First of all, I'd like to take a moment to thank all those who have given so much for this country and the American people. Dad sent an email today that talked about the importance of today, with one passage that really caught my eye:
"Today we honor the many lives that have been lost in the battles that have been fought that peace and freedom might previal."
Thank you to all who have served, are serving, and will serve for this same purpose.
Well, tomorrow begins week two of T-38 training. Last week went pretty smooth, with tons of academics and trying to learn the entire T-38's systems in a matter of a week. We started with all the electrical and avionics systems, and with all the new hardware in the C model (glass cockpit), it was quite different than the old steam gages in the Tweet. It's pretty rediculous how many different electrical systems are in the jet, some AC, some DC, some both, and which components are part of which systems.
Next was the fuel system, along with the hydraulic, flight control, pneumatic, and other miscellaneous systems. It's pretty rough considering the Tweet was a child's toy compared to this thing and the Talon's flight manual is twice as large as the Tweet's.
Our systems test is on Wednesday, with tomorrow (Tuesday) being all aerospace physiology training. We've also gotten into our new flight rooms on the T-38 side, and H Flight (my flight) went to M Flight, and D Flight (Mike and Greg's) went to I Flight. It was pretty cool, because M Flight is called Mob Flight, and with 5 Italians, the IP's thought it was pretty fitting. The flight room is about three times as large as our old one, thank the Lord, and we even have our own large central table to actually study and do work at. I'll have to post pictures soon, but I still need to replace the LCD screen on my digital camera that was broken in the flight back from the Centrifuge.
That reminds me, don't put anything expensive or breakable in your checked baggage on flights. I'm not quite sure why I did, but Murphy's Law wanted to teach me a lesson and cracked the screen on my camera. I took it all apart, being the engineer that I am, and am able to take the screen out and replace with a working one I will get from the same type camera that I bought off Ebay. I love Ebay.
Anyhow, after spending a few days in Dallas with Dave relaxing and hanging out with Nicole, who we actually spent our freshman year spring break with at a lakehouse in Orlando years ago along with a bunch of other friends, I am back at base and really need to study. It seems I am more likely to write a post on here than study, and it's getting bad. I really need to control my procrastination! Haha, well I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend and I'll be sure to write again soon after I pass my systems test on Wednesday! Have a great week!
Monday, May 28, 2007
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Centrifuge Training
Our Centrifuge profile:
4 G (640 pounds) for 45 seconds (0.1 G per second)
5 G (800 pounds) for 30 seconds (1 G per second)
6 G (960 pounds) for 30 seconds (6 G per second)
7.5 G (1200 pounds) for 15 seconds (6 G per second)
6 G (960 pounds) for 10 seconds "check 6" (6 G per second)
Wow. The centrifuge really did a beating on all of us this past Friday! The Air Force flew all of us over to Holloman AFB, New Mexico for the training, right in the middle of nowhere! If you aren't sure what the centrifuge training is, it's where you sit in a cockpit style chair inside a capsule that spins around a room. As the pod spins, it rotates to where you are "sitting" on the wall sideways instead of upright. The faster they make it spin, the more G load you experience. The above numbers are of the profile we all had to fly, with what the specific G load converts to for my body weight, along with the duration and the onset rate. As you can see, it's pretty intense!
Here is the inside of the capsule, with many many previous class stickers.
Here is the room that is spins around, and as it spins faster, the blue box where we sit rotates 90 degrees so you are "sitting" on the wall as it spins.
Overall I, along with the rest of the class who passed, scored average. Basically that means you are able to perform the Anti-G Straining Maneuver (AGSM) properly and stay conscious throughout each profile. The AGSM is where you take a 70-80% breathe, close your glottis (throat muscle) to block the air, squeeze your lower body muscles like your legs and abs, and perform an air exchange every 3 seconds briefly. It keeps the blood up in your head and not down in your legs, resulting in an increased G-tolerance. We got to wear our G-suit during the training which helps a bit, but only provides about 1.5G of resistance. If you don't know what I'm talking about, think about a rollercoaster going through a loop, except it doesnt stop and just keeps accelerating. The force that you would feel pushing you into the seat is what we are training to protect ourselves from because you can G-LOC yourself (G induced loss of consciousness) pretty fast in these aircraft.
