Friday

I had my instruments checkride on Wednesday and it went very very well. I had to do the 2-check twice because I screwed up my missed approach the first time so I was a little apprehensive going into it but everything went nice even with some crazy 30 knot gusts out there.

No rest for the weary though, as they stuck me in my formation 'dollar ride' the next day. They paired me up with a good dude in our class, Allin, and we had a pretty nice formation ride. On the dollar ride the IP does most of the flying but from the sounds of things we got to do a larger share of it than most and my IP seemed to think for my first try it was pretty decent. It's pretty awesome to be up there with another plane 10 feet from your wing but it's going to be frustrating trying to get good at keeping it there... 

I have my last T-6 simulator ride today which is a low-level sim where you fly a low route 500' above the ground. I'll get to do 2 of these in the plane at some point. 11 more day...

Update

Whoops apparently it's been awhile since I updated this thing - but hopefully I was able to see most the people who keep track of this thing over Thanksgiving.

So I had my 2nd checkride (final contact) on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. My "profile" ended up getting all switched around because of the weather but everything ended up going pretty well. I did most my patterns here at laughlin, then went out to the MOA and knocked out the area stuff - the loop was pretty ugly but good enough to get by.  Finished up the flight with the general knowledge and emergency situation and everything went much better than my first checride. It was definitely great to knock that out before the holidays!

That night I drove down to San Antonio with a few guys and hit up the flying saucer and spent the night at a hotel near the airport as we all had flights the next morning. I flew out on a 6AM flight and got back to Philly where Megan picked me up and got to enjoy not 1 but 2 Thanksgivings at my Aunts house with most my family and then over Megan's and got to see a bunch of her family there so it was a very nice evening. 

The next day we went up to Sea Bright, NJ for Andrew's wedding and had an awesome time seeing my friends there and getting the opportunity to witness Andrew's big move into married life. It was pretty surreal being there while I'm in the middle of all this crazy flight training but it only made me appreciate it that much more. We (megan and I) enjoyed a great after-party at the hotel and breakfast the next morning and said our goodbyes and headed back to South Jersey to drop off my tux and hit up best buy where we turned up RockBand on PS3 as loud as it would go and played a couple songs before the employees came and told us it was too loud. Had lunch with my family and then met up with Nick and Lou for a night in Atlantic City. Dinner at Buddhakan was great and then made some money on the roulette and blackjack tables. 

Sunday I was supposed to fly back but my flight got cancelled because of all the weather and had to stay home an extra day (darn...) But the bad part was I had to take a 540AM flight which meant waking up at 245(145 Central) and then had to take the bus to Del Rio since I had carpooled which put me back into Del Rio at 6PM... aye

I had an instrument ride on Tuesday that went well, then my last instrument Sim on Wedesday and an "out-and-back" Nav Ride today where I flew out to College Station ( where Texas A&M is at) and had lunch and flew back. This means I'll probably have my instrument checkride early next week and there's a lot to know for that! That about covers it I think for now,

17 days until get to go home again~

quick update...

...since I feel bad about the lack of updates.

Finished last week off with 3 contact flights and then Megan got down here on Saturday. 

We had a great time over the weekend hanging with the guys and saw the James Bond movie and ate at most the decent places in Del Rio (pretty easy to do in a weekend)

Monday I had a flight followed by a solo ride and then Tuesday I went up for another Solo. It was supposed to be in the morning but two of my jets broke and I said screw it and came back in - I figured after 2 planes no working that was a good enough reason to believe I wasn't supposed to fly that day.... until they decided to stick me in the afternoon go heh so yeah I went up for my 2nd solo ride and did some of the aero and came back but the pattern was crazy busy so just did my best to get the plane on the ground and call it a day.

We're all done with academic tests for the T-6 now so that's pretty cool. Tomorrow I'm scheduled for an instrument sim followed by an instrument flight. Wouldn't be so bad but our show time is 610AM aye. Then friday I head out for my cross country with one of our reserve pilots. He's a former navy pilot and seems like a cool dude to fly with, we're kinda doing our own thing and heading to fort worth on Friday and staying with his family there. Then on Saturday we'll meet up with the rest of the guys in Houston and that should be a good time. I don't really like not having a weekend off from pilot training but oh well. As of right now I'll probably be having my final contact checkride Tuesday or Wednesday - hopefully the check IP's will be nice with thanksgiving around the corner!

Day Off

A nice day off for Veterans Day, kinda feels like another Sunday since I'll be at least feeling like I should be studying all day but it's had to say whether that will actually happen or not. Just got back from a nice workout at the gym and that will probably be the highlight of the day heh

Last week was a strange week as it was a night fly schedule and I went another week without completing a contact flight. I flew an instrument flight on Monday which was just OK and then on Wednesday I flew a contact ride with our squadron Commander, the dude who's from Haddonfield I think, or at least the Cherry Hill area - I get those towns confused around there. But anyway we couldn't do the aerobatics stuff (which is basically the entire point of this block, it's basically a continuation of the contact flying I've been doing but with a bunch of new aerobatics like chandelles, barrel rolls, cuban 8's, lazy 8's and a couple others) as it got too dark so we headed back and afterwards he told me my flight was really awesome and I have great control of the plane, that I would definitely get through this program... basically he seemed a lot more confident than I am and I felt 2 or 3% better after his barrage of complements. 

