Life's-a-changin!: 2 Checkrides Remain and SENIOR CLASS!

Labor Day I spent with all the old college friends. We rented a house at Lake Texoma and spent the weekend catching up and on a pontoon boat floating around the water and jumping off the big rocks. We even found the party island! One night we all wore the same shirt (Dave made shirts for the first annual get together) and went out. When people asked what they were about, our answers ranged from a flying club from CO, to a choir group from LA, to a group of people who's parents all died in a plane crash in 1946....making us all at least 61 years old...and they believed us. HAHA it was a great weekend and a well deserved break with great people. I can't wait till our 2008 trip!

Next, we got our "Hero Shots" back...and here's what we got:

Not too bad, my close up with a smile is dumb looking, so you get the serious one.

For the past few weeks, I've gotten through the rest of the instrument phase, flew my instrument checkride to Dyess AFB and passed with a 2 downgrade flight. I was really excited, with the exception that both downgrades were due to stuff that I should not have done, and it had nothing to do with my flying which is pretty cool. One was because I planned my flight plan with an unrealistic fuel calculation, correct by the book, but not real-life. The other was because the crew chief missed signing off the pre-flight tire pressure check after he did it, and I missed that he didnt sign it off. So overall, a great flight, great approaches and the IP flew the jet back to base at .99 Mach since I was complete.

After getting that done, and being the second to last person to fly my checkride for instruments in the class, they pushed me pretty hard through formation to catch me up. Let me tell ya, double turning formation flights 4 or 5 times a week really is awesome! It keeps your proficiency way up and is friggin fun too! I ended up getting paired up with a couple different people throughout the two weeks, and finally paired with Jeff Searcy aka P.I.D.L.E. for the last 5 flights and into our checkride. They like keeping you with the same person for at least a few flights at the end so you are used to how the other person flies on your wing and as lead. It all worked out, and we both were having great flights all the way through the end.

We just flew our Basic Formation Checkride today, and both passed with really good scores! Woo hoo! Jeff ended up with 2 downgrades and I had 3. We both have a really good flight and did well on our ground evaluations, and were happy with how it turned out. We started to get worried because the weather moved in this week and we had to adjust the profile for fuel and clouds and thunderstorms throughout the entire flight, but the IP's were happy with our decisions while each of us was lead, and ended up being a good day to fly.

I also flew my final contact solo last Friday. It's sad, no more taking the jet out totally alone to play around in the area. It's amazing how much improvement is happening throughout the program. In the beginning, I could barely get through all the aerobatic maneuvers before running out of gas, and now it's like I have way too much gas! Being able to stay ahead of the jet is a huge part of it, and the more we fly, the better we are at mastering this. Needless to say, I was able to do all of the maneuvers and then some. I made a couple bombing runs on the town below me, and pulled 6Gz at 500kts for an entire 360 degree turn! Talk about hurt! haha, I can't wait to do it again!

Now we are on to Advanced Formation...and fluid maneuvering which teaches us about flying parameters for BFM (Basic Fighter Maneuvering) which will come later. It's a lot of Gz and fun flying in formation, and I can't wait to start! Sometime coming up soon, I will get to fly my "Bobo" flight which is our solo Out-and-Back. I'll be flying alone out to some other base about 400 miles away, stopping for fuel and lunch, and flying back solo. Sounds like fun to me!

Outside of flying, everything else is going really well. I'm finally getting back into working out and playing sports since we are starting to have a little more time off, or time to ourselves, not necessarily "off". This Friday is graduation for class 07-08 as well. Four guys I graduated are in this class, and 3 will be going to fly Vipers (F-16) and one got the BUFF (B-52). Congrats to them and that means only one thing....WE ARE SENIOR CLASS!!! Holy cow. 6 weeks until we graduate from now! Oct 26th is when we all find out which jets we will all be flying....keep your fingers crossed!

Hope all is well and everyone is doing great and had a great summer. Until next time......