This is me getting strapped in and the Airman about the close the door. She is showing me what I am supposed to look at during the profiles.Surprisingly, the worst one for me was the very first profile, the gradual 4G pull with no AGSM. It is to figure out what your resting G tolerance is, give or take. I started to grey out towards the end, and I really thought I was in trouble. They see that alot in people with low blood pressure (runners especially, not that I've run much recently) and people who are dehydrated. I blame running, cause I was clear and copius for two days during this trip!
The next pull was 5G with a faster onset rate of 1G per second. This is where we got to "play" with our straining techniques and breathing, as well as see the effects of what one thing does over another, like squeezing your abs, and then your legs, and then neither or both, etc. It was pretty cool to see what works the best, and the lower body squeeze was definately the most important part for me.
The most difficult profile of them all was the third one, the rapid onset 6G for 30 seconds. Holy cow, I've never felt anything like this. It wasn't so much that it was a large number of Gs, it was the fact that we had to hold it for that long. They are constantly reminding you to breath, squeeze your butt, squeeze your legs, breath, etc. It doesnt sound that hard now, but when you are actually doing it, you really can forget to breath or squeeze. Gladly, I didn't experience any greying out during this one.
The 7.5G for 15 seconds was a bittersweet mix. I didn't mind it actually, because even though it was more intense, it was for half the time as the previous. Although, I did lose about 25% of my periphial vision, but some extra squeezing of the buttocks got that right back. In my debrief, they actually told me that is what they are looking for more than never losing any sight at all, because they want to see that we recognize and react to the loss, not that we just dont lose any sight at all.
The "check 6" was not too bad either. They have you slowly (and I mean slowly) turn your head to the right until you can see a red LED "8" about 130 degrees behind you, and then put you through the rapid 6G onset for 10 seconds. They also make you breath without the reminders, which like I said, sounds easy now, but you'd be surprised! The reason I say turn your head slowly is because (and I tested this earlier in the ride) if you turn fast, your equilibrium is all messed up and you really REALLY feel like you are tumbling all over the place! It is quite the ride!
Once you complete your profiles, you get out and are just wiped. You get to just sit on the couch and catch your breath and regain some strength, but it only gets worse. Everyone got "G-sles" which are little red dots where the capillaries near your skin surface have burst, and it looks like mini measles from the Gs. It also makes you feel like you just worked out every muscle in your body, mainly the butt and legs. Everyone was walking funny the rest of the trip to say the least.
It was nice to get the experience, although we wont be pulling 6 G turns for 30 seconds anytime soon in our jets, but we will have to go back to the centrifuge once we find out what aircraft we will fly in order to complete that specific profile, and some of them get up to 9Gs for 30 seconds. Wow.
The rest of the time there we went out to eat at Chilis and then went back and experienced Holloman's O-Club. It wasnt the greatest, but we ended up leaving and going to the bowling alley, which was a blast. I'm not going to lie, there were breverages being served and some pretty good bets going for the gutter balls, and at the end of the night the bumpers were definately up. Mike took the pictures while we were at the centrifuge, so all I have at the moment to share are of bowling.
Look at that form!
I wasn't too happy about missing that last pin, but at least it wasn't a gutter ball. If you threw a gutterball, you owed a dollar to the pot for more.......soda. haha!
Monday, May 7, 2007
TWEET COMPLETE!
Well, despite today's best efforts to doom me completing my last checkride, I succeeded! I am now officially Tweet Complete! (ok, so I'm not counting that we have to finish weather academics...but still)
It starts with me sleeping through my alarm, or shutting it off somehow, and waking up 30 minutes late. This isn't so bad, except I give myself 45 minutes from alarm to when I have to walk out the door. I was a tad rushed this morning, to say the least.
We were on the schedule to have one of our last weather classes from 0800-1000 this morning, but they decide we aren't close enough to needing to be done, and not only do they not have a classroom for us, there are no available instructors. In the mean time, class 08-02 (the class finishing in about 6 weeks) is in the middle of their weather class with an instructor and a classroom. We were not happy. We ended up sitting around till 0900 when they got out and got our 2 hour class crammed into an hour. This was fine with me because Mike and I were supposed to be at check section to brief at 1130. If the class went the whole 2 hours, it would have given us about 5 minutes to gather all our checkride stuff and get there. In the end, I guess it worked out, it was just a pain in the butt.