Then on Thursday I flew with my flight commander for a treat of sorts. We did an out-and-back to San Antonio. Now this is a requirement for the navigation phase of flying but luckily for me this ended up being considered an instrument flight on the way there and then my night flight requirement on the way back meaning I still get to do another out-and-back  --probably sometime next week most likely. It was pretty cool and while I was a little overwhelmed with all the stuff going on that I haven't even really learned yet it was still very cool to do something besides fly to the MOA and the auxiliary field and back to Laughlin. The actual reason for the flight was funny, my flight commander was having difficulty exchanging a mattress he bought so we took a car to the place he bought it so he could deal with them in person. He and a couple other pilots that went along in another T-6 picked up some sushi which I don't really like but next door to the Mattress place was a "Texadelphia" a texas styled cheesesteak place. It wasn't a bad steak and it comes with chips and salsa - I guess that's the texas part... weird.

Anyway I didn't fly yesterday but the next two days should be pretty killer. I'm flying twice tomorrow - 2 contact rides full of crazy aero - I'll just be happy if I don't puke after a few weeks of no yanking and banking. Then on Thurs I'm scheduled for two Magoo rides - these are area solos where I get to go out and practice all this aero I learned umm yesterday(?!) by myself. Sometimes I think the AF doesn't think this stuff out too well but oh well! My flight is with this reserve pilot who is supposedly a Delta pilot out of Atlanta and very relaxed so that should be cool. Adios

Nice weekend

So The week ended with an Instrument flight on Wednesday and a few more instrument sims to finish the week. But this now means I've been out of the front seat of the plane for contact for a week now - another awesome break in training. 

I feel funny complaining about not flying because it's honestly a big relief when I don't, mainly because I tend to get worked up for them. But anyway... yeah for the weekend I got up to San Antonio with some guys from our class and 7 of us stayed at our buddy Austin's families house as his dad is a contractor and currently residing in Georgia leaving they're house nice and empty. It was a really good time and one of the more refreshing weekends (minus when megan's here of course) and really forgot about pilot training for bout 36 hours. 

Friday night we hit the riverwalk for a couple hours and spent the majority of our time at the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner and drinks.

On Saturday, my buddy Jason and I took Austins truck and ran some errands. We hit up Mens Warehouse so i could get measured for my tux for Andrew's wedding and then ran by the quarry market and got some good chinese food (impossible to come by in Texas it seems) and played some darts at a pub watching some college football. That evening we hit a bar called the Flying Saucer which has a collection of about 80 beers on tap plus many more other rarities so this was quite a treat though I can't seem to resist ordering snake bites (half harp lager half woodchuck cider) when the ingredients are available. 

Then on Sunday the plan was to get back at a decent time to get things done but somehow we found ourselves behind schedule and then Austin got a call from a family member asking if we were coming to the San Antonio Airshow at Kelly airfield as we were just about to Kelly on the highway. Needless to say we were forced to pull in and enjoyed an awesome F-22 Demo, a great heritage flight with a Mustang, F-16, F-15 and F-22 - Very cool. Followed by the Blue Angels which I happen to find much cooler than the thunderbirds - sorry Air Force...

I also got to talk to a few C-5 guys in the San Antonio Reserve unit as they were letting folks walk through one of their galaxies and that was nice. One guy seemed convinced that my unit was converting to C-17's but I haven't heard anything about that so who knows. 

So it was a great weekend and now it's back to the grind. We have night flights this week so at some point I should get up for an hour and do some night flying which I've always very much enjoyed - maybe I can even enjoy it with an IP complaining in the back seat - we shall see.

I hope everyones doing well, Thanksgiving is fast approaching - then only 3 weeks after that for xmas followed by about a month until I track to T-1's.... can't come soon enough !

thanks for following :)

midphase complete (finally)

So I got through the checkride-redo and while it wasn't a super clean ride, I got through it. He switched things up on me - it was another 31 Day (of course) and on our way to the auxiliary field he decides we should head to the MOA first which I hadn't done since my 3rd flight. 

But anyway I got through the ride, and while I know my next checkride is only a couple weeks away I'm trying to find some confidence in this win of sorts and hopefully get the next one on the first try. It's gonna be busy now as I have some catching up to do as far as our next academic test (navigation) and getting back into the instrument stuff as I've been narrowly focused on this checkride the last week and a half. 

Step 1 part 2

So the checkride didn't go too hot. 

It's a bit hard to explain but basically we have to learn all these ground references for the runway and this entire time (except 1 flight) we've flown the same runway. And of course right before my checkride the winds shift and I have to fly the other runway flying ground references that I'v studied but never completely seen. Needless to say I was off my game and besides screwing some of the pattern work up I was worried about it a lot and it definitely made the flight frustrating.

They ended up giving me an extra ride today to prepare for the redo and it went smooth. Hopefully the winds stay the same and I can go in on Monday and bang out a good flight. It's definitely nerve-racking knowing your always 2-3 bad flights from being out of the program but you can't think about that part of it and just go out and do your best. 

We actually lost our first guy due to inability to keep up with the flying. Kind of a shame - hopefully he'll be the last but it's unlikely.

I'll be relaxing this weekend and preparing for the flight on Monday, and as long as everything goes well I can look forward to about 2 weeks before the next big checkride ha not a lot of recovery time. But after that there's only 2 more for the last 3.5 months or so of flying T-6's.

I'll make sure to update this thing Mon or Tues and let everyone know how it went. 

Step 1

So passed my "pre-check" today.

It was a really good flight and I flew with our assistant flight commander who is a really good dude. Tomorrow is this wingman day thing, we do some group PT stuff and then there's a picnic in the afternoon, kinda strange but gets us the day off which is fine by me.

