like being called Japanese)  workers at the entrance. We told them we were there for the play and they asked for a ticket. We said we didn't have any and asked how much they were. They said 1800 yen (about 24 dollars). I said that we were invited to the play by one of the two actors. When I said this they signaled for us to wait at the entrance and one of them ran upstairs. He came back and said he was sorry but we would need to buy tickets. We said ok, and started taking out money to buy a ticket and he then explained to us that we couldn't buy tickets till 15 minutes before the show. We were getting a little frustrated but walked down the sidewalk out of the way to hang out till we could purchase the tickets. My buddy and I finally decided to not go when and as we started walking down the road, the ticket master came running down the stairs and motioned for us to wait. He approached us and said the actress we had met had given a couple of her personal tickets to us. So after all that we ended up going to the play which was pretty interesting, very contemporary, Katherine (Dede) would have liked it. It was in Japanese, but some parts were in German, and French as well, so they had subtitles, which was a very big help obviously.

I've fallen in love with the neighborhood of Chatan-cho. Specifically the neighborhood of Sunabe. It's less than a mile from the main gate of base, it's very close to the East China Sea. Sunabe, has great restaurants, good night life, and lots of scuba and surf shops. Almost every place you go you end up meeting the owner and eventually get to know them. So my house hunting has been concentrated on that area. That's all for now, I'm going to drive up North in my new (well, new to me) Toyota Surf (basically a 4Runner in the states). Pictures will come soon.

Ranting on the Plane

**Written on the plane back on July 20th but posted now** 

So after a great trip back home, I'm finally off to Japan. I was trying to use my miles to upgrade to business class but I was able to get economy plus in the exit row seat and I have so much room in front of me I have actually done a few sets of push ups in-between watching movies, and eating, of course. The 777 I'm in is 9 seats across in economy and so far is making good time cruising along at 38,000 feet. On my last flight, the pilot came on the speaker and told us the altitude we were flying at. The guy I was sitting next to asked me, "why do we fly so high?" The airlines have been pioneering fuel conservation and have found a few cool ways to do so. When you are flying, there are many speeds that can be used for various reasons, it's not like being in a car where you just look at the speedometer and instantly know the speed you are traveling along the ground. Due to winds, instrument limitations, temperature, barometric pressure and other factors, the speed on your airspeed gauge only shows the speed of the air entering a little tube facing the front of the airplane, called the pitot tube(pronounced pee-toe). Yea, I know what your thinking, the French don't know how to pronounce their own words whatsoever. Give it to the French to take something made up in the good Ol' US of A and have the audacity to slap their names on it. Fuselage, empennage, and pitot tube are just a few of the ones that come to mind right now. I better caveat this with the fact that they do sound a little more majestic then what we probably would have come up with but it's just food for thought. No hard feelings for my millions of French readers, right?

Alas, I digress... Back to fuel, without getting into to much physics, the higher you fly, the better "mileage" you get. In addition to the possibility of using jet streams, one of the other speeds flyers use, true airspeed (versus indicated airspeed shown on the gauge), increases with altitude. So say for example you compute that due to your aircraft and engines, you want to fly at 250 knots/hr "indicated" airspeed. Well if you had absolutely no winds, in a perfect world, your "groundspeed" would equal "indicated" airspeed on the gauge at sea level. However, for every 1,000 feet you climb, you gain another 3knots in true airspeed, which for sake of discussion well say is the same as "ground" speed;) did I confuse you yet??? So say you were flying 250kts/hr at sea level, when you climb up to 25,000 ft (25 X 3 kts/1,000 ft= 75 kts. So that's an additional 75 knots of "free speed" you get after you take out the additional fuel it takes to make the climb. I imagine the cost to climb is offset by the fact that you get to descend at nearly idle for the last 50-100 miles depending on your altitude and if you do it right. In addition to saving gas, at higher altitudes you also smash less bugs, not just the insects but also those little ity slow bugs called Cessnas, Pipers, and others that will not fly at higher altitudes due to lack of engine capability and supplemental oxygen, pressurization, ect.

Well I have another 1 hour 47 minutes till we arrive in Tokyo, should be interesting for sure. I'll write more on the flight to Okinawa and I explore the airport.

Checkride Complete and Back Home!

Hope you are all doing well. I've been noticing a lot of people coming to read about "UPT" and "pilot training". If you have any questions about how to get to UPT how it was, or any other related Air Force type questions, don't hesitate to write me or leave a comment below. If I don't know the answer off hand, I can get a hold of someone who will.

Thursday the 30th was my Initial Qualification checkride for the KC-135 and things didn't go perfect, but I passed (Q1) without any downgrades. Murphy seems to be in full effect with these checkrides but the evaluator obviously thought I made the right decisions and didn't say much of anything in the debrief. I think a lot of times they know after this checkride we won't be flying again for another 1 to 2 months while we get settled in our new locations so they tend to be pretty "big picture" on these checkrides.