Ok, so, with the academics class done for the day, Mike and I can concentrate on getting ready for the checkride, but oh wait, the network goes down. Not only this, but the weather decides to take a dump on us and we go Stop Launch. So not only can we not get the weather, notams, ops notes, etc for the brief, we dont even have an instrument status that we need to be able to take off. God really didnt want us checking today. We finally get the weather and notams and head to check section at 1130, and our IP's tell us, "Well, we aren't going to brief with no status, so we'll let you know." Greaaaaaaat. We head back to the room and wait. About 45 minutes later we finally get a break in the weather and are able to fly. We get our flight times switched around with a couple people and head to our brief. All is fine, a little rushed, but nothing out of the ordinary. We step to the jet and find out the areas arent going to be very good. Jeeez... What else can go wrong. Oh yea, and we have to take off on an instrument departure, kind of non-standard, and arrive on our Simutaneous Instrument Approach, pretty non-standard. Not to mention I haven't flown formation, let alone any flight, under these conditions in a long time. Guess I get to see how much I remember.
We step to the jet, get all strapped in, and taxi out with our clearance. Not too bad. We get lined up, and with a couple small communication gliches between Mike and I, we are ready to go. Take off and departure are actually pretty smooth, minus the turbulence. The clearance we requested was for the Sheppard 1 Areas, but I get told all of them are full, so I (as Lead) have to coordinate for other clearances. We end up getting an area in the Sheppard 2 Areas, which are just in a different part of Oklahoma, and there are only 2 usable areas out of 5. Super. As I look out in front of the flight, I take a guess at which will be able to use, and this is where we finally get our first break. I choose area 13, and end up lucking out, seeing as this is the only area that we actually get some, and I mean SOME, ground references. Needless to say, up to this point was a pain.
Next, we get into the area and start our work. I am leading out so I give Mike some wingwork, echelon turns, a pitch out and rejoin, a break out, and some close trail. At this point, Mike's IP saying "Wild 2 is good" (we are Wild Flight), meaning he is done with the current maneuver (an echelon turn), but my IP says he thinks he is ready for the position change. I didn't think that was right, but I asked my IP again and he says the same thing. This means I do not get to give Mike any extended trail maneuvers, which is the most fun stuff of formation. Oh well. We do the position change and he starts leading me on my work. Wingwork, echelon turns, break out, pitch out, rejoin, close trail, and extended trail. Awesome, I've had better flights, but not bad for a weekend off and in and out of the weather, with turbulence. We start heading to the back of the area, and I am expecting to do some checks to prepare to come home, when Mike sends me fighting wing. This wasn't briefed, and we weren't supposed to need to do this position, but I go. Little did I know, Mike was up in his jet trying to re-orient himself within the area and figure out where we were. Since I was flying on his wing, I hadn't paid much attention to the area, seeing as this is his responsibility. Later I find out in the debrief that he flew our formation about a half a mile out of the back of the area. Not good. I'll get to more of that in a minute.
He finally figures out where he is and leads us home, through the weather and through an instrument approach. We are able to land in sequence and taxi back to the chocks, get out, and head into the flight room. We have about 20 minutes until we have to report back to check section so the IP's can fill in the gradesheet, and the entire time, Mike is looking pretty pissed off. All he says to me is "I don't know" when I ask him how his flight went. We report to check section and go through our respective debriefs, mine going pretty well. I get my EP (emergency procedure) done, and get through some GK (general knowledge) pretty fast because I knew everything he asked right away. I end up passing my final Tweet checkride with only 6 downgrades! This is pretty good, considering there are about 3 times as many gradeable items than a normal checkride. I head back to the flight room.
Once Mike gets done with his, he gets back and is pretty pissed. I guess when he went out of the area, his IP busted him for the flight. He now has to go through an IPC, which is like a makeup checkride, except if you bust that, you are in big doo-doo. We talk for a bit about the flight and he just tells me he got really spacially disoriented after the extended trail and just couldnt figure out where we were. This was very unusual for Mike, and definately the first time it's happened when I've flown with him. Of course it HAD to happen on the final Tweet checkride. Dang. He's scheduled to fly the IPC tomorrow, and hopefully he passes.