This means I'll be doing my checkride on Thursday. I'm still worried based on how the last few rides went but today made me feel like there's a chance I could actually do things well enough to pass. My area work (stalls, aerobatics, etc.) was basically awesome and the pattern stuff (landings, breakouts, etc) were safe and decent enough. 

I'll be spending tomorrow looking over some of the general knowledge type stuff I need to know for the checkride. It's an extremely aggravating process - and according to my Dad I'll be dealing with them the rest of the time I decide to fly military/commercial. EXCELLENT.

Tough

Well this is a big week coming up, could be the deciding factor if I'm gonna make it through this craziness. Had a couple rough flights last week and I'm for my To-Check tomorrow which is the flight before a check ride where your IP confirms you're "prepared" for your check ride and then I would potentially be doing my Mid-Phase Checkride on Tuesday, this is the most commonly hooked check ride and puts you essentially 2 rides from being out of the program if you do fail it.

I'm trying my best to stay positive and motivated but it's tough. I definitely don't enjoy the pressure cooker and the sooner I get this first one over with, win lose or draw, the better.

Megan left this morning and is back in New Jersey so that's a bummer, but it was nice having her out here again to keep me relatively sane :)  

Thanks everyone for keeping an eye on things and I'll let you know how the week goes. If I can just do everything right ON THE SAME FLIGHT - I may be able to pass this thing lol. (not to mention answer all the ground eval questions well enough). 

Solo pics

Wow it's "only" been a week and it seems like so much as happened. Very quickly... I soloed that Wednesday then didn't fly Thurs, Fri. Boring weekend then stomach was bothering me Mon,Tues and didn't fly. So I flew Wed and after a week out of the plane is was a rough flight. Didn't get up Thurs, Fri leaving me back to a 6 day break between flights (awesome...). 

On the bright side, Megan got down here Friday night and Saturday was my Bday! Happy Birthday to me. We had a very nice weekend (3 day'er thanks to Columbus Day, it's nice to finally get it off somewhere - Through middle/high school we never got it off because the jewish holidays maxed us out I suppose!) Anyway we did some shopping, watched the Eagles with a bunch of displaced Eagles fans in San Antonio and saw that Eagle Eye movie. Megan had a job interview today and then we got back to Del Rio this afternoon.

It's never fun finishing a week with a bad ride but oh well, just gotta do my best to get back on my game. One cool thing is this block we start doing the "baby aero" including loops, aileron rolls, and split-s. I don't get a big kick out of this stuff but it's cool and gives you more confidence in your your flying and not freaking out if you ended up upside-down or something crazy like that!

This should be a link to the solo pics: 

PICTURES

SOLO

Got to Solo today! It was a lot of fun to finally get up there by myself. It's a pattern only sortie and only a half hour so we don't really get to do a whole lot. My buddy took a bunch of pictures so hopefully I can get a hold of those soon and I'll post them on the blog here. I will report more soon!

Monday

Not much to report on really but i felt bad not writing for so long. Finished last week with an "ok" ride on Thursday, not really the kind of ride that makes me feel like I'm going to solo in 3 flights but hopefully there will be some improvement. Friday I had an instruments Sim and today I went in with nothing scheduled and ended up doing 2 more Instrument Sim's partly because I guy hooked his ride (we had 3 today I think) and you can't do any more events after you unsat a ride. So I ended up having a sort of busy day - but it was funny because I had the same Sim instructor which is very ironic and he's a real laid back guy and we talked about the steelers game half the time and he seems to think I've got the basics of instrument flying down pretty well. I can't wait until my flying consists more of this as honestly this is the first thing that I'll actually use a great deal when I'm eventually flying C-5's

So tomorrow I get up in the morning for a flight and then have my 4th Instrument Sim. If things go well I will be soloing this week and if they don't... well I'll have a little extra time to be ready for that solo ride.  Not much more to discuss, weekend was pretty boring - relaxed and caught up on some tv shows I missed during the week - DVR is very nice for this. Goodbye for now.

The days are long

But the weeks go by so fast. Flew the last 3 days, had a rough ride on Monday but things went a great deal better yesterday and today. Today we did some spins and I think it kind of frazzled me a bit and wasn't feeling too hot but I got through it and didn't have to say anything about it so yeah we'll see - it sucks a lot feeling sick in that plane when your all strapped in with an oxygen mask and g-suit on.

 I also flew the last emergency procedure sim prior to soloing today and it went A-ok. My buddy aaron was the first from our class to solo today; his wife and daughter came out and a group of us ganged up on him and tossed him in the "solo tank". A pilot training tradition where you get tossed in this dinky pool full of nasty water after you solo  - It's a lot of fun and he was a good sport. I can't believe that I'll be doing that early next week (if everything goes well!) 

We're left with very little time, it's 8 right now and I can't believe I have to sleep and be back there at 730 tomorrow. Hopefully I can get a decent hour of studying in before my brain shuts off and get some sleep. We had another "welcome to pilot training, etc." brief today. Oh yeah, everything here is a brief somehow - there's no presentations or meetings it's briefing after briefing. But anyway, yeah it was the same old stuff but he went around the room asking who was academy, ots, rotc, etc. and finished asking who was from the Academy of Minimum Standards heh and of course this is the commissioning program for the Air Nat'l Guard... kinda amusing (kinda not). What was funnier was that one of the AF Academy guys thought he meant "who graduated from the academy by meeting the minimum standards" and raised his hand. It was cool though This Lt. Colonel is from Cherry Hill and is a big Eagles fan and told me I'm not allowed to bring up that I'm an Eagles fan if he does an 89 ride with me. (this is where the commander takes you for your "last chance" ride to determine whether you get the boot or stay in training if your messing up - hopefully that won't be required). 

