Almost Tweet Complete

The T-37 Tweet
(My current office, not for long though)

Well, this week could be my last week of flying the T-37 Tweet. I have six formation flights and a formation checkride to complete and it's a good thing too, since the Tweet's air conditioning unit is nonexistant and the weather is creeping into the 90's (during the coming months it will get up to the 110+ range). We are scheduled to have Tweet graduation on May 14th. The 17th-19th will be spent at Holloman AFB, NM getting our centrifuge training out of the way. This is where we go and get high-G tolerance training done. They basically put you in this little pod that simulates the inside of the cockpit and accelerate it so fast it simulates up to 9 G's. This is like feeling 9 of your body weights on you, which would be about 1500 pounds! It's pretty intense to say the least.

Anyway, once we complete that, we will start academic training for the T-38 Talon. About three weeks later we hit the flightline! Woohoo! I can't wait!

The T-38 Talon

(My new office, in a few weeks)

4 down, one to go!

Well, I only have 6 total flights left in the Tweet!!!! Holy cow!

This week was quite an interesting week. The first two days were horrible cause we got weathered and sat in the flight room for hours on end, doing standups and studying. Actually, I wish we could have studied. It mostly just turned into slacking off and telling stories and wasting time. Oh well, Wednesday we finally got a break with the weather and were able to fly.

My flight on Wednesday was horrible. I can't put it any more simply than that. I should have busted for a number of things, but the IP I flew with was feeling generous and told me there would be nothing worth while about busting me on that flight. It was my second to last flight of the advanced contact block, so I had one more before the checkride so he just let some stuff go that probably he shouldnt have. Thank you so much! Haha, but he was right, nothing would have come from busting me, and the fact that I had another flight made it better.

The flight itself was my worst flight yet. I busted the area by 0.1 miles and almost oversped the flaps twice... Stuff I've never done before. There was a really bad cloud deck right in the middle of our areas, so I was trying to complete aerobatics and maneuvers in the holes as I found them. It made for some sporty flying. Not that I blame it completely on the weather though, not flying a contact flight for 15 days up to that point didnt help either. Oh well, I made it.

Thursday's flight was only about half as bad as the other one. I was definately rusty on everything and really needed these two flights to knock off the rust before my checkride. This flight could have gone a little better, but I'm not complaining after what I went through the day before. Thursday's weather was the nicest weather we've had in weeks, which made it alot better for aerobatics, thankfully.

Finally, Friday I got to fly my advanced contact checkride. I originally was supposed to fly it about two weeks ago, so I'm happy to finally be able to get it done. I ended up flying a much much better sortie than the past two, and passed with only 4 downgrades. Two of them I got cause I was an idiot and started my cloverleaf maneuver low on energy so I scraped the bottom of the area boundaries. One was because I didnt flare enough in one of my landings, and the other for a power on stall recovery being too soon. All pretty fair, and I'm just glad to be done with the thing. On a scale out of 100%, Wednesday's flight was 100% bad, Thursday's 40% bad, and today's only about 10% bad. Not too bad for not flying contact for a few weeks.

Anyway, like I said in the beginning, this leaves me with 4 checkrides done, 1 to go for formation. I have 6 flights left in the Tweet, and should be done in the next week or two. Thank the lord, cause the heat is starting to increase, and the A/C in the jet doesn't exactly exist. It's gets hot as hell in that thing! Well, that does it for this week, only one or two more, and then it's back to square one in the T-38!!

Formation SOLO today!

yes, I know they are VN (Vance AFB) Tweets, but I couldn't find any ENJJPT pictures of a two ship formation.

HOLY FRIGGIN COW! Today, quite possibly, could have been the best day of pilot training yet! First off, it's a FRIDAY, which, in itself makes it better than every other day. Second, I am on the schedule to fly not only once, but twice! And even better yet, my second sortie of the day is not only another formation sortie, but one where me and an IP each fly our own jet out, so I get to fly solo on his wing!

The first flight was my seventh formation flight, once again with my wingman Jeff. We did all the normal maneuvers with me leading out and then switching halfway so I could practice on the wing. He led us back in for a formation approach to the overhead pattern, where we just broke up and flew single ship into land.

Then I got into the flight room to debrief that flight, and we were already at brief time for my second flight. These new (as of when we started) turn times (times between our first group of flights and the second group of flights) are pretty rediculous, cause they only allow for about 15 minutes of debriefing your sortie before you have to brief for the next one. It really cuts out on alot of feedback, but I guess they have their reasons for maintenance for scheduling it this way. Anyhow, Captain Johnson and I brief, and its pretty short because this will be the sixth formation flight I will have flown with him so he can concentrate on only what would change from the last flight.