Well, that sums up my final checkride in the Tweet, and hopefully my final flight ever in that jet! Although, if it turns out I FAIP (First Assignment Instructor Pilot), I'd either go to the T-6 Texan II, or the T-38. The rest of the day I spend hanging out in the flight room, and my Flight Commander tells me not to leave until he gets back. So I go to the bookstore and pick up my T-38 publications, checklist, in flight guide, and cockpit poster and put them in my car. I go and visit with Greg and Mike over in D Flight, and hang out with the Italians in the flight room for a bit. Once the Flight Commander, Captain Molari, gets back from his flight, he has a couple guys grab me and tells everyone there is a new tradition in H Flight! The first person or people (formation) to complete from the flight gets thrown in the same tank of water that we got thrown in during our solos! Oh man, and the whole point was that we wouldn't know about it and be able to bring a dry set of clothes or anything! HAHA, since there wasnt anywhere to run, I give in and take all the stuff out of my pockets and get led out to the tank. YES! The tank was empty! WOOHOO! haha, all that was left was an inch of water on the bottom, and about an inch of mold on top of that. Thank goodness! But Captain Molari doesn't stop there. He has a couple guys go get some trash cans (empty) and fill them up with water. He calls me to attention outside and proceeds to order the guys to one at a time throw a bucket of water at me. HAHA, I guess that's the new H Flight tradition!
Well, that sums up my day...the good and the bad. I am now one weather academic test from being Tweet Complete, but in all fairness, I'm done. No more "Flying Dog Whistle" for me!!! I'm gonna miss that jet...........maybe.
It starts with me sleeping through my alarm, or shutting it off somehow, and waking up 30 minutes late. This isn't so bad, except I give myself 45 minutes from alarm to when I have to walk out the door. I was a tad rushed this morning, to say the least.
We were on the schedule to have one of our last weather classes from 0800-1000 this morning, but they decide we aren't close enough to needing to be done, and not only do they not have a classroom for us, there are no available instructors. In the mean time, class 08-02 (the class finishing in about 6 weeks) is in the middle of their weather class with an instructor and a classroom. We were not happy. We ended up sitting around till 0900 when they got out and got our 2 hour class crammed into an hour. This was fine with me because Mike and I were supposed to be at check section to brief at 1130. If the class went the whole 2 hours, it would have given us about 5 minutes to gather all our checkride stuff and get there. In the end, I guess it worked out, it was just a pain in the butt.
Ok, so, with the academics class done for the day, Mike and I can concentrate on getting ready for the checkride, but oh wait, the network goes down. Not only this, but the weather decides to take a dump on us and we go Stop Launch. So not only can we not get the weather, notams, ops notes, etc for the brief, we dont even have an instrument status that we need to be able to take off. God really didnt want us checking today. We finally get the weather and notams and head to check section at 1130, and our IP's tell us, "Well, we aren't going to brief with no status, so we'll let you know." Greaaaaaaat. We head back to the room and wait. About 45 minutes later we finally get a break in the weather and are able to fly. We get our flight times switched around with a couple people and head to our brief. All is fine, a little rushed, but nothing out of the ordinary. We step to the jet and find out the areas arent going to be very good. Jeeez... What else can go wrong. Oh yea, and we have to take off on an instrument departure, kind of non-standard, and arrive on our Simutaneous Instrument Approach, pretty non-standard. Not to mention I haven't flown formation, let alone any flight, under these conditions in a long time. Guess I get to see how much I remember.
We step to the jet, get all strapped in, and taxi out with our clearance. Not too bad. We get lined up, and with a couple small communication gliches between Mike and I, we are ready to go. Take off and departure are actually pretty smooth, minus the turbulence. The clearance we requested was for the Sheppard 1 Areas, but I get told all of them are full, so I (as Lead) have to coordinate for other clearances. We end up getting an area in the Sheppard 2 Areas, which are just in a different part of Oklahoma, and there are only 2 usable areas out of 5. Super. As I look out in front of the flight, I take a guess at which will be able to use, and this is where we finally get our first break. I choose area 13, and end up lucking out, seeing as this is the only area that we actually get some, and I mean SOME, ground references. Needless to say, up to this point was a pain.