Little Speed-bump

Ah Sorry about the long delay in updating this thing, it's been a busy week. I flew Mon, Tues, Wed and there was a lot of learning going on in those flights. I finished the first "block" of flights, they group the flights into blocks and there's certain requirements you need to meet by the last flight of the block in order to progress. After this next block, 6 more flights or so I would be scheduled to solo, pretty crazy! 

As far as the speed-bump is concerned I missed the required score on the instruments test Thursday morning by 1 question - bummer. So I had use my mulligan on that one leaving me with 4 tests remaining and if I was to fail 2 more I'd get the boot. But that's not going to happen so we don't need to worry about that. It's a lot more difficult to try and get ready for those tests when your concentrating so much on trying to fly better. 

Next weeks going to be a lot of work and I'll be expected to bring every aspect of my flying up to a level where they trust me to go fly a $4 Million airplane around by myself, so I'll be trying to make the most of tomorrow and make Monday a good ride. I'll be with a new instructor tomorrow but I think he'll be good, I've sat in on a few of his debriefs and he seems very thorough and my buddy has said he's learned more flying one flight with him than 3 rides with his previous instructor. Today we might go see that movie 'burn after reading' and relax a bit. Thanks for checking up~

back to work

Had my 4th Contact flight today and it was a good one. It was a little different since the wind was favoring 31 today, which isn't used very often - almost never in the summer. I went up with a different IP and he was another very helpful, easy to talk to instructor and it went well. I have to say I'v been pretty fortunate thus far with my IP's. They've got me going up again tomorrow and then again on Wednesday. I think I was one of the last to still feel sick in the plane so they've got me going up a lot to help get over it and I think it's working, it's also got me ahead of the class which isn't a bad thing at all. 

We also had our first Standup EP today and Emergency Procedure Quiz. The former is where they stand up one of the students and have them "fly" the plane orally and they introduce some kind of emergency indications and you have to fly the plane through the situation to a safe conclusion. It can be a bit nerve-racking. The latter is a quiz on different aircraft systems stuff. It was a lot harder than I expected so I wasn't too happy about that. There's some kind of maximum number you can fail, and if you fail one you have retake it and pass it before you fly again. Hopefully I passed but not a huge deal if I didn't, it's nice to not be "competing".

For now... try and study with the eagles/cowboys in the background :) Go Birds

Quite a week!

Not an all bad week but definitely a long and tiring one. So I flew again on Wednesday and Thursday and while Wednesday I still wasn't feeling too hot, Thursday was a lot better, sickness-feeling-wise and flying-the-jet-wise. Each flight is definitely a blast and the plane definitely has a fighter-pilot type feel to it. I don't know what's with all the dashes tonight but they seem necessary heh. There is an UNBELIEVABLE amount of stuff to know to fly this plane and to make matters worse they're throwing the first part of Instruments at us and we test on Thursday so that won't make the week any easier. 

The IP I'v been flying with has been great, He's a first assignment instructor pilot and graduated the USAFA in 2005, with Steve. I'v been having some difficulty controlling the plane on final approaches in particular and he's convinced it's because I'm left-handed and has been making me do things right-handed in the flight room so that's been pretty funny. I definitely think he's right though, I don't have quite the dexterity with my right hand that you need to finesse the plane in for landing. I seem to get by during most other stages of flight but the landing is really sensitive. He's been pretty encouraging and I think I'll get it down better, I fly again with him Monday so hopefully there will be some improvement. 

On a sort of funny note... When the hurricane was predicted to come right at us on Wednesday, they implemented this plan to move all our planes (like 60 T-6's) to Arizona, and they actually told us Wednesday evening that we had Thurs and Fri off. Then, of course, we get called in at 9am on Thursday morning after they decided the massive plane movement wasn't necessary because the storm was being tracked to head north before it got to us. So that was a pretty big bubble burster, but it got me in the jet again which was good for me getting over feeling sick every time I fly. 

But now it IS the weekend and time to chill, though I'm sure at least Sunday will be a full day of studying. Enjoy the weekend!

wow

So I had my dollar ride yesterday! recap: this is where the IP takes you up and basically intro's a lot of stuff - basically a freebie. It was pretty awesome but I felt like crap for the majority of the ride. Not a big deal since most people don't feel too good and a lot of guys have thrown up. I fly again tomorrow and I'm hoping I'll be feeling a bit better then. The fact that I've been a little sick the last few days with some congestion isn't helping matters. The next ride they expect a lot more out of you it has the title of being sort of the worst sortie in flight training because it's your first ride and they expect you to kind of take control and you're going to mess up a lot of stuff. So the IP's make jokes about not wanting to instruct those rides but it's all good.

Since I didn't fly today I spent the majority of the day doing random tasks and listening in on the debriefs for the guys that did fly - basically the critique of their flight and with some general knowledge type stuff that the IP's will lay out during the debrief. Tonight I'll look over some more pattern stuff, etc. 

On a kind of cool note every time I tell an IP that I'm flying C-5's they go into these diatribes about "their buddy" that flies C-5's and how they go to all these awesome places and other guys will be staying in tents and the C-5 crews are in the Hilton and this and that so it makes it only that much sweeter - the light at the end of the tunnel here :) I'll let you know how the next flight(s) go. Objective: not feel like crap. Adios.

flyin time

Dollar ride tomorrow! 