Once we step to the jet, I get all strapped in by myself, go through my off and on circles (where I turn all the equipment off, and then only what I need to check back on) and wait for him on the radio, channel 1, because he is Flight Lead and will be checking us in. Once he checks us in, I have clearance to start up my engines. Once that's done, I wait again on Ground Frequency for him to request our clearance to taxi to runway 15L. We taxi out and get positioned on the runway, doing all the appropriate checks along the way in uniform. I am taxiing 150 feet behind him, being careful not to get to close or too far away. In formation, a part of it is being in sequence with your Flight Lead, and in turn, that makes the formation look good. We do all control checks at the same time, all radio changes, and even lower our respective canopies at the same time. It really does make it look good from the outside when it is done together.

Anyhow, we get lined up in formation on the runway, where I am 10 feet from his jet and a few feet back, and watch for his signals for the runup and eventually, brake release. From that point on, my sole job is to stay right where I am and do everything that he does. I raise the gear and flaps on his command, change radios on his command, and do this at the same time as keeping my jet about 3 feet from his off his wing. It's one of the greatest feelings I have ever had knowing that he trusted me and my flying skills enough to let me fly on his wing. The Flight Lead really does put his life in your hands, expecting you not to hit him. In turn, you put your life in his hands, because he is responsible for keeping you from hitting the ground, other aircraft, and keeping the formation inside the area boundaries doing what you need to be doing.

Once we get into the area, we do all the normal formation maneuvers, starting with some wingwork on each side. This is basically just flying modified Lazy 8 maneuvers, over and over. Then we do some Echelon Turns, where he turns away from me and i tuck in just beneath his jet in a 60 degree 2-G turn at about 5-10 feet from his jet. We do some break-outs and rejoins, then a pitch out with a Anti G Straining Maneuver (AGSM - squeezing out abdomen, butt, legs, and calves to keep the blood in our heads during high G turns), and then I practice some overshooting rejoins. On one of my turning rejoins I decide to overshoot (where I am coming in too fast and go under/behind his jet to lose some of the airspeed) but I do it by performing a barrel roll around his jet! It was pretty damn cool!

Once we get done with all of this, we start heading back home and he leads me into the pattern for some overheads, and I get to fly my last solo patterns and landings in the Tweet. Not a bad way to end my solo Tweet career!

After the flight was over, H Flight was scheduled to get fitted for G-Suits. We will start wearing these in the T-38 Talon when we are Tweet Complete next month! The G-Suit helps you recognize when to start your AGSM when you begin to pull multiple G's. Considering we can pull up to 7 G's in the T-38, this should come in handy! It's basically a lower abdomen/leg pressure suit that inflates with air when you begin to pull G's. Anyhow, we finally got ours fitted to us and I can't wait to start wearing them! And just for the record, she told me to put a fist in the front so she could fit it correctly! HAHA!

The last thing that went well today (so far) is I got my stitches out of my lip! Woohoo!

Finally got to fly today!

Well, after a week of not being able to fly due to scheduling and weather cancels from all the thunderstorms, we finally got to fly at least one formation flight today. My wingman, Jeff Searcy, and I have flown 4 of the first 5 formation flights together, and we are beginning to learn each other's techniques. This is a huge part of formation flying because once you learn how your wingman flies, you know what to expect from their roll rates and how rapid they put on the "G"s, which helps alot when you are trying to stay 3 feet away from his wingtip while flying aerobatic maneuvers.

We also took our last phase test today, which covered advanced contact and formation information. I ended up doing well, but better have considering I studied hardcore for the past few weeks on the information. Now that that phase test is out of the way, we are able to take the advanced contact and formation checkride whenever we finish all the flights leading up to it.

We also finally started the last portion of the T-37 academics, which happens to be weather, and should be taking the test on it next week. It really feels like we are coming up on the end of our Tweet training, finally, and I cant wait until we start T-38 training next month!

I also came across three badass pictures and I figured I'd share them with you...enjoy!

Up and Running!

Well, I gave in and made my own blog. This will replace the emails I send out with that word document to everybody. I figured, on here I can post pictures and make it sort of interactive, while at the same time being able to post shorter posts so I don't put you to sleep from the bi-monthly updates being to long.

The older posts are already on the page, and I actually added some photos to all of them, so feel free to go back and look through some of them. Hope you enjoy reading about the stresses and amazements of pilot training!

-Jason

15 Apr 07

This is my flight and some IP's from our solo party, keep reading to know more!



Wow, I didn’t realize it had been over two months since the last time I wrote. Let’s see what I can catch you up with.

Overall, I have completed the vast majority of my training in the T-37 Tweet. Since the last I wrote, I’ve passed both my instrument checkride and my Low Level Navigation checkride! I have two more flights before I will have my Advanced Contact (aerobatics, etc) checkride, and then all that is left is formation flights! If all goes as planned, I should be “Tweet Complete” in a little less than a month! Holy cow has it gone that fast!?

We have flown some pretty exciting flights since the last email, including a cross country flight to Colorado Springs where we got to ski and snowboard at Breckenridge Ski Lodge for a day and some day trips to College Station, Abilene, and Amarillo, TX.





