25 June 2005- Phase III Week 5 (dollar
ride & transition)
3 July 2005- Phase III Week 6 (home for
the 4th)
19
July 2005- Phase III Week 8 (evac to Ft. Worth)
31
July 2005- Phase III Week 10 (Transition Check)
7 August
2005- Phase III Week 11 (Navigation)
28
August 2005- Phase III Week 14 (Cross-country)
11
September 2005- Phase III Week 16 (Katrina Evac)
25
September 2005- Phase III Week 18 (Navigation Check)
10
October 2005- Phase III Week 20 (Basic Formation)
23
October 2005- Phase III Week 22 (Airdrop and Refueling)
30
October 2005- Phase III Week 23 (The Drop)
07
November 2005- Phase III Week 24 (And the result is….?)
First of all let me apologize for not updating the website for so long. I didn’t feel it was worth writing anything during academics and since I’ve hit the flight line I haven’t had internet access. I’m working on that but I should still be able to keep the entries going. Academics was a pretty relaxed time. There was a lot to learn but we weren’t on the flight-line yet so there wasn’t much pressure. I’ve been doing real well with the tests so far but they aren’t that hard so I’m sure that everyone else in the class is right up there with me. The guys that went over to the T-38 hit the flight-line a lot sooner than we did in the T-1. They don’t have nearly the amount of systems knowledge to learn on their aircraft. There is just a massive amount of information to absorb. It’s been rough but I think everyone is starting to get there. I just finished my second week on the flight-line. Its been tough be also enjoyable. One of the toughest things to learn is the different responsibilities you have as a pilot in this aircraft as opposed to the Tweet or any other single seat aircraft. There you have to be the one doing everything. In the T-1 and all other crew aircraft the pilot in command can’t do everything and is wrong for trying to do so. A big part of learning how to fly this aircraft is learning how to delegate the tasks that have to be accomplished. There is a lot to do and the pilot can’t do it all at once. The pilot has to worry about the overall safety of the flight, making sure the flight goes to plan, the mission gets accomplished, and making any other decisions that need to be made along the way. It’s hard to transition from being taught to do everything and now being told that you will be downgraded for trying to do too much. The instructors have told us that the goal of phase III for us is to not only make us into good pilots but also mold effective aircraft commanders. There’s a lot more responsibility up there now than there was when it was just me alone in my Tweet when all I really had to think about was getting the plane back on the ground safely. One other really neat thing about the plane is the automation that is built into it. It’s got all the bells and whistles you can think of. Its not as sophisticated as the airliners that can land themselves but it’s pretty darn close. Its got autopilot, GPS satellite navigation, air-conditioning (which is real nice right now), computer display instruments instead of the old round dials, a system that watches out for other aircraft in the air, a weather radar, and all kinds of other cool stuff that makes flying a lot easier and more fun. It’s a difficult transition with the actual aircraft control as well. Going from a very nimble fast turning plane to a much heavier hard to handle aircraft is tough to get used to. I’ve already found myself reverting back to tweet handling characteristics that aren’t safe in an aircraft like this. The maximum bank angle is 60 degrees. In the tweet we regularly went up to 90 degrees in the pattern and that is a huge no-no in this plane. If that’s the instincts you’ve built in though, its hard sometimes not to go back to that. The other thing that is tough is just not having a feel for the aircraft. We all have the knowledge on how to control the aircraft and we think that we ought to be able to. It’s a bit frustrating knowing that you have the skills to fly the plane very well but just haven’t adjusted them to the new aircraft. It takes time and practice and that’s tough for some of us who are shorter on patience. Right now we are in the transition phase where the focus is on developing aircraft control, learning to fly the different types of landing patterns and learning how to coordinate with a crew to fly the aircraft properly. There are only two big check-rides. The first is the Transition check which is what I’m getting ready for right now. The next phase is Navigation where I’ll be going to all kinds of different places and flying low level missions, simulated airdrops and simulated refueling missions. It should be a lot of fun and right now its shaping up to be an enormous challenge. I think it will be quite rewarding though. I’m really looking forward to learning all of that stuff and most of all to graduating.