Weather test went well, only missed two. Half our class flew on Friday and the day as a whole went relatively well. I've been a little congested the last few days but I'm hoping the worst of it is behind me and at this point I feel well enough to fly so as long as things go as planned I'll be taking off around 1pm tomorrow. That will be followed by a sim ride in the evening and I probably won't be out of there until around 9 for a nice 12 hour day. 

Spent the weekend in San Antonio with Megan and we had a good time shopping and relaxing before I dropped her off at the airport this morning and came back to Del Rio by myself. I've been going over checklist items trying to have the 'flow' memorized a little better and it's coming pretty easily (at least while I'm in the comfort of my room, we'll see what happens in the jet!).

The Eagles won their first game 38-3 which is pretty awesome even though I didn't get to watch it. The phillies just won their first game of the doubleheader and have a chance to sweep the met's series tonight and even the NL East race - and this game WILL be on ESPN tonight so I'll have to give up a little study time for that it's looking like. 

4 day weeks are nice too

I think every weekend should be a 3-day weekend. Although it makes getting up Tuesday that much more difficult. Had a 'fire-hose' sim today but it actually went pretty well. The instructor was speaking a mile a minute and it gave me a pretty good idea of what I can look at to look slightly less stupid on my first flights. This involved departing from Laughlin, flying the departure to Wizard, which is a Laughlin Auxiliary field, doing a touch n go there, then climbing to the ELP High key which is the special pattern used for emergency procedures, doing another landing then going into the MOA for a few stalls, a spin and some uncontrolled flight recoveries. Followed by departing the MOA for Laughlin performing a straight-in landing followed by a couple in the pattern. Apparently this is more than we normally ever do in one 'real' flight but it's supposed to kinda scare you at all the stuff you COULD have to do. 

Besides that, we met our flight commanders and some of the IP's for our flight today, which was cool. They seem alright but they're ALL "FAIP's". This is First Assignment Instructor Pilot. Basically, they graduated pilot training and went straight to flight instructor school and are here now before any, well, Non-training assignment. This basically means we'll have guys who are 100 up-to-date with the training requirements but will expect a lot out of us. AKA it's not gonna be easy street for the next 5 months. 

Finally, we had a couple more weather classes. We'll have 2 more tomorrow and then the Test on Thursday, which is our last day of academics. We report to the flightline on Friday and some of us may get our "dollar rides". This being your initial ride where the IP kinda intro's certain aspects of the pattern and such - though supposedly they still expect you to have certain things down at that point and will call you out on it.

So that's the deal; Test Thursday, Flightline Friday. Wish me luck... :)

3 day weekends are nice

Ah, nice to have a few days off before the defecation hits the rotating oscillator. One of the Military Training guys at AMS used to use that line, guess it's a Tennessee thing. Had a pretty busy week, but supposedly it was nothing compared to what's coming... Nice thoughts. Finished the week off with a good sim doing more emergency procedures on Friday, and almost felt like I knew what I was doing! Then I had my Contact test which didn't go as well as I'd hoped but i Passed (And that's all that matters). 

That reminds me of the speech we got early in the week from the T-38 commander. He let our class know that there was basically a 99% chance that we(or the active duty folks) will have UAV's "dropped" on our class. This basically means that a few of the guys in my class will go through a year of intense pilot training to end up flying remote control planes from a cellar. Pretty sucky. And too make matters worse there's no guarantee that they would EVER get to fly a real airframe after that - meaning they could be stuck flying rc planes their entire career. Luckily I'm not affected by this since I'm guaranteed C-5's being guard but it's a shame still. 

Megan decided she wanted to stay another week so she's going to stay a bit longer which is really nice. Therefore we're staying in Del Rio for the weekend and just lounging. Tonight Aaraon is having a big fish fry at his place. He brought some massive amount of halibut and salmon from Alaska with him and invited a bunch of people over to enjoy some of that along with the beer he brewed up.  Ah I also found out my dates for Thanksgiving and Xmas which was disappointing. If I want to come home for Thanksgiving I'd have to leave on Thursday morning which only gives me 2 full days at home so I'm going to think about it. For Xmas I'll be leaving on the 24th and I think I need to be back on the 4th - which isn't too bad. But anyway, this will be a big week as we hit the flightline on Friday and from that point on it's 12 hour days and we can't even leave for lunch or anything - crazy stuff. Catch everyone later

Wednesday

Eesh 6 days since my last post - I'm a bum. Well for a quick recap, I had my first sim on Friday which went decently but was somewhat eye opening by getting a glimpse at all the stuff we're expected to know/memorize in the plane. Lots of stuff! So after that was some computer stuff and off we went to San Antonio to pick up Megan!

We met Megan at the hotel and relaxed in SA for the weekend and had a great time. Got back on Sunday and went right into studying for my Flying Fundamentals test on Monday. Crammed for it and missed 3 again for a 94. It was a weird class in that it was entirely taught on computers and self study with a review the day prior in the classroom. Anyway, that one is over with and we've moved onto "Contact". This involves learning a lot about how to track visually using the ground targets they point out along with how to do some simple VFR navigation, getting to the MOA's and some of the rules involved with the military flying around here. 

I also have a sim almost every day this week (Except Tuesday). The 2 I've had so far this week have gone well and I'm trying my best to get the radio call, checklist procedures and other little things down to the point where I at least look like I've looked at it a bit heh. 