Luckily enough, I was able to out-process the day prior due the long holiday and had the movers come Thursday morning to pack up whatever I didn't need for the next few weeks in California and what I didn't want to lug around to California and then to Japan. Saturday evening I was back in the Bay Area and by Sunday I was out paddle boarding with my college buddy at Bolinas in Marin County. Lately, I've been living a much more simple life since my arrival. Surfing, paddle boarding, catching up on California cuisine, seeing old friends, going to Giants games, making new friends, enjoying live music at the Lagunitas Brewery, just to name a few.

As far as I know, my flight has been booked for next Monday afternoon to Okianwa. I haven't heard back from the travel agent yet but that's what we arranged for. 

Recommendation ride and upcoming Initial Qualification Checkride

Well, today I finally had my recommendation ride, which is the flight before my big checkride. After successful completion of this checkride, I will finally remove the "U" in front of my current title of "UP", or unqualified pilot and will be mission qualified. As of today, it is scheduled to take place Thursday night, right before the big four day weekend.

In other news, I've had my hands full making last preparations for  heading out to Okinawa. The movers are also coming Thursday morning to pack up the last of my belongings here in Altus. My OLD (faithful) Chevy was totaled last week in one of the longest hail storms ever recorded. It was at least 45 minutes in duration and the hail was about golf ball sized, it was pretty brutal. It ended up being a mixed blessing because, even though I didn't even realize it till I called the insurance company a week later, I did have comprehensive insurance and they are giving me some very good options for ways to get rid of the car before I leave for the island, were they don't allow cars to be imported to.

If all goes well, I should be in San Francisco for the 4th, with my family and friends. However, worse case scenario I'll be visiting my good buddy in Austin, Josh, who just returned from Iraq.

I can't wait to be done with Altus... I didn't actually think a town could be worse than Del Rio. I sure do miss floating down the creek on the weekends...

Things are coming along...

So the two flights I spoke of in the last post went well. The instructors have been great and the learning curve is very steep, the flying portion is coming back to me quite quickly. Yesterday I flew formation with another tanker and we refueled another C-17. Tonight I have one more simulator and then Friday we will be flying at night to get our night currency and what not. The final checkride is scheduled for the 24th and then I'll be done with Altus. The movers are coming on the 28th to pack everything up and then I'll be heading back home hopefully around the 29th and will be there till the 6th of July.

One more thing...

I forgot to post yesterday that I will be flying twice (weather permitting) next week! Monday will be a normal refueling flight and Wednesday will be a formation flight! Pretty excited about that... off to go brief for Monday's flight, then off to Dallas to see my old roommate and neighbor one last time before going to Japan.

Instrument Quailification Check Ride AND a trip back home!

Hope all of you are doing well. Last Thursday I had my first checkride in the KC-135. After 4 months of studying and simulators and about two weeks of stressing over it, I passed with a Q1, no downgrades. You can only get a Q1,Q2, or Q3 with Q3 being a fail and Q2 meaning you passed, but additional training is required. This is arguably the most important check ride I've had so far due to the fact that I am no longer a student and this checkride is the first that included a Form 8, which stays with you for the remainder of your air force career and is looked at by the airlines if you ever apply there. From what I've been told, one Q3 on a checkride and that will keep you from getting an airline job. Although I don't have any plans to join the airlines at this moment, I would like to keep my options open and keep my squadron in Japan from thinking I'm a slack-nasty before I even get out there, so a Q1 was a great way to start my non-student pilot career.

The checkride was very big picture and the check pilot told us so. In the simulator, he acted as a neutral copilot, who needed some prompting but just wanted you to be directive so that he knew that you knew you need to perform whatever the action you needed to do was.

After the debrief, I went and had a beer with my Chilean co-workers and went a laid out at the pool across the street for an hour to let it all soak in with a little sunshine on top:) I went back to my room and packed my bags for the flight I had booked right before going to bed Wednesday night back to the Bay Area to see my mama who was recovering from a procedure and was in a lot of pain. Friday morning I took the first flight to SFO from DFW. I had originally planned to drive down to Austin to see some good friends one last time before I left the country, but Mom comes first!

It was very good to be home, Mom quickly recovered and felt so good that she insists that she made one of her famous chocolate cakes, from scratch of course.... Who was I to refuse!?! My two best buddy's from college came up and we had a great dinner at my old work, Central Market on Saturday night. The menu always features the freshest local ingredients and service was wonderful. Of course, I also had to go in for my Super Burrito from the local Mexican restaurant, Mi Pueblo. And no visit home is complete without a trip to Hallie's Dinner for breakfast, I went twice! Now that I think of it, I sure did do a lot of eating this trip.... better go running.

Sunday I went to church with the family and the friends that stayed for the night after dinner downtown. Dad's sermons are the best. After they departed, I went to Pt Reyes National Seashore. The drive was almost as good as the destination, all I needed was a convertible and I would have just kept driving up and down the coast.


Mi Pueblo's Super Burrito

 Small vineyard on the way North from San Fran

 The best backyard in town!

 Some guys working in the garden

 Mom, Nate, and I at grandpa's place

 Grandpa and I... I got him to smile!

 Drive out to the coast

 Pt Reyes National Seashore

 The light house at Pt Reyes. You can see whales migrate from here