Maverek
This week wasn’t quite as hard as the last two. Things are finaly starting to click and I’m getting a feel for the aircraft. One of the toughest things to get the hang of is using trim. In the tweet little clicks of trim worked fine to keep the controls light. In the T-1 though, it takes long runs of trim to keep ahead of the jet when your changing airspeeds. Your thumb wants to keep using little clicks and you have to remind yourself that you need to hold the button down longer to make it fly right. This last week was pretty busy. I was flying or simming everyday. Combined with standup each day and an EPQ at the beginning of the week plus academics each day, I haven’t had much free time. We all got Friday off and I came home to visit with friends and family. The break has been real nice. You still have to balance free time with work though. Even when you’re off for the weekend you still feel the pressure that you ought to be studying and preparing for next week. The key to pilot training is staying ahead. If you get behind its almost impossible to catch up. Especially when your flying everyday, there’s just not enough time to get everything done unless you’ve been keeping ahead of the game. It’s a tough schedule but I’ve been getting used to it. A bit of good news though. From here until the end of T-1’s we are off early weeks. I’ve been going in at 5 a.m. The baby class gets the earliest jets so as soon as there is a new class in (every three weeks) then the former baby class gets off early week. It hasn’t been horrible really. At least there’s still daylight when the day is over. The toughest for me is going to be these next few weeks. We have 6 p.m. takeoffs for 3.5 hour flights. That’s going to mean some really late nights. Working second shift really. The easier part is that the transition from weekend to work week will be easier since you don’t have to adjust your sleep pattern as much. We’ve got some crews getting pretty close to their first check ride. I guess I’m not too far away. Maybe a week and a half or two. I don’t think this checkride will be quite as tough as some of the ones in the 37 since we’re used to checkrides now. We’ve all got a lot more confidence. That makes checkrides easier because your nerves don’t get rattled quite as easily. The key is going to be knowing the general knowledge and being able to do well on the table top Emergency Procedure. We got Monday off as well so everyone could celebrate the fourth. That makes for two four-day weeks in a row. Should be nice and maybe a little helpful. The new class starts on Wednesday so maybe that’ll take a little heat off of our class as well. Either way we need to get better at this stuff though. One funny story to end this. Thursday our mission got cut short because our jet had a few in-flight malfunctions. Nothing serious but we thought it would be interesting to tell our buds about it back on the ground. It wasn’t to be. When we got back, another crew had already topped our story. They had a bird in the cockpit while they were on final approach. No one knew it was there until the thing flew out from under the instrument panel and up into the IP’s and student’s faces. They had to full stop on the taxiway and let the bird out of the plane. Nothing serious but that must have been pretty exciting to be there. That and they stole our thunder by one-upping us with the bird situation compared to our minor malfunction.
Maverek
It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve written an entry. I haven’t really had much free time lately. After getting back from the July 4th break, they kept us real busy flying while we had good weather. That week went well. I didn’t think I’d enjoy flying the T-1 as much as I do but it can be a lot of fun. We got a taste of what the navigation phase will be like that next weekend. Friday seemed like it was going to be a normal day but when we got back from flying we heard that the entire flight was going to help with the evacuation for Hurricane Dennis. There wasn’t any real danger to anyone living here, Columbus is a long way from the coast, but people were worried about damage to the airplanes. The idea was to send all the T-1’s out to other bases since there’s only enough hanger space at CAFB for the T-38’s and some of the T-37’s. That’s ok, no one is really worried about the T-37’s. Soon anyone could pick one up at a surplus auction for about $25,000. Sounds cheap, but not to mention the maintenance costs, those things burn about $1,000 worth of gas an hour. We’ll either way, the T-1’s were going all over to stay away from Dennis. The planes that our flight took all went to Fort Worth, TX. We were told Friday to show up Saturday with our bags packed for a possible 5 day or so stay. We flew out to Texas on Saturday, flew a regular training mission on Sunday and had a break on Monday. By Tuesday, the storm had passed and we flew back to Columbus. The trip was a lot of fun. There wasn’t much to do except go out and hang around Downtown Fort Worth. We were staying right in the heart of the city in a five star hotel. I didn’t expect Ft. Worth to be as nice as it was but there was plenty to do during the day as well as at night. I don’t like having my weekend taken away from me but I guess the trade-off was even. When we got back on Tuesday it was a normal work day. A lot of us expected to be allowed to go home after such a long trip but there was still a lot to do when we got back. The rest of the week was a normal work week and yesterday was my first real day off of work since coming back from the 4th. Well, I take that back, I did have to go into work yesterday. The Monday we didn’t fly on the trip we had a general knowledge/emergency procedures session for about an hour or so and yesterday I had to go in for two hours to do a pubs check and g.k. session. So I guess today is really the first true day totally away from work that I’ve had. I know this sounds a bit like complaining and it can seem tough if you loose sight of the bigger picture. These last couple weeks were nothing compared to what I’m training to do. I had to work for the weekend in Ft. Worth, TX. Not quite the same as spending four months in the desert. Pilot training is a different atmosphere than the operational Air Force though. Everyone gets by looking forward to the weekends and using them to unwind and prepare for the next week. I guess everyone’s got their own stresses and problems to deal with. I flew a couple times after getting back. There’s wasn’t too much to say about those flights until we started trying to fly back from the training area on Thursday. We had flown up to Memphis to do pattern work at an airfield up there. While we were there we got called back because the weather at Columbus was deteriorating fast. We had to pick our way through a line of thunderstorms to get back and had to hold in one of the areas for a while before we could be recovered to base. The weather was getting real bad and my jet wound up being the last one allowed into Columbus before the storm hit. When we were on final, the storm was just at the edge of the airfield and was approaching fast. It was quite an exciting ride and I was very glad to be back at Columbus and not off at some other airfield for the night. A couple guys in my flight did have to divert and they didn’t get back till much later that night. The weather and the hurricane evacuation threw the schedule off a bit so we had a test on Thursday, an EPQ on Friday. Now we’ve got the next EPQ on Monday and a lot of the crews are going to their first check ride at the end of this next week. There’s been a lot of studying lately and I’ve got quite a bit left to do today. I guess I had better get at it. I’m not sure if I’ll check this week but I probably ought to be ready for it.