Megans been enjoying herself down here and is actually out hanging with Aarons wife this afternoon and we'll be having some steaks over their place later. 

Contact test is Friday, along with sims both Thurs and Fri where I'll get into the emergency procedures a bit. 

Almost Friday

Just got back from my Aerodynamics Exam and it was Rough! I was sweating it pretty bad, used a whole piece of scratch paper and had like 11 questions written down that i was pretty unsure about (out of 47). Somehow I came away with 44/47 for a 94, definitely got lucky on a few! I'm definitely glad that ones done with, and the fact that this week is almost done with.

Tomorrow I have at least one sim ride where we go over the entire checklist and get a feeling where all the buttons are along with some of the challenge questions required. These are certain phrases you have to memorize and repeat to the instructor, basically ensuring that he accomplished his portion of the checklist items which are also located in the back seat, where he sits. Then it's a bunch of computer-assisted instruction on Flying Fundamentals and Emergency Procedures. The Flying Fundamentals is the next class I have, I call it a class but it's only one day of instruction (Monday) then the test is on Tues. Pretty ridiculous if you ask me - but supposedly they do care and want us to pass (if you say so...)

If I don't get on here tomorrow, wish me a good weekend in San Antonio with Josh, Aaron aaaaaaand Megan! She's coming down for the week and leaving Labor Day, so that's definitely exciting. And if I fail my flying fundamentals exam I can blame it on her :)

Hey, I just wanted to put up a few links. Pretty relaxing weekend overall, we went out on the lake for a while on saturday which was a lot of fun and I have a nice sunburn to prove it. Today I ran some errands and did some laundry and stuff. I've got a few youtube links for you guys if you want to see some T-6's in action and that sort of thing.

Some T-6 Action

Spins past 2 turns

From Moody

Song I'm obsessed with (no flying)

Phase 1 half done

So test #4 is out of the way, didn't do as well as I would have liked to but got a 90 (probably due to the olympics constantly attracting my attention). Onward to Aerodynamics - not really sure how in depth we get but I can't imagine it being too bad if a bunch of english and econ, etc majors are able to get through it !

Tonight will be some relaxing and then tomorrow Josh and I, along with Aaron and his fam and a few other married type people are going to go out on a couple boats on Lake Amistad and chill there for the day. Should be a good time and I'm excited to finally see what this lake is all about. 3 weeks until we start flying, coming up fast. Enjoy the weekend~

The Wednesday Report

Not a whole lot to say here.  We've been rolling through the 2nd portion of  T-6 Aircraft Systems and continuing to hear on a daily basis how bad our life is going to be when we start flying :)

This portion of systems discusses the Electrical, Fuel, Propulsion (engine), Environmental, Canopy and Ejection systems. Some interesting stuff, I doubt this test will be too bad so even though we don't spend a lot of time on it, it should go well enough on Friday when we test. Tomorrow I think we get back in the Sim for our 2nd introduction instruction, should be similar to the last where we mainly go over the systems we'll be testing on to get a slightly better idea how they work. Before that though we have an "early" class at 730 - of course this won't be anything near early when we start flying but we've been pretty fortunate thus far and most our class times have been between 830 and 930. 

On Friday we have to take a PT test, should be the only one we do while we here so it's fine to get it out of the way I guess - I'll probably just take it easy and not try to be a gym class hero that day. Afterwards we have to wear service dress and attend/run the graduation for class 08-13 (we being 09-13 or the 13th class to graduate in 2009). It will be a long day but I think our schedule ends around 3 so that's not too bad if we can actually get back around then. A day like friday makes me feel like I'm back in the active duty as I'll be wearing 3 possibly 4 different Air Force Uniforms that day - Woah

I've felt bad about my lack of picture-taking so here's just a couple pictures I've snapped with the phone. The first is the Oxygen tank where I told you we practiced the oxygen mask techniques at altitude along with a rapid decompression. The 2nd is just a pic of the UTD'd - the basic sims we can use to practice our checklists and stuff. Au revoir!

long (good) day

Started off with an intoduction to one of the basic simulators. There's a few different kinds apparnently - I was in the basic one where it's a full mock-up of the cockpit with working screens and buttons, etc but there's no screen to actually fly visually. Then there's types that are in dark room with screen in front of you (perhaps behind also I'm not positve). And finally, they have some full motion, full screen models where you feel like your in the real thing. 

The simulators are all run by civillian instructors who are former Military Pilots, mostly AF - some Navy. Our dude was really cool and explained stuff well and was easy to talk to and made it enjoyable. It was helpful to see how some of the buttons actually work to get a better of idea of what does what. Of course we only scratched the surface, but for the test it was definitely nice. 

That being said - after the sim I had some time to study and took my test and got a 98. We have another exam on Systems 2 on Friday but supposedly that one is much easier so I'll try to split my time with that and looking over some flying stuff since all I keep hearing is that we have a huge amount of free time right now and once we start flying I'll be so overly tasked I won't have time to sleep - or something like that.

In other news, I hope everyone got a chance to watch that 4x100 mens relay last night. I wouldn't call myself a HUGE swimming fan or anything resembling being knowledgeable on the sport but that was one of the coolest things I'v seen in any sport - right up there with some phillies comeback wins. 

Systems 1 Tomorrow Systems 2 Friday

So that's the summary.

We spent the last 3 days of the week going over the various systems outlined in the Systems 1 course. Flight Controls, Radios, GPS, Nav Equipment, etc, etc. The information is much more interesting but they throw quite a bit at us and supposedly the questions can be a bit tricky. We test tomorrow afternoon and then go over the 2nd portion of systems tues, wed, thurs and test on that Friday. So it should be a pretty busy week. We get to check out the sim in the morning two at a time and that should give us a slightly better idea of what the buttons do.  