These are all flights that are part of our Instrument training, learning how to fly by just looking inside the cockpit at the gauges and instruments and navigating from place to place like airline pilots do, and really, it’s pretty boring. Basically you just takeoff, climb to your cruising altitude, and point at the next airport and sit there for an hour, then descend and land. Sometimes when we just fly out to the local practice areas, we get to practice different maneuvers like a wingover and aileron roll, which is pretty cool because you aren’t looking outside at all, but you know you are flying inverted at some point. For the most part, the instrument phase is pretty tough on people and usually has the most checkride failures due to all the millions of rules, techniques, and ways to fly everything that we have to fly, not to mention the extensive ground evaluation at the end of the flight that can cover anything out of numerous publications with over 1000 pages combined. Basically, the things we learn in the instrument phase we will use for the rest of our flying careers, whereas the stuff we learn in aerobatics we may not do again after training, depending on your airframe. I flew my instrument checkride sometime last month, and did pretty good, only getting four downgrades during the entire thing. A downgrade is when your grade in one category goes from an Excellent to a Good, or from a Good to a Fair. You start with all Excellents, and as you make mistakes or errors, the IP will change it to a Good, and then to a Fair, etc. There are about 50 categories you get graded on, and can pass the checkride with something like up to 20 downgraded, as long as you don’t get one or two in the same category. That being said, getting four isn’t that bad, although I could have done better. Oh well, it’s over and as they say, “A kill’s a kill.” Once the instrument portion was out of the way, the three things we had left was advanced contact, low level navigation, and formation, all of which are awesome! We had already started some of the advanced contact flights, so we made a push to get a lot of those completed.

In the advanced contact phase we have learned all the different aerobatic maneuvers and get to fly them all the time, even when we fly solo! We’ve learned the Lazy 8, Aileron Roll, Barrel Roll, Chandelle, Loop, Immelmann, Cuban 8, Cloverleaf, and Split S. My favorite ones are the Cloverleaf and Cuban 8 which are two “over the top” maneuvers. We still practice all the maneuvers we learned in the beginning because we will have to perform them on our Advanced Contact checkride that I will fly this coming week, things like spins, traffic pattern stalls, power on and off stalls, slow flight, and all the basic normal and emergency (for practice) patterns for landings. Right in the middle of these flights, we started and finished the low level navigation phase.

ENJJPT (the program I’m in) is the only pilot training program that actually has more than just one low level flight, and we actually have to pass a checkride on it at the end of the phase. We have to because the vast majority of us will be flying some kind of attack aircraft that we may have to fly the same type of flight in combat later on. Low Level Navigation is a flight where we take off and fly VFR (by looking outside and navigating ourselves by looking at where we are over the ground) to a certain point and then fly a 45 minute route from point to point at 500 feet above the ground and at 210 knots (245 miles per hour). We spend hours preparing our charts with the route we will fly, picking out certain bridges or intersections or lakes as turn points, and designating a target that we have to identify and fly over at the time we calculate. We also have to see and avoid the towers along the way, and stay away from cities and towns, and recognize what altitude we are flying at just by looking outside. The common technique is if you can see the legs on the cows, you are about 500 feet, but when you can start seeing the, um, reproductive organs, you are too low, hahahaha! These flights are by far the coolest thing we have done up to this point, and I loved flying low level navigation flights! I ended up taking my checkride just a couple weeks ago, and once again got four downgrades and passed, but definitely was a little upset because I could have scored less than that but just had bad luck with the winds that pushed me a little off course during the flight. When you plan your charts, you “spin” the winds to figure out what drift correction you must fly in order to stay on course, but if the winds are not the same as what you spun, your drift correction isn’t going to work. Oh well, a kill’s a kill. The entire low level phase only lasts 8 flights and about 2 weeks, so it went as fast as it came and I already miss it. The good thing is that once that was done, we started flying formation flights! When I said low level is the coolest thing we’ve done, well, now formation is!

Flying 3 feet from another aircraft is the most intense and most awesome thing I have ever done! It makes it even better when I know it is one of the guys in my flight, my good friend Jeff who graduated from the Air Force Academy, and knowing I am putting complete trust in him and his IP when I am flying on his wing that he isn’t going to drive us straight into the ground. And even better, halfway through the flight we switch and I take the roll as “Lead” where then he flies on my wing. We get to fly through a complete profile of maneuvers and aerobatics in formation, and then come back and do a formation approach and landing. We’ve flown four flights so far and we are getting better and better each day. We have about 15 more flights in formation before the checkride, and after that, we are done with the Tweet and will move on to the T-38 Talon! Hopefully I finish a little bit early and will be able to take some leave to come back to FL to visit everyone. I’m getting really excited about being done with Tweets, but don’t look forward to starting back at the bottem of the totem pole in knowledge and skill. I just hit my 100 flight hour mark last week and really feel like I know what I’m doing up there in the air, and feel completely comfortable flying solo and knowing so much information about the jet and stuff, but when we changeover to the new jet, we start back at square one. This is what we will do for the rest of our careers, once we feel confident in one jet, we get switched to a new one haha, at least for the next couple of years it will be that way.