Maverek
It’s been a tough two weeks. Last week was ok. I’ve hit a little slump in my flying performance. Since returning from the trip to Texas things haven’t gone as smoothly in the jet. On top of that I had to fly the remaining four flights until the check ride with one of the tougher instructors. Its been very challenging. Last week I flew twice. Each of the rides were difficult and I wound up getting an unsatisfactory overall grade for the flight Thursday. That was a little hard to take. I wanted to try and get through T-1’s without getting an unsat. Oh well, at least I learned from my mistakes. The whole process was a big challenge and improving each flight was difficult. We got back from Texas on a Tuesday and I didn’t fly another transition ride until Tuesday last week so there was whole week where I wasn’t flying what I needed to fly. Thursday was the unsat and then I didn’t fly again until Tuesday of this week. Tuesday’s flight was a bit better than the rest and Wednesday’s flight was even better. I went to my check ride on Thursday. I flew very well but did some stupid things that cost me a couple of downgrades. I messed up a couple of things on ground-ops and called for a checklist a few minutes late. The other two downgrades were for flying related things. So if I had not made those mental mistakes I could have done a bit better. Even though, a 4 downgrade G is still good. If you remember from Tweets, check rides work the same in the T-1. There are about 25 categories of things to grade and each one that you do below an excellent level is a downgrade. If you do a maneuver below a good level it’s two downgrades for one thing. The G is for a good overall. I would have liked to have an Excellent overall but the overall grade doesn’t count for anything. Its only the individual downgrades that count for each students overall rating. I’m very glad to be done with the transition phase of flying. Now we get to move on to the more interesting and fun phase of navigation. It comprises the majority of our training and is also the most intense. We’ll be doing out & backs where we fly out to different places, go and have lunch and then fly back. We’ll also be doing low levels. That’s were we fly a specific route at very low levels. The key is making your turn points on time and being over the target when you’re supposed to be. We only got to fly one of those in the T-37 but we’ll get to fly many more in the T-1. Tomorrow I’m flying from Columbus to Nashville to get some approaches, then down to Chattanooga for lunch. Then we’re going to Dobbins for some more approaches and then back to Columbus. That’s mostly what I’ll be doing from here on. Its all about getting ready for the Navigation check ride. It’s the toughest one and counts the most for the overall rating. I’m really looking forward to these next few months. I know the flying is going to get tougher, but its also going to be more interesting, challenging, and a lot more fun. Plus, we are now in the home stretch. Only 3 months until assignment night when we find out what plane we’ll be getting after training. Can’t wait.
Maverek
Man, these months are really flying by. Just a little longer and I’ll have my day. Shouldn’t look to far ahead though. Still got a ways to go. This week was a bit more fun than the last few have been. It sure was a lot more work though. Monday was our first navigation mission. My partner and I decided to fly up to Nashville, down to Chattanooga, down to Dobbins ARB, and then back to Columbus. The way Nav missions go is one student flies first and flies to a base, does a few instrument approaches there and then continues on to the next base to land. We go to lunch together and then come back to the airport to fly the rest of the mission. Monday I flew second so I flew from Chattanooga to Dobbins and then to Columbus. It wasn’t the smartest thing to do for my first Nav mission. Chattanooga is relatively close to Dobbins and Atlanta has some of the busiest airspace in the nation. I was hardly through with my briefing for the descent checklist when it was time to configure for the first approach. I was caught way behind the jet. It worked out ok though and I rebounded on the next couple of approaches. The trip back home was uneventful. Tuesday we flew from Columbus to Barksdale AFB, LA, and then had lunch in Texarkana, AR. There’s a really good place to eat there. I had better watch it flying this way. I’m going to end up fat and broke from eating lunch allover the place. Wednesday we had a sim and Thursday was a down day. Friday was the most interesting day of the week. We had a flight all planned out and our instructor told us he had plans to go somewhere else. That was ok since we didn’t plan anything that we can’t use for a later flight. The plan was to fly somewhere for approaches and then on to Ft. Worth, TX for lunch. The IP’s mom lives out there and it was here birthday so he wanted to see her if he could. It was a little difficult to plan since we are limited to just over two hours of flying for each student that has to include at least three approaches. We got it done though. My partner and I were a little proud of the plan we had come up with. We had to fly faster than normal to make it happen though and that made us burn a lot more gas than normal. Normally not a problem. But when we got back to Columbus the whole place was covered in thunderstorms. We couldn’t land and had to hold to see if the weather would clear up. It didn’t and we didn’t have enough gas to wait so we had to divert to Millington, TN. We almost weren’t allowed to take off to come back and were facing the possibility of being stuck out on a Friday night. We were allowed to fly back at the last minute after a few crews had already decided to stay because they couldn’t make it back inside of their twelve-hour duty day. I was very happy to be back and I learned to never fly without at least the bare basics to be able to stay overnight again.