It was a nice lazy weekend otherwise, one of the guys that lives off-base had a party and there was a pretty good turnout and we played some horseshoes and other games. Saturday, Josh and I saw Pineapple Express which was hilarious and I think he found it extra amusing because he was a cop prior to coming here and it reminded him of all the nut jobs he would arrest. We hung out at Aaron's for a few hours last night while he went through the process of brewing a batch of beer which should be ready in a couple weeks. It was pretty cool to see how it's done and I think I'm going to try and find some good wheat beer mix to concoct next. 

Today was all about studying with a quick trip to the gym. I've been getting on the rowing machine to try and augment my workout and lighten the load of running on my knees the last few weeks. It's a slap-in-the-face reminder every time I get on of how much those things can hurt! But it was really cool to see some olympic rowing on TV and gave me a little inspiration to try and stay on the erg and get back in crew shape. 

Back to systems for now... I'll try and update a bit more often as Nathan claims I have quite a fan base growing lol. Adios~

The Aerospace Physiology test went well enough, didn't score that high but I got above an 85 so I passed as the whole class did this time. Monday we did the Oxygen Chamber before the test and it was pretty cool. We went up to 35,000' and leveled off then back down and leveled off at 25,000' where we did the hypoxia "demo". It was pretty cool to see the different effects people experience when they lose oxygen. For myself, I started feeling very hot and tingly, plus we had this worksheet with math problems and little puzzles on it and I did some of it but just had no interest in doing multiplication or subtraction problems. I went back on Oxygen and a few others decided to hold out and it was pretty funny. One guy was told to count back from 100 by 4's and it went something like 100, 96, 92, 84, 90, 86, 78, and that's about as far as he made it.

Today was the last day of aerospace phys and was all untestable material so it made for a pretty easy day discussing crew resources and making good decisions.

I picked up a bunch more food at the commisary in my effort to be slightly more healthy and save a little money. We start looking at T-6 Systems this week and that will definitely be more interesting. 

54 Weeks To Go!

I probably shouldn't remind myself of that but oh well. Not a bad rest of the week - aerospace physiology is pretty interesting, discussing the different effects flying can have on your body and how to combat these. We spent a morning practicing how to safely egress the plane and more so how to properly land if you were to parachute down. We used to do a parasail thing to simulate it better but they decided more students were getting hurt on the parasail than would ever actually have to eject out of an airplane - smart decision.

We spent some time on the barany chair which is used to simulate the different effects of flying and spatial disorientation that can occur by spinning you in circles at about 30 rpm. The chair also has a 2nd function of being used to combat air sickness by spinning for ten minutes 3 times a day, 3 days a week. Apparently it's a hellish program and I'm praying I don't get sick in the T-6 because it would most certainly not be fun to go through that (The point is to throw up a lot)

We touched on vision night vision, the threats of high altitude, acceleration, stress awareness and also did the Fighter Aircrew Test which is a bunch of muscular exercises they use and give you a score and it's supposed to determine if your "in shape enough" to perform high G force maneuvers. The test is pretty bogus and apparently a high score doesn't necessarily correlate to a high tolerance to G's - according to the instructors. But it was easy enough and all I had to do was pass it and since I already know I'm flying heavies I'll never have to do it again.

A bunch of guys(+1 girl) in the class went out friday night and had a good time. Josh and I went to San Antonio for the weekend and saw the Mummy 3(?) - it wasn't bad and we had a good time hanging out at the river walk. I found some good margaritas and Josh found some good Pepsi's :) Aaran and his family were going to meet up with us for dinner but got delayed in some bad traffic on their way back from Ikea near Austin so Aaron met up with us around 1030 and we hung out for a few hours and had a good time.

Tonight I'll be studying for my physiology exam tomorrow afternoon and then the Phillies are on ESPN @7C so I'll probably have to watch that. We get in the Oxygen chamber tomorrow to see the effects of hypoxia and high altitude. That will finish up physiology and we move on to the systems of the T-6 which should be interesting and at least I'll finally feel like I'm learning about something to do with flying the T-6!

I'll be in touch!

Hola

I feel like I should make each of my blog entries in Spanish as that's all I hear when I get off this base. 3 miles from Mexico and it seems like all the immigrants that made it into the US decided to set up shop right here in Del Rio.

Not a bad couple days. We are in a week of Aerospace Physiology and had our first test today on Survival. It was a pretty poorly written/explained exam but I passed and that's all that matters! We went through the egress system and how to "punch out" of the T-6 in our full g-suit, harness, helmet and mask which was interesting. We also went over some of the oxygen system and techniques to ensure the mask is on properly. The mask will take some getting used to but it definitely looks cool...

Next test is Monday so I'll have the weekend to be ready for that. Besides that I just have to keep up with the Bold Face & Ops limits which is this sheet of emergency procedures and operational limits of the T-6 that you have to know word for wore, number by number. They give us blank ones to fill out and I think we won't get to come to class in flight suits until everyone gets it right 3 days in a row. Good stuff heh. I've got it down fine so hopefully we'll have it down in the next couple weeks. 

Good to go

Just wanted to let you know that the physical went fine today. Not without a little concern, but I passed and that should be the end of the medical issues unless I get ill. My bp was high the first time (of course) but came down to acceptable levels (by 3 points i believe) and also for some reason it took me a few takes on the glaucoma test where they blow the air at your eye. The numbers would change and each eye has to be within 3 points of the other eye - and it took me a few times to get that spread.