Next, we get into the area and start our work. I am leading out so I give Mike some wingwork, echelon turns, a pitch out and rejoin, a break out, and some close trail. At this point, Mike's IP saying "Wild 2 is good" (we are Wild Flight), meaning he is done with the current maneuver (an echelon turn), but my IP says he thinks he is ready for the position change. I didn't think that was right, but I asked my IP again and he says the same thing. This means I do not get to give Mike any extended trail maneuvers, which is the most fun stuff of formation. Oh well. We do the position change and he starts leading me on my work. Wingwork, echelon turns, break out, pitch out, rejoin, close trail, and extended trail. Awesome, I've had better flights, but not bad for a weekend off and in and out of the weather, with turbulence. We start heading to the back of the area, and I am expecting to do some checks to prepare to come home, when Mike sends me fighting wing. This wasn't briefed, and we weren't supposed to need to do this position, but I go. Little did I know, Mike was up in his jet trying to re-orient himself within the area and figure out where we were. Since I was flying on his wing, I hadn't paid much attention to the area, seeing as this is his responsibility. Later I find out in the debrief that he flew our formation about a half a mile out of the back of the area. Not good. I'll get to more of that in a minute.
He finally figures out where he is and leads us home, through the weather and through an instrument approach. We are able to land in sequence and taxi back to the chocks, get out, and head into the flight room. We have about 20 minutes until we have to report back to check section so the IP's can fill in the gradesheet, and the entire time, Mike is looking pretty pissed off. All he says to me is "I don't know" when I ask him how his flight went. We report to check section and go through our respective debriefs, mine going pretty well. I get my EP (emergency procedure) done, and get through some GK (general knowledge) pretty fast because I knew everything he asked right away. I end up passing my final Tweet checkride with only 6 downgrades! This is pretty good, considering there are about 3 times as many gradeable items than a normal checkride. I head back to the flight room.
Once Mike gets done with his, he gets back and is pretty pissed. I guess when he went out of the area, his IP busted him for the flight. He now has to go through an IPC, which is like a makeup checkride, except if you bust that, you are in big doo-doo. We talk for a bit about the flight and he just tells me he got really spacially disoriented after the extended trail and just couldnt figure out where we were. This was very unusual for Mike, and definately the first time it's happened when I've flown with him. Of course it HAD to happen on the final Tweet checkride. Dang. He's scheduled to fly the IPC tomorrow, and hopefully he passes.
Well, that sums up my final checkride in the Tweet, and hopefully my final flight ever in that jet! Although, if it turns out I FAIP (First Assignment Instructor Pilot), I'd either go to the T-6 Texan II, or the T-38. The rest of the day I spend hanging out in the flight room, and my Flight Commander tells me not to leave until he gets back. So I go to the bookstore and pick up my T-38 publications, checklist, in flight guide, and cockpit poster and put them in my car. I go and visit with Greg and Mike over in D Flight, and hang out with the Italians in the flight room for a bit. Once the Flight Commander, Captain Molari, gets back from his flight, he has a couple guys grab me and tells everyone there is a new tradition in H Flight! The first person or people (formation) to complete from the flight gets thrown in the same tank of water that we got thrown in during our solos! Oh man, and the whole point was that we wouldn't know about it and be able to bring a dry set of clothes or anything! HAHA, since there wasnt anywhere to run, I give in and take all the stuff out of my pockets and get led out to the tank. YES! The tank was empty! WOOHOO! haha, all that was left was an inch of water on the bottom, and about an inch of mold on top of that. Thank goodness! But Captain Molari doesn't stop there. He has a couple guys go get some trash cans (empty) and fill them up with water. He calls me to attention outside and proceeds to order the guys to one at a time throw a bucket of water at me. HAHA, I guess that's the new H Flight tradition!
Well, that sums up my day...the good and the bad. I am now one weather academic test from being Tweet Complete, but in all fairness, I'm done. No more "Flying Dog Whistle" for me!!! I'm gonna miss that jet...........maybe.
Friday, May 4, 2007
T-Minus one checkride till Tweet Complete!
Today I flew my last instructional sortie in the T-37 Tweet (hopefully). Mike Twisselman and I are paired again to check together on Monday, and as all goes to plan, we will be Tweet Complete after we pass!