Well that catches up all the flying stuff, and really, that’s the majority of what has been going on with me. The weather here lately has been really weird, one day getting up to 85 degrees and sunny, and the next being like 40 with thunderstorms and rain/hail that reminds me of a FL thunderstorm. Just earlier this weekend, my flight finally got to throw our “Solo Party” in celebration of everyone going solo a while ago. We had it pretty late because we were waiting for everyone to get back in town so we weren’t missing any of our IP’s. The solo party is where the IP’s all get to tell funny stories about the students and give them their first callsign. The students just sit there during the stories and listen, and if they talk or argue, the rule is they have to take a shot of liquor. Doesn’t sound that hard right? Well, another rule is that the stories that they IP’s tell only have to be 10% true, and some of them come up with some pretty funny and embarrassing additions! Needless to say, I sat up there and tried to keep my mouth shut, but failed twice, haha, but did get my first callsign. If you remember in my last letter, I told you about how I busted, or failed, my very first solo flight. Well, the IP’s decided this was going to stick with me for my career and made up my callsign off of it: B.U.S.T.ER. It stands for Busted Under Solo Training (ER just to make it a name). I guess it makes for a good story later on, and I like it. Haha!

Well, I think that pretty much covers the past two months, and seeing as I finished my taxes yesterday I guess I get to relax a little bit and study some formation information for the rest of the day. I hope everyone has a great weekend and enjoyed reading my letter, and hopefully ill be able to visit in May. Have a great weekend!

PS. At the end of the solo party, i was getting pushed into the pool with my camera and phone in my pockets, so I wrestled my way out of the attacker's grip and ran right into a sharp edge on the BBQ grill. Needless to say, the night ended with me going to the hospital for 5 stitches.

10 Feb 07

Wow, it’s been a few months since I was able to sit down and write what we have been up to out here in Texas! Hopefully everyone is doing well and had fun during the holidays and new years!

Basically, we have dove head first into flying and have about 45-50 hours in the jet so far up to this point! We fly once or twice a day, weather permitting, and have even gotten to solo the jet a few times already! My initial solo was back in December, on the last Friday before we all got released for Christmas break. It was pretty damn fun, even though I got a “surface to air missile” from the IP’s who control the runway we use. On your initial solo, you have to fly for about 45 minutes with an IP, and he just makes sure you are safe enough to go up alone, and then you land and drop him off, taxi back around and take off to fly around the pattern until you have to land from being low on fuel. It was one of the best and worst days in pilot training so far, because I made a mistake on one of my patterns that resulted in getting told to “go around” from the controller during one of my landings and then they instructed me to land immediately. I “busted” my initial solo! Yikes, this was not good! Haha, I can laugh about it now, and I know it will make for a good story later, but it sucked then and I definitely learned some pretty important things.

Since then, I have gotten to go solo a few more times out to fly around the practice areas doing a few of the maneuvers we have learned like loops and aileron rolls! It is the GREATEST feeling in the world being up there alone, with no IP sitting next to you talking your ear off telling you everything you could be doing better! Ha ha ha, it really makes it so much easier to concentrate on flying and paying attention to what is going on and keeping your SA (situational awareness) up when you are solo. I have 3 solo hours so far, and will be getting more this coming week to practice all the advanced aerobatic maneuvers we learned last week. When I go, I get to do loops, aileron rolls, barrel rolls, chandelles, split S’s, lazy eights, Cuban eights, Immelmanns, and cloverleaf’s! It’s going to be amazing!

We have also gone through almost the entire academics portion of the training for the T-37. We went though classes for basic and advanced instruments, navigation, low level navigation, and the only class we have left is aviation weather. This past test, low level nav, gave five of us problems though, resulting in us going through a remediation class and having to take the test again. It sucked, but we all passed the second time around and everything is ok.

This past Monday, 5 Feb 06, I finally got to complete the first stage of training by passing my first checkride. During the T-37 phase, we have 5 checkrides that we must pass to move on to the next phase of flying. They are contact, instrument, formation, low level, and advanced contact. Each of them consist of a preflight brief with a Check Section Instructor Pilot for an hour and fifteen minutes where they go over the rules and objectives, and then you go out and fly with them for an hour and a half or so doing all the maneuvers, patterns, landings, etc. that we have been doing for the past few months during those flights. When you get back, you go through about 2 more hours of a ground evaluation that consists of your flight debrief, general knowledge questions, emergency procedure questions, discussion about the different systems of the aircraft, spins, ejection, local procedures, rules, and all that fun stuff. It takes about a total of 5-6 hours to go through the entire checkride and is a huge part of the training, so everybody is fairly nervous going into it. I was originally scheduled to do my checkride about two weeks ago, but we had some bad weather and they kept getting pushed back, and then the radar at the ATC building was having problems, so it did give me extra time to study which was nice.