Maverek
I haven’t updated this thing in quite a while. I haven’t had that much free time lately though. I guess that’s not really that great of an excuse though. Time is what you make of it just like anything else. But the truth is I have only had about one day off of flying in three weeks. They’ve been keeping us extremely busy. I’ve had either a flight or a sim everyday for three weeks straight now and this weekend I flew each day on cross-country. It really is a shame that I haven’t kept updating this journal because I have been doing some really cool stuff. I’ve started the low-level portion of training. It goes along with navigation and is a big part of the navigation check ride. For the most part, the routes we fly aren’t that interesting but I did get a chance to fly a route that makes a circle around Chattanooga up in the mountains. It’s really cool. Flying five hundred feet off the ground at 270 miles an hour is a lot of fun. It can be dangerous if you’re not doing what you’re supposed to but we take all the steps to ensure that the sortie is as safe as it can be. It takes a couple of flights to get used to the different way of flying. For most of the low-level the instructor flies from the right seat while the student tells the instructor what to do and navigates the route. It gets pretty busy when your that low and that fast. You have to stay ahead of the jet. I’ve been to a lot of different places on regular navigation rides as well. Planning for the flights takes a lot of time and work but it’s a lot of fun to pick at random where you want to fly to. Last week I flew to Dobbins ARB in Marrietta and had lunch with my girlfriend. It didn’t really seem out of the ordinary to do something like that and we were only on the ground for 45 minutes or so but once I really thought about it, that’s a really cool thing to be able to do. This last weekend we went cross-country to Houston, TX. We flew a low-level to get out there and then I flew at night the rest of the way. We flew a couple of nav rides on Saturday, ate in College Station, TX and then came back to Columbus today. For a while there was some question about what we were going to do since the squadron is evacuating for the Hurricane and going west. We figured since we were already out there they might let us stay and meet up with everyone else later. Turns out they wanted us to come back first and we are planning to fly out at six in the morning and I don’t have a clue where we’re going to go. I really wish I wasn’t going, I don’t mind the training or flying, its just that I’m running out of flights before my Navigation check ride. It’s the biggest check ride of all and I’ve only got six more flights to go until I’m there. I think I’ll be ready but everyone could use some down time to get ready first. The weekends are going to be vital from here on. When you’re flying every day like we are, there’s no time to study. The flights take six hours including the time for lunch on the ground, two hours prior to takeoff to prep and brief and an hour to de-brief after the flight. We have to get eight hours of rest and two of the remaining three hours are spent getting ready for the next days flights. I’ve enjoyed the pace and it’s good for continuity of training. It’s easy to build on what you learn since you fly back to back to back. Like anything it’s got it’s ups and downs. Well, I don’t know where I’m going tomorrow but I’m sure it will be interesting and I should have plenty to write about tomorrow.