This is definately good news, considering today was our first Thermal Index Caution Zone day. It only got up to 95 F, but in the jet it felt like an oven! I can't even imagine what flying in 115 F feels like.
Not only was today my last instructional sortie, I flew it with Colonel Asmus, an IP from Randolph AFB who commutes to Sheppard to fly for a week a month, and as we went through the sortie, I found out he was at NAS Lemoore in 1988-89, back when our family was there. He flew A-10s there, as well as spent some time on the USS Lincoln with a crossover tour with the NAVY. Small world. He was an awesome guy to fly with, and a really nice guy on top of that! I really enjoyed myself and actually flew my best formation flight yet. Things are definately looking good for the checkride.
Tonight is assignment night for the class we replaced in Tweets, and who we will replace in T-38s. Good luck to them all and hopefully they all get what they want! As for now, I get to relax for a bit before going to the OClub, and tomorrow Mike, Jose and I are finally going to the shooting range for the first time since we got here. It'll be a nice release before I start studying for the check. I hope everyone has a great weekend and I'll try to post some pictures soon!
This is definately good news, considering today was our first Thermal Index Caution Zone day. It only got up to 95 F, but in the jet it felt like an oven! I can't even imagine what flying in 115 F feels like.
Not only was today my last instructional sortie, I flew it with Colonel Asmus, an IP from Randolph AFB who commutes to Sheppard to fly for a week a month, and as we went through the sortie, I found out he was at NAS Lemoore in 1988-89, back when our family was there. He flew A-10s there, as well as spent some time on the USS Lincoln with a crossover tour with the NAVY. Small world. He was an awesome guy to fly with, and a really nice guy on top of that! I really enjoyed myself and actually flew my best formation flight yet. Things are definately looking good for the checkride.
Tonight is assignment night for the class we replaced in Tweets, and who we will replace in T-38s. Good luck to them all and hopefully they all get what they want! As for now, I get to relax for a bit before going to the OClub, and tomorrow Mike, Jose and I are finally going to the shooting range for the first time since we got here. It'll be a nice release before I start studying for the check. I hope everyone has a great weekend and I'll try to post some pictures soon!
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Even Better!
Just when I thought it couldnt get any better, I go and fly a flight like I did today!
I was scheduled to fly once today, and not even with a take off time until 1836 (6:36 pm). The sunset was supposed to be at 8:17, so if all went to plan, I would be touching down exactly one minute before "night". The day up until my flight was ok, with some time to study and even go back to my apartment to eat a nice lunch. I got back to the flight room at about 2:30 and just sat around and read up on some formation info in the mean time.
At 5:36 pm we were supposed to start briefing (me, my IP Captain Johnson, and the two guys I was flying against, Mike Twizzelman and his IP Captain Cox), but neither of our IP's were back from their previous flights. The scheduling really makes for some sporty briefings, cutting out alot of time from the turn times being so short. Anyhow, once our IP's show up we start briefing and since this is like the third formation flight we have flown all together it's pretty standard. We go over the important stuff and step to the jet about 10 minutes late.
Once we get out to the jet, we get everything up and running and taxi out to the EOR (End of Runway). This is where we check each other over and request clearance to take off. Since I am leading the formation on the take off, I request clearance and they give us a standby for weather. This is not good, considering we are just sitting there burning gas and wasting time. The weather was getting pretty crappy, with some pretty good thunderstorms building around the airport and in the areas we are going to. It had started raining on us, so we put the canopies down and waiting until they cleared us to take off.
Once we got that, we did an interval take off where lead goes and wing waits 10 seconds and then goes. This results in us having to rejoin on departure, and when there is weather, makes it pretty interesting. But, we rejoin and head out to one of the areas. Once we get established in the area, we start our profile.
From the time we take off, we spend the entire flight flying through and then around the thunderstorms. The wing work is kind of challenging, trying to keep out of the clouds and to plan what to do next to stay out of them. We complete that stuff, doing lazy eights, echelon turns, pitch outs, rejoins, and close trail. Once we get done with that, we start the fighting wing and extended trail stuff. Up until this point, I thought I had seen the best formation stuff, but wow, extended trail is friggin amazing! It's where you fly 500-1000 ft out and anywhere in a 30-45 degree cone around your lead. While you are keeping your position and maneuvering around this cone, the lead aircraft is doing barrel rolls, cloverleafs, loops, and like today, chasing the clouds. We had such an amazing time flying today!! I'm not sure if any of the next 5 flights I have remaining can top it. The area we flew around had a broken cloud deck all around the area, which made for some kick-ass cloud chasing flight. In the words of my IP, "If you are not having a blast flying in this, you should not be in this program" and he is totally right.