Now that the first checkride is done, we get to move on to advanced contact (aerobatics) and more instrument flight. We are beginning to plan our first cross country trips that we will be flying the 23-25th of Feb. As of right now, we are planning on flying up to Amarillo, TX, and then on the Colorado Spring, CO. We will leave on a Friday morning, fly up to Amarillo and do a few approaches into the airport, get gas, and then continue to CO. Once we get there we will land at Peterson AFB and are planning on renting a car and driving up to the mountains to go snowboarding! There are about 8 students all planning the same trip and all the IP’s that are going with us are really excited about skiing so it should be a lot of fun!

Enough about flying, now for some personal stuff. Let’s see, I spent thanksgiving with friends here, eating dinner with Greg, Jill, Mike, and Amy. We only had 2 days off, so there really wasn’t enough time to get a flight out of town which stunk, but I enjoyed the time off and all the food. For Christmas, I flew up to Seattle and spent 10 days up there with the family, relaxing, eating lots of cookies (thanks mom!), going snowboarding, and vegging out on the couch! It was a much needed break and I did get dad to help me with some approach plate stuff (instrument approach procedures into an airport). It was really nice seeing everyone and hanging out with them, and wish I could have gone back to FL to see all the family back there too. I hope everyone had as good a break as I did!

Once I got back here, we started flying again and have been going ever since. Mom and Dad came into town for my birthday in January, which was really nice and I enjoyed. It snows every once in a while here, which is weird for me and I realized my car does not like the cold weather! Haha I was having a couple of problems with it and actually started thinking about trading it in for a new used one, but, in the end I took it to a repair shop and got it fixed, trying to make it last till the end of pilot training. I haven’t done much biking lately, seeing as its freezing out a lot and the rain made the trails pretty muddy. We don’t get very much time at all to go to the gym either, which is pretty sad, but we spend 12 hours a day in the flight room and when we get off, all I want to do is relax, eat, and then have to study till I go to bed. I usually have maybe 3 hours to myself at home to take care of everything before I need to get to sleep. Especially flying twice a day which really wears you out!


Overall, I love the flying portion of training, and love the aerobatics and instrument flights! I can’t wait to go cross country, and want to solo again bad! Mike and Greg and Matt, all from ERAU, are doing well and all of them passed their checkrides as well, so that’s good. Mike was pretty upset last weekend that the Bears lost though, haha, but great job Colts!

The long days are rough, intense, and it is definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

This is the design of our class patch we had made, if you don't get it, ask a teenage or early 20's male...hahaha

18 Nov 06

Well I left off last time finishing up the Aerospace Physiology portion of training. Since then we have gone through quite a bit more including T-37B Aircraft Systems training, Flying Fundamentals, Aerodynamics of Flight, and have moved into our flight room and started flying!

The Aircraft Systems portion was relatively easy, just a lot of reading and memorization of how the different systems work. We learned about the electrical system, hydraulic system, engines, ejection system, flight control system, etc. The Flying Fundamentals portion was also just a lot of reading and memorization about things like takeoff and landing data, crosswinds, headwinds, and tailwinds data, flight envelopes, airspace classifications, and then how to compute values for things like refusal speed, critical runway lengths, etc. Luckily, most of this stuff I had already learned while I went through my private pilot’s certification a few years ago. The Aerodynamics of Flight portion has been a very, VERY basic class covering just what a pilot needs to know about aerodynamics. Considering I went through 5 years of Aerospace Engineering classes getting into much more detail about each section, I pretty much had to “dumb” myself down so I wasn’t over-thinking the exam questions. Historically, people from engineering degrees are the ones who usually miss the most questions because they think too much into the questions. All in all, the academics portion of training is called “slackademics” for a reason, seeing how it’s not exactly like going through an engineering degree here, considering people go through this program from all backgrounds. Overall, I did well in the academic portions so far, with quite a bit more to go. Finishing this part of training brings me to the 8th of November.

On Wednesday, 8 Nov 06, our class finally got to move into our respective flight rooms. This is where we will basically live for the next 6 months. Our class was split into two flights, Delta and Hotel, each with 12-13 people. I am part of Hotel Flight with Matt (guy I went to school with), 5 Italians, and 5 other Americans (unfortunately, Greg and Mike who I am good friends with got put into Delta Flight). Our flight room is right beside the life support area, which means we don’t have to walk far to get to our parachute and helmets, and then to the flight line which is nice. We got reintroduced to our Instructor Pilots (IP), two Italian Air Force, three Americans, and one German Air Force officer. They are all pretty intense, and have already demonstrated they expect a lot out of us, and it seems we will learn a large deal from them all. One American IP, Lieutenant Colonel Ingle, has been flying the T-37 Tweet before we all were born, and even back when it was an operational fighter called the A-37 in Vietnam. He is definitely the IP to look out for, seeing as he could build a Tweet blindfolded with one hand behind his back! He also got an “award” from the graduating class: “Reincarnated from the depths of Hell, this IP busted our ass in order to make us better pilots.” The award was presented to him as a plaque on a 25 pound sledgehammer! Great…..but, I am sure we will learn more than we want to know by flying with him, so we’ll see. When we moved into the flight room, we also were overwhelmed with the amount of things that needed to be done each day, and that was all outside of our studies, classes, flying, and meetings… We were also introduced to the 12 hour workdays that we will be living from now on. Up at 0500 to report at 0600, leaving at 1800. Whew.