Maverek
We started up early Monday morning to get out of Columbus and away from the hurricane. Turns out that the storm had weakened a lot by the time it got to Columbus and did minimal damage here. It was still a good reason to get a lot of expensive planes out of town. We wound up going to Colorado Springs, CO which turned out to be a great choice. The weather was great and the temperature was even better. We had Tuesday off and a lot of us went around and did some stuff around town. I went to the Garden of the Gods, which is a beautiful park, and also to the top of Pikes Peak. It sure is hard to breath up there. Wednesday we flew back and got a little training in. It was tough to go from being on one cross-country and go straight into another but I can’t complain too much. Any time away from Columbus is time well spent. We got back and didn’t really do much flying the rest of the week. Friday was a half-day and then we were allowed to enjoy a long weekend. I was almost called back to do some stuff on Saturday but thankfully I had signed out properly, which I sometimes forget to do, and was allowed to stay. Otherwise I would have had to come right back. The weekend was nice and when we got back it was back to normal everyday flying. I am right now one flight away from my navigation check-ride and I’m scheduled to do so on Wednesday. The original plan was to fly me on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday and check on Monday. As luck would have it though, on our flight Thursday we hit a bird and had to stay out for the night until the plane could be inspected prior to the flight home. That meant that I didn’t have to fly Friday and my check-ride was pushed back from Monday to Wednesday giving me two more precious days to prepare. The pace has been pretty grueling lately and hasn’t really left much downtime for studying and check-ride preparation, so any extra time is a blessing. I watched a little football yesterday but most of my time this weekend has been spent studying up for this check-ride. It’s the biggest check-ride in pilot training and has the most say over what I get out of pilot training so I’ve been trying my best to get myself as ready as I can be to pass this ride and do well. Our instructors have been very helpful getting us ready and giving us the information we need to know to do well. I’m not too worried about it right now but I’m sure I will be the day before. I’m not too worried about the flying part of it. I’ve been given some really good instruction and shown great techniques to get me ready for that portion. Plus flying has been going really well for me lately. Things keep getting easier and easier. I do still make little mistakes quite often but not always. I think I can minimize those enough to do well on the flying portion. It’s the ground evaluation that is taking up most of my prep time right now. There’s no way to thoroughly study everything you could possibly be asked on this ride. You are responsible for nearly every bit of information covered to this point. It’s a lot of stuff but there are techniques to make sure you study the most likely questions. I think I’ll be ready. I would like to get a 2 or 3 E if possible. I think I can do it but it’ll take a lot of work. After this ride, there’s really not much left to pilot training. We are getting really close to the end as a class. Until then, I’ll keep working hard.
Maverek
These last two weeks have been pretty eventful. Last week started out pretty rough. I was supposed to fly on Monday, have Tuesday to prepare, and the have my check-ride on Wednesday. The sortie was actually a combination of two different flights. The plan was to fly a low level and stop for lunch in Chattanooga, and then fly the other flight along with some approaches back home to Columbus. The low-level was ok. It was a tough low level, but went fine. Some of the points were hard to find though. I did a VFR leg and flew over my grandparent’s farm. I had time to call and tell them I’d be flying over before we took off so they saw me. I was a little early though so they were a little surprised to see me when they did. I wanted to loop back around but the IP wanted to get on the ground since we were already flying over the required time for the sortie. The next flight is the one that didn’t go as well. I did most things ok but I tried to fly a couple of approaches without the right nav-aids tuned in on my instruments. I got an unsat for that flight so I had to repeat it before I could go check. I flew the next day and did even worse. I don’t think I’ve ever flown worse than that in my life. I don’t know what my problem was but I just couldn’t concentrate. I wound up hooking that ride as well. I was given a day off to get everything straight before my next flight. I guess it helped. I flew the next flight pretty well. There were a few things I could have done better but overall I was pleased with the flight. That was on Friday. I studied up over the weekend and got ready for my check ride on Monday. Monday rolled around and I was prepped and ready to go. I had my primary plan and my secondary plan and a backup for both of those as well all planed out. I got to the squadron as early as I could to get ready for the flight. I finished getting everything to do with about a minute to spare and went though the briefing without a problem. The whole flight was going ok and I thought I had everything nailed. I found the entry point for the low-level and had the low-level entry checklist done and was ready to go. About a minute into the flight I looked at the map to see where I should be at about a minute into the low-level and then looked at the clock. I had forgotten to start the clock at the entry point. I thought for sure I had hooked the flight right there. I almost freaked out trying to think what to do and then decided to just hack over the next point and use my leg times from there. The rest of the low-level was pretty tough without really knowing what my time should be. I was having to wag the whole thing but in the end found all but one of the turn-points and never went outside of the corridor and I wound up over the exit point about 30 seconds early. Inside a minute is the squadron standard. That’s pretty lenient but it’s the standard. Still, I thought I had hooked my check-ride only 10 minutes into it. I finished the flight without any other mishaps except for a few minor mistakes. My overall grade was a 5G. I was a little disappointed but very happy to have passed and glad to be done with the navigation phase. It just puts me even closer to graduation. One thing I have definitely learned though is never count your-self out. I’ve only flown one check-ride in pilot training out of the 5 of them so far that I was sure that I didn’t hook. I wish I could have done better. The slip up on the low-level cost me two downgrades. Without those I would have one of the better ones in the class. Some of the guys have been doing real well. The rest of the week I didn’t fly at all. They have been waiting for the rest of the class to finish up before they start us in on the next block of training. The next block is mission familiarization. In mission fam we get introduced to formation flying in larger planes, air refueling (practice), and air-drop (practice as well). It should be fun and since there are only four flights of each, it shouldn’t take too long. It is a lot more stuff to know though, so I don’t want it to sound like my work is over or anything. My mom misunderstood me about the navigation check-ride. I emphasized it so much she thought I had my wings after it was over. I won’t have those until graduation and until then nothing is certain except that I’ve got a lot of work to finish up.