Once we got all the area work done, we start to head home and I am flying wing now. We have to fly through some weather, and just like on the way out, the lead's jet is barely visible! In and out, I see him, I dont.... It was nuts. Right about the time we are breaking out of the weather, the sun is just on the horizon right behind lead's jet as I look at him. It made this really cool orange haze with the silhouette of his jet black and the orange haze all around from the sun reflecting off the clouds we were flying through. I wish I could have had a camera up there today, or been able to find a picture to show what I'm talking about, cause I've never seen anything like it.
Definately, by far, the coolest day of flying I have ever had.
I was scheduled to fly once today, and not even with a take off time until 1836 (6:36 pm). The sunset was supposed to be at 8:17, so if all went to plan, I would be touching down exactly one minute before "night". The day up until my flight was ok, with some time to study and even go back to my apartment to eat a nice lunch. I got back to the flight room at about 2:30 and just sat around and read up on some formation info in the mean time.
At 5:36 pm we were supposed to start briefing (me, my IP Captain Johnson, and the two guys I was flying against, Mike Twizzelman and his IP Captain Cox), but neither of our IP's were back from their previous flights. The scheduling really makes for some sporty briefings, cutting out alot of time from the turn times being so short. Anyhow, once our IP's show up we start briefing and since this is like the third formation flight we have flown all together it's pretty standard. We go over the important stuff and step to the jet about 10 minutes late.
Once we get out to the jet, we get everything up and running and taxi out to the EOR (End of Runway). This is where we check each other over and request clearance to take off. Since I am leading the formation on the take off, I request clearance and they give us a standby for weather. This is not good, considering we are just sitting there burning gas and wasting time. The weather was getting pretty crappy, with some pretty good thunderstorms building around the airport and in the areas we are going to. It had started raining on us, so we put the canopies down and waiting until they cleared us to take off.
Once we got that, we did an interval take off where lead goes and wing waits 10 seconds and then goes. This results in us having to rejoin on departure, and when there is weather, makes it pretty interesting. But, we rejoin and head out to one of the areas. Once we get established in the area, we start our profile.
From the time we take off, we spend the entire flight flying through and then around the thunderstorms. The wing work is kind of challenging, trying to keep out of the clouds and to plan what to do next to stay out of them. We complete that stuff, doing lazy eights, echelon turns, pitch outs, rejoins, and close trail. Once we get done with that, we start the fighting wing and extended trail stuff. Up until this point, I thought I had seen the best formation stuff, but wow, extended trail is friggin amazing! It's where you fly 500-1000 ft out and anywhere in a 30-45 degree cone around your lead. While you are keeping your position and maneuvering around this cone, the lead aircraft is doing barrel rolls, cloverleafs, loops, and like today, chasing the clouds. We had such an amazing time flying today!! I'm not sure if any of the next 5 flights I have remaining can top it. The area we flew around had a broken cloud deck all around the area, which made for some kick-ass cloud chasing flight. In the words of my IP, "If you are not having a blast flying in this, you should not be in this program" and he is totally right.
Once we got all the area work done, we start to head home and I am flying wing now. We have to fly through some weather, and just like on the way out, the lead's jet is barely visible! In and out, I see him, I dont.... It was nuts. Right about the time we are breaking out of the weather, the sun is just on the horizon right behind lead's jet as I look at him. It made this really cool orange haze with the silhouette of his jet black and the orange haze all around from the sun reflecting off the clouds we were flying through. I wish I could have had a camera up there today, or been able to find a picture to show what I'm talking about, cause I've never seen anything like it.
Definately, by far, the coolest day of flying I have ever had.
It kind of looked like this, except with a Tweet instead of a T-38, more clouds all around us, alot less visibility, the sun a little bit lower on the horizon about to set, and the other jet about three times as close as this one. Like I said, it was awesome.
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