That very next day, Thursday the 9th, was a great day! We all had our “Dollar Rides”! The dollar ride is the very first ride in the T-37B Tweet. It is called the “Dollar Ride” because you have to “pay” your IP a dollar (usually decorated) in order to get the ride. This is basically the only flight where you don’t have to know anything or do anything. The IP takes you up in order to get an idea of the local flying areas and what is feels like to be up there flying. It is also the only flight were we are not graded. I’ll have to say, climbing into the jet and seeing myself in a helmet, mask, flight suit, and actually at the controls of a twin engine jet trainer made me feel extremely overwhelmed at where I was and what I was doing. Everyone was so pumped up from this flight! That night, we helped out at the graduation for the class who was a year ahead of us. Sitting through that made the light at the end of the very long tunnel (as dim as it was) seem to brighten just a bit. The graduation was exciting, seeing the guys get their wings pinned on and listening to the Commander of the Italian Air Force’s Air Education and Training Command give a great speech. Our class was also introduced (as the new class) to the people in the audience, seeing as most of them were IP’s and commanders of some sort who we will run into along the way.

This also marked the end of our free time for the most part. The next 6 months will be spent either in the flight room, studying, going through emergency procedures, getting tested, flying, or in the simulators. This past week (13th-16th), we flew three times, one day of flights being cancelled because of 35 knot winds, gusting up to 55 knots! The first two flights really started to worry me and really got me aggravated and down in the dumps (just as mom or dad…they kept trying to cheer me up). I was completely overwhelmed and disoriented with how much was going on in the cockpit and in the air, had no idea what I needed to study on what night, had no idea how to prepare myself for the flights and on top of all that, I was getting airsick! Not to the point of throwing up, but my second flight of the week I had to cut 10 minutes short because I had to actually take the bag out of my pocket just in case…I was that close. It was horrible! I actually had to report to the Flight Surgeon to get cleared to fly, even though it was just passive airsickness, meaning I didn’t pass out or throw up. It still sucked and put a ton of stress on me, freaking me out on whether it was going to get better. There were a few other people feeling the same thing, about a third of each flight, and some even throwing up. It still freaked me out though. Wednesday’s flights were cancelled due to the winds, and I was actually quite relieved. It gave me a chance to study what I needed to study, and also to kind of cool off from the last two flights. Turns out when Thursday rolled around I was actually really nervous by that point. I did feel more prepared and ready to go fly, but now my stomach was feeling like it did before every cross country race I ran in college. Just that butterfly’s feeling, like I was hungry but couldn’t eat…This was not a good sign. Surprisingly, when I stepped to the plane, it all seemed to go away and I ended up having my best flight yet! I was SO relieved while I was flying, actually feeling like I was up there with the plane instead of still down in the chocks. I was even able to complete a few overhead patterns and box patterns on my own (for the most part). Let me tell you, the overhead closed patterns that the Air Force flies are no joke! From 200 knots and 1000 ft above the ground, to 150 knots, gear down going the other direction, to 120 knots, gear, flaps, and speed brake out at 500 feet, and finally going 100 knots and landing, all within a box 3000 feet long and 1000 feet wide, and at the same time doing all your checks and radio calls!!!! It was intense! Everything happens INCREDIBLY fast and if you aren’t ahead of the jet, you are going to do something wrong or forget something! Supposedly once we get further into the program this will all be second nature to us, but right now it is just an absolute mindful and very task saturating! But, like I said, I had my best flight yet and was really happy I didn’t feel sick and actually was able to do most of what the mission entailed, hopefully my flights will be like this from now on!

Friday the 17th was Combat Air Forces Day, meaning we got to sleep in (till 0800) and go listen to the capabilities brief on the F-15C Eagle, F-15E Strike Eagle, F-16 Viper, A-10 Warthog, PA-200 Tornado, B-1 Lancer, B-52, and F-117 Nighthawk. After the briefings they were all (minus the B-52) on static display and available to look at and get in some of the cockpits. I got to sit in the A-10, F-15C, and F-16! What a great feeling! They were all so much larger than the little tiny jet I fly, and I can’t wait to find out what I will be flying! A while later the Strike Eagle Demonstration Team flew a demo over the flight line, making lots of noise and pulling lots of G’s. What a great sight! Looking at each of those jets was so awesome, and even better you could touch them! The only one they didn’t want you to touch was the F-117, or take pictures from the wings back (even though it is being retired). It was still cool though, and I posted about 85 pictures on www.kodakgallery.com . If you didn’t get an invite to view them, just let me know and I’ll add you to the list to get emailed from now on.