Well, its been another two week span since I’ve updated this journal again. Sorry about that but this time I’ve got a good excuse. I didn’t fly for two weeks and a day after my navigation check-ride. That’s the longest I’ve been out of the cockpit except for when we were in academics. It was a nice break but I kind of feel slighted a tiny bit. All that hard work getting ahead should have paid off and given me a nice break when I finished a month or so ahead of schedule. Now I’ll finish two weeks before graduation so I still don’t have much to complain about. I flew three times this last week. The first four flights of the mission fam phase are all basic formation flights. We do a lot of the same stuff that we did in Tweet form except that we don’t get near as close in the T-1. It’s a nice change and it gets you back into the mindset of military type flying. For now I’ve still got to finish the last basic form flight and then I’ll have four air refueling missions and four airdrop missions. All of these are just simulated. The T-1 can’t really do mid-air refueling or drop stuff but the planes that we will be going to soon can. That’s why the phase is called mission familiarization (fam). Even though its all pretend, the procedures are still the same and will provide a good basis for when we have to learn how to do the real thing. One change for us though, is that all the flying after navigation is done in the right seat. It’s a real challenge to remember the different responses and responsibilities when your flying on the other side of the cockpit. The reason for the change is the same as the purpose for the mission fam block. When we get out of training all of our flying will be done as co-pilots. Our jobs will be to do whatever the pilot/aircraft commander tells us to do. To sit in the left seat in an operational jet you have to have a certain number of hours to upgrade to aircraft commander. Both pilots are fully capable of flying the aircraft but it takes experience to be able to handle the responsibilities of commanding a mission, coordinating a crew and being the sole responsible person on board. I’ve heard that the Air Force has stopped training people as pilots and copilots. The new concept is that both crewmembers at the controls are pilots and only one is acting as the pilot in command/aircraft commander. I guess this is starting to get too detailed. The important thing is that even though our training has been mainly geared towards acting like the pilot in command, for the first couple years of our operational lives, our job will be to do only what we are told to by the actual pilot in command. Anyway, it’s a different role to have to get used to. Especially in pilot training where they still expect you to make all the decisions. I wish there were more I could say about airdrop and refueling but same as form, you can’t really understand it until you see it. One thing that has been nice lately have been the weekends. Last weekend was a three-day weekend because we didn’t fly the last two days of the fiscal year. We were given Friday as a down day. Last week was a full five-day week but we got Monday off to celebrate Columbus Day. I celebrated by watching a documentary on Columbus. I went downtown to the Columbus Day ceremony. We had a special flyover on base to honor Mr. Columbus’s memory and to recognize the significance of his great deed, and………….well……….I’m making it all up. I didn’t do any of that stuff and couldn’t have if I wanted to. I don’t have any clue why we get these days off. I’m not complaining. I like having days off. The way it normally goes for stateside military is that we get all federal holidays off, including Columbus Day. I think its ridiculous that it’s a holiday, but I’m glad it is since I get to have some much needed time off. I should be flying a few times this next week. At least twice even though it is a four-day week. Hopefully I’ll have some interesting things to write about.