So a little pressure off with that being done and now I can enjoy my weekend and take a look at some of this information i have in my box of pubs and materials. I think Josh (TN ANG), Aaron (Alaska ANG) and I are going to get together over the weekend and hang out and go over some materials for a little guard study session. I don't think I mentioned before but I found out on Wed that we'll be splitting up into 2 groups when the flying starts and I'll be separated from both of them, but it's yet to be seen how that effects us studying together and stuff like that so yeah kind of a bummer but we'll deal. 

Have a nice weekend!

Books-A-Million

Alright - So Day 2 is over and tomorrow is just a physical (hopefully the BP will be low). Yesterday was mainly lots and lots of briefings. We met our Boss of sorts for the next year and he's a great dude from the looks of things, they seem to have our best interest in mind as they want to get the most out of us in the coming months. The big story for the day was picking up all my Pubs and Study Materials. Some of it applies for the entire program but much of it is only on the T-6. It's pretty amazing that there's this much material involved!

I took a picture but it doesn't do it justice. I have a box that holds 10 reems of paper and it was completely full. So as long as tomorrows physical goes well I'll be in the clear and we'll get rolling into our first class on Monday which is the survival portion of aviation physiology I believe. It looks like I'll probably be hanging in Del Rio this weekend since Josh and I will possibly be meeting his parents in Dallas next weekend to pick up his jet ski. 

On a side note, today was actually the first somewhat nice day since I've been here. the hurricane stuff kept the temperature down and it only just recently started raining and the wind picked up - but overall very pleasant. Hopefully I'll have good news to report on about the physical and I'll let everyone know soon.  Adios.

Welcome to Active Duty...

Aye what a night. So yesterday afternoon I get a call from one of the captains nicely telling me that I'v been selected to be "on call" and that I might get a phone call with further instructions. Later I get a call from a Lt. Colonel explaining that I needed to be available at a moments notice to be able to show up in uniform at a to be determined location at a tbd time to do what will be explained at the time. Now of course I'm very curious about what might be going on here. Is this some sort of emergency scenario? Is this some kind of hazing event they do before you start pilot training? I have no idea. Anyway, so I hang around the base and don't drink any alcohol per the instructions and get to sleep around 1215 thinking I'm probably in the clear now. 

Wrong. I get a call at 215AM telling me to be at the Seminar Hall at 320, which of course I wasn't too excited about, I decide at this point it's not worth sleeping another half hour and risk not waking back up and decide to very slowly take my shower (in a very bad mood) and get ready to leave. I show up to find out they're doing mass dorm "safety (drug) inspections" and drug testing on all the unaccompanied enlisted folks living in the dorms. Of course since this is active duty, the reggies had the inspection directions in sealed envelopes and it was all very cloak and dagger and nonetheless I found it somewhat amusing. 

Myself and the 5 other guys (this by the way somehow included all 3 guard guys even though there's like 40 people in the transition group right now...odd) were put on the drug testing observation team and had to watch people pee in cups for 3.5 hours. I definitely felt bad for all these enlisted kids, i say kids because most looked like they were between 18 and 20 though there were some older ones. I definitely can't imagine an episode like that being much of a morale booster but I guess someone decided it was necessary to completely invade their evening and privacy. Perhaps the guard has just made me soft ~

 So that's how I spent my first Saturday night on base at Del Rio. Leasson learned: Go to San Antonio every weekend :)

I should say that our current boss was kind enough to let us sleep in tomorrow and not show up for the roll call we do at 0830. I'm pretty much done all my in-processing stuff now and ready for class on Wednesday! 

Dorm Pics

Hey everyone. 

Not much new here. Went out and checked out Lake Amistad and the Laughlin Services marina where we can rent boats and stuff. Josh might be having his parents bring his jet ski to Dallas where he'd meet them and bring it down to Del Rio which would be very cool. I took a few pictures of my dorm room and stuck them on a slideshow here: Slideshow.

Hope everyone has a nice weekend I'll catch ya later.

6 Days and counting...

I was wandering around today and snapped a few pics of the flightline. The first picture is the T-1's and the next two are the T-6's. Today I was fitted by life support for my Helmet, Mask, Harness and G-Suit which was pretty cool. I didn't know we'd be wearing g-suits during T-6's so I get to be a fighter pilot of sorts for 5 months - good stuff. This weekend I'll be staying in Del Rio and probably try and see the new Batman movie tomorrow, it looks like it should be as good as the previous edition. 

A couple pictures...

Eventually I'll take some pictures of the base and my room and such but here's just 2 quick pictures from San Antonio. First a picture from the boat ride on the River Walk that Megan and I went on and then a picture of the Superman Roller Coaster at Six Flags. Finally, a quick picture of me trying on my flight suit! All my pictures will be from my phone for now until I either find my camera or buy a new one. 

PRE-PHASE 1 / Arrival

Hello everyone. I am starting this blog to hopefully keep friends and family updated and give some info on UPT to the strangers scouring the internet for such gouge. 

I arrived at Laughlin AFB on 9 July after a nice 5-day drive consisting of stops in Charlotte NC, Pensacola FL, Houston TX, San Antonio TX and finally Del Rio Tx. It was a fun 2000 miles that Megan joined me on and we had a great time although it ended in her departure :(

My class starts on 23 July and until then I spend the majority of my time doing in-processing