Other than that, this weekend has been pretty relaxing, watching football and grilling steaks tonight. Tomorrow will consist of a mountain bike ride in the morning, then studying for the rest of the day….got to prepare for my flights for the week! Hopefully all of you are having a great November and all have a wonderful Thanksgiving! I’ll be staying in Texas unfortunately, missing our family trip to Seattle…..but some of the married couples have said they are cooking a meal so hopefully I will be able to have a big dinner too….

26 Oct 06

As a quick background, during my final years at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, I was awarded a pilot training slot, and later an ENJJPT slot. ENJJPT stands for Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training and is located in Wichita Falls, TX at Sheppard AFB. It is a specialized program consisting of about the top 5% of all pilot slot selections for that previous year, and at the completion of training 55 weeks later, get their choice (sort of) of any of the F-15C, F-15E, F-16, A-10, F-22 (maybe), B-1, B-2, or B-52. These are all high priority weapon systems (planes) for pilot trainees, and at any other training base the competition is fierce just to get the chance to fly them. Not that it will not be competitive at ENJJPT, but we are guaranteed one of those, and have no chance of flying cargo planes or tankers. Anyway, on with the story.

Back in the end of September, I packed up half of my stuff (half went into storage until I get my own house and/or move out of the Unaccompanied Officer’s Quarters), and moved out to Sheppard AFB, TX. I made the drive over a weekend so I was able to stop by Fort Walton Beach, FL on Friday night and hang out with Dave Sustello and Chris Johansson. It was good seeing them after they moved away from Daytona Beach when we all entered active duty in the beginning of June. Dave showed me around Eglin AFB and Hurlburt Field, which is where he is working on casual status for the time being until he reports to Vance AFB, OK in February. After staying the night there, I met up with mom and dad in Pensacola where I also got to see some old family friends and spend the early part of the day at the Naval Aviation Museum. After we were done there, mom, dad, and I drove from FL to Alexandria, LA where we stayed in a hotel with crickets the size of FL roaches…some sort of infestation at the time, ha ha. The following day we drove from LA to Sheppard AFB, TX, which is located in Wichita Falls. After checking into the Sheppard Inn, we got to relax and see some of the base. I had arrived.

Monday I checked in with the housing office and selected my “dorm” room for the next year. It’s actually called the UOQ, Unaccompanied Officer’s Quarters, but they call it the dorm for some dumb reason. I guess some people would rather live in dorms than barracks, like its less military. So for me, I make a big 360 degree circle, first living in dorms freshman and sophomore year in college, then an apartment, then house, and now back to dorms as an officer in the Air Force. Oh well… So anyway, mom, dad, and I moved all my stuff into the room and it’s not that bad, kind of small at 350 square feet, but has a bed, desk, kitchen, bathroom, closet and some dressers. It’ll work for a year, but I get my entire housing pay taken away, which makes it a very expensive small apartment. Some of my other friends are out here, Mike Kuzmuk, Greg Farrell, (and their wives), and Matt Lowe. Matt is in the dorms with me, but Mike and Greg each have their own three bedroom house on base, complete with a yard and car port. They pay the same for that as I do for my small room. HAHA kinda funny, all I need to do is get married to get a house! Easy enough.

Well, after getting moved in, mom, dad, and I went out to dinner with Matt, Greg, and Jill at Texas Roadhouse. I guess Texas is known for some pretty good steaks, and mine was ok.

Later that day I reported in to the 80th Operational Support Squadron, where I will be attached to the entire time I am at ENJJPT. This was followed by a LIST of things to take care of in the next two weeks, with in-processing and paperwork. Mom and Dad ended up leaving Tuesday, both flying out of Dallas up to Seattle. Basically I spent the next 10 days running around doing CBT (computer based training), paperwork, briefings, etc. Eventually I got it all done, and had some time to work out and hang out with friends and get my room all set up. I also went to the flying training side of base (we are kind of like the red-headed step child, getting stashed way out on the edge of base) and got to know my way around those buildings. At that time, I picked up my training publications or “pubs” from the library. It ended up being a stack about 24 inches tall of all the literature on the plane I will be flying and aerospace physiology classes, aircraft systems, and different instructions. Needless to say, it’s kind of intimidating to know that in less than 6 months, I will know pretty much the entire stack by heart. I won’t have much of a life once this starts! I also had some medical things to take care of, but eventually it all got done.