Maverek
These last two weeks I’ve flown a few times. I finished the Basic Formation block and have flown one airdrop missions and two aerial refueling missions. Both AR and Airdrop are more interesting than basic form. We have to finish the basic form block before any AR or Airdrop because you have to learn the basics before you can start on the more complicated stuff. Once we complete the first block though, we are opted for both types of missions. Usually we fly formation out & backs and do either AR or Airdrop on the first half and the opposite on the back half. If I fly airdrop on the first half, then we’ll land at an outbase have lunch and then my partner will fly AR on the back half. It’s a lot easier to plan than Navigation flights were. Plus, we have four people to help get everything together in the morning instead of just two. Airdrop is just like a regular low-level except you fly it with another jet on your wing and instead of just turning over certain points on time, you also have to simulate the airdrop maneuvers which involves slowing down at a certain time to be over the target at a certain time, simulate the drop maneuver and speed back up for the escape. It makes the low-level itself a lot more interesting and challenging. Right now they seem even easier. That has a lot to do with the fact that we have more experience now but also with the weather. We’ve been having unbelievably good weather lately and the temperatures have finally started to drop off. The key to AR is being at the air refueling control point at the air refueling control time (The ARCP at the ARCT). That’s what is stressed to us in this phase of training. We perform the maneuvers in blocks of airspace called Anchors or Tracks. They’re just really large blocks of air that are blocked off while we’re using it so we can perform our training. These same anchors can be used for actual refueling though. The “tanker” orbits at the ARCP and when the “receiver” calls IP inbound from a point usually 70 miles away, the tanker turns to go meet the receiver. At a computed distance the Tanker turns to wind up about 1-3 miles in front of the receiver and 1000 ft. above. From there the receiver closes in and we simulate passing gas. Its interesting to do this stuff but its even more interesting that we’ll be doing this stuff for real in a few months. We are two weeks away from assignment night and our drop will be coming out this week. The drop is a list of planes that will be divided among the T-1 students at Columbus, Vance and Laughlin; the three T-1 training bases. No one is exactly sure how they will decide who gets what between each base but we know that the three flight commanders from each base will call each other and teleconference to hash things out and decide who gets what and we’ll all find out Friday November 4 at about 5:30 p.m. Everyone is pretty excited to find out what our drop is going to be. We’ve also all been busy getting stuff ready for graduation. Its ridiculous the amount of stuff we have to do just to get out of here. I guess we’ll all be glad when we look back on it. Right now, though, its just more stuff we’ve got to worry about on top of flying. We did find out one really cool thing about assignment night though. Its going to coincide with career day where all different kinds of planes fly in from around the Air Force to tell us about their mission and what its like to fly their plan. Not that it’ll help with our decisions but it will be nice to talk to guys flying the plane that we are going to fly since we’ll know by then. It will also make for a very fun assignment night since all those extra people will be there. The last time a career day happened on assignment night weekend it was a blast. So, no matter how things turn out, at least I’ll be able to have a great time. Another cool thing worth mentioning, I’m going Saturday to take a few tests for civilian ratings. For $100, when I graduate I’ll get my commercial, multi-engine, and instrument ratings along with a type rating in the Beech 400 (T-1). I know that doesn’t mean a lot to most people so I’ll put it this way. All of that stuff is worth about $30,000 or more if I had to do it on my own. It won’t help me much for the next 10 years of my life but if I ever plan on flying outside the Air Force then I’ll need all that stuff and it would cost much more later on. Cool huh?
Maverek
This last week has been a bit interesting. I only flew twice. The first flight was on Monday. I didn’t find out that I was going to be flying until Sunday afternoon and I was in Georgia at the time. I was scheduled to fly an airdrop mission. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem but without any prior notice I didn’t have the low-level charts I needed to plan the flight. To make it a bit more interesting, the flight was supposed to be early in the morning so it meant a 0530 showtime which meant I didn’t have much time to plan if I wanted to get the kind of sleep I needed. Luckily I got a hold of a buddy of mine as well as an IP who happened to be in the flightroom doing work and I was able to get the charts I needed to plan. I was in charge of the briefing as well. A formation brief is a lot more detailed than a normal due to the fact that formation flights are more complex than single ship missions. I did ok though and the flight went pretty well. I really enjoy the formation airdrops. I really hope that I get to fly a plane that does that sort of mission operationally. Monday evening after the de-brief we found out what the likelihood of that happening. Our drop came down. The drop is the list of aircraft that will be divided among the 06-02 classes at Columbus, Vance, and Laughlin. To my dissapointment there were only 2 C-130’s in the drop. I still stand a chance of getting one but not as much of a chance I would like. There are 35 planes total in the drop for the 35 students who will graduate in class 06-02. The 35 jets come out to being 15 different choices to rank order. We were given a sheet Friday that we had to fill out with our preference listed from 1st to 15th. It was a little difficult to do because there’s a few planes that I would really like to fly and there are some that I really don’t want to fly. My first choice wasn’t difficult but from there it got a bit harder. I split it among the planes I don’t want and the planes that I do and tried to sort it out from there. The other thing to think about though, is the location. Some of my choices were based mostly on that. For instance, my 9th choice was a KC-135 to Wichita, KS. My 10th choice was an E-8 to Macon, GA and my 11th choice was the same plane as my 9th only the location was Grand Forks, ND. So I would rather fly the KC-135 than the E-8 but I would rather fly the E-8 and be in Georgia than fly the KC-135 and live in North Dakota. The whole thing, 1-15 went pretty much like that and it wasn’t really fun filling it out. Our assignment night is this Friday. I’m excited but I’m also nervous. I try not to think about it too much. Either way I’ll be relieved once Friday is over with. I could wind up very happy or a bit disappointed. On Friday we had a group discussion with a lot of IP’s who have flown the different airplanes in our drop. We got to hear a lot about what it’s like to fly each one, what the different bases are like, and what kind of follow-on assignments we could possibly get afterwards. That’s one great thing that’s also not so great about the Air Force is that if you get an assignment that you don’t like that much you stand a chance of getting a better one only 3 years later. But, you have to move around every 3 years and no matter how good your current assignment is you know it will be over in 3 years. After flying Thursday, I’ve only got 6 more flights left until the end of pilot training. According to the schedule I’m supposed to fly every day through Thursday and have my check-ride Thursday. After that I’ll only have two co-pilot rides left and then I’m done. The co-pilot rides don’t have any requirements to meet so normally if you can string them together with the student you fly with, you can go a lot further than we normally do. I’m looking forward to using mine to visit some friends down in Florida. This is going to be a very busy week and I hope it ends well. I’ll find out where all this hard work is going to get me and if I worked hard enough to get what I want. Either way I’ll know what I’m flying for the next three years. All the IP’s always tell us its not what you fly or where you are that matters, its what you make of it. I guess that’s true with a lot of things. Wish me luck.