16 Oct 06 – Our first day of actual pilot training! We reported in to our MTO’s (military training officer) in classroom G2 in full service dress uniform at 0700. The class I will be going through ENJJPT with consists of 25 officers. We have 4 ROTC graduates (me, Mike, Greg, and Matt all from ERAU), 3 OTS grads (Officer Training School), 2 ANG guys (Air National Guard), 7 AFA (Air Force Academy), and 9 Italians! Actually, we all met the Friday before we started and went out to dinner and had a blast meeting everyone and learning about the Italians.

Everyone is really nice and the Italians are going to be a blast to go through the program with! Ok, so we met our MTO’s on Monday, and spent the next two days in the blues uniform sitting through briefings from EVERYONE. Finance, MEO, Flight Med, and even the base commander were just some of the briefings. We spent the nights hanging out, reading some of the literature, and practicing the Boldface/Ops limits procedures. This will come into play later one…The Boldface are emergency procedures that we all have to know by heart, word for word, dash for dash. The Ops limits are the same way, but with numbers like the maximum airspeed, oil pressure, prohibited maneuvers, etc. Mike, Greg and I had been studying that stuff while we were still in Daytona Beach, so we are good to go.

Tuesday, 17 Oct 06 was full of briefings like Monday, but we also got to go to Life Support and get our very own helmets and masks fitted! Talk about finally feeling like we are starting!
Starting on Wednesday, 18 Oct 06, we got to wear our flight suits! That reminds me, one of the in processing events during the 10 days prior, we get issued about $5000 worth of equipment. This includes flight suits, boots, gloves, jackets, briefcase, flying aids, and even our helmet and G-suit! Too bad the helmet was in a sealed box and we were all told not to open it until told to, otherwise there would have been pictures! So, Wednesday we got to wear our flight suits for the very first time, and boy did it feel good. This is only because for the next 8 days we were going through the Aerospace Physiology courses. This included everything from Spatial Disorientation, Airsickness, Survival, Ejection and Egress, Parachuting, and some First Aid. This has definitely been fun considering what we are about to do through. The PLF training (Parachute Landing Fall) was fun and we got to practice it by parasailing and getting released! Needless to say, Parasailing was the best thing we have done so far! They pull you up until you are about 400 feet above the ground, then detach you and let you parachute down! I wish we could have done it more than just twice! As everybody was rotating through, we actually got to teach the Italians how to play American football. They are all really fun to be around and a blast to talk to!

Next on the list was more Aero Phys training, this time we got into the Altitude chamber! On Monday the 23rd, we strapped up and sat inside the chamber for about 2 hours. The first hour we were purging the nitrogen from our blood by breathing 100% Oxygen for 30 minutes, just making sure nobody was going to get Decompression Sickness due to the nitrogen boiling at altitude. We then were taken to 35000 feet (simulated in the chamber) and then down to 25000 feet. This is where everyone took off their oxygen masks and experience the signs and symptoms of Hypoxia (lack of oxygen in the blood). It was quite an experience! I ended up lasting about 6 minutes off Oxygen, and by the time that had passed I was getting hot and cold flashes, tingling, disorientation, and mental confusion. I guess they were talking to me and I was euphoric and non-responsive….haha, I did feel the hypoxia before it got to that point, but wanted to see how long I could last since I was never going to be able to do that again! The rest of the day everyone was pretty worn out, and we were told not to do anything active. I guess lack of oxygen isn’t good for the body…go figure.

On Tuesday, we had Ejection and Ground Egress training. Talk about learning something I hope I NEVER have to use in my life! The rest of the day, as well as Wednesday, was filled with briefings about survival and first aid, as well as two tests for the Aerospace Physiology classes. Almost done with Aero Phys!

Thursday, 26 Oct 06 was our last Aero Phys day. We had a briefing by Dr. Pittner, the psychologist who is very helpful with airsickness and stress management (might come in handy here soon) and we also took the FACT. The FACT, Fighter Aircrew Conditioning Test, is a strength and endurance test to gauge how well your body will be able to handle the high G loadings during flight. It consists of 5 strength exercises and 3 endurance ones. It is a very tough test because each repetition is a 6 count rep, so if you want to max the score, you have to do a full minute and a half of continuous motion with weights. The endurance is being able to do as many push ups, sit ups and squats as you can in one minute. Thankfully, I have been preparing for it in the gym, so I was able to max everything and get 225 points out of 225. Most people who were in shape were getting 201+, so our entire class did well, with only a few people failing an event or two. You are required to pass the FACT by the end of pilot training, and we will take it three more times before we leave here. After that was done, our entire class went out and played football for a while, getting our group physical training in for the week.

Tomorrow is Friday, thankfully, and we are back to wearing our blues uniforms. No more flight suits unfortunately, and now we start the aircraft systems class work. We will be on the flight line in about 2 weeks! It’s going to get really stressful, really fast, but I’m looking forward to it.

Like I said, I’ll try to keep this updated and sent out as often as possible for you to read, and the pictures are all online, so enjoy!