Maverek
I GOT IT!!!. I can’t believe it but its true. For the next three years of my life I’ll be serving the USAF flying the mighty C-130 HERCULES. I’ll be headed to Dyes AFB, TX. The base is in Abilene, TX about two hours west of Ft. Worth/Dallas on Interstate 20. Monday started the week off with the first of four flights for the week. I wound up flying every day this last week except for Friday. I flew two airdrop missions and one air-refueling mission and then had my check-ride on Thursday. On Monday I flew airdrop on the route that goes in a circle around Chattanooga up in the mountains and through some of the valleys. It was an amazing day for such a scenic flight. The visibility was limitless and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It had to have been one of the nicest flying days I’ve seen in quite some time. One interesting note from this flight was that someone e-mailed me that day and said that he had seen two jets fly over and that he decided to write since he had been reading the website for a while. I asked where he saw the jets and whether or not it was a formation that he saw. He named the town and described the formation as well as the general time that the jets were there. Everything matched up and I’m sure that he saw me fly over and decided to write me, not knowing that it was me, only to find out that indeed it was. I couldn’t believe it, but I guess stranger things have happened. Tuesday I finished the AR block and Wednesday I flew my last real training sortie finishing the airdrop block. On Thursday we had our check-ride. I checked at the same time as three other people. We could have drawn three different profiles. AR/AR, AR/Airdrop, or Airdrop/Airdrop. We wound up getting double airdrop so the first two guys flew formation airdrop against each other on the first half and the plan was for myself and the other student to fly the same thing on the back-half from the out-base. That was the plan. The first half of the plan went well up until the end. The other jet had a malfunction on the end of the low-level and wound up having to abort the mission and return to Columbus rather than continuing to the out-base. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to check that day after all that but we wound up getting another jet and completed both missions. I thought the flight went real well and everyone was tired when we got back so the de-brief was brief and I wound up getting one of my best check-ride scores yet. I got a 2 downgrade Excellent overall. I was very pleased. It was a nice thing to achieve but in the end didn’t mean anything since the assignments had been finalized on Monday. I turned my dream-sheet in last Sunday and our Flight Commander was busy all day long Monday talking with the Flight Commanders from Vance and Laughlin to sort out all the assignments. No one knew it until Friday night but there was some major dealing going on. I went home Thursday night and relaxed trying not to sweat it out too much until 5:00 p.m. Friday. That’s when our assignment ceremony started. Due to the luck of being first alphabetically I was the first to receive my assignment. I stepped forward in front of the large crowd, listened to the roast that had been written by my classmates, and then turned around to see what the big screen predicted for my future. I waited for the reaction of my classmates before I looked. Before I saw it, I already knew it was good. Everyone exploded, but no one was more excited in that room that night than I was. I guess I made a fool of myself yelling and jumping up and down like I did, but I didn’t care then and I don’t care now. After all the hardship, all the shortfalls, all the scrambling to get back to the top, I actually did it. I got my first choice of assignments out of UPT. I absolutely couldn’t believe it. Turns out I must have had some of the IP’s pulling for me because in our original drop, Columbus was only supposed to get one of the C-130’s. There was some trading going on for us to get both of them and I’m pretty sure that mine was the one that had to be traded for. The surprising thing for me is the fact that the planes that were traded were C-17’s. Planes that were very high on everyone’s list. All I can say is that I owe my Flight Commander a big debt of gratitude. Saturday was fun too. Our assignment night was on the same weekend as career day so Saturday everyone got to go out to the flight line to enjoy our own private air-show. There was a C-130 there so I spent most of my time over there talking to the pilots and looking at my future. I did get a chance to look at the other planes though and we also saw the F-16 west coast demonstration team perform. That was pretty amazing to see the things that plane can do. This next week should be short and fun. I should have my last flight on Wednesday in time for a four-day weekend.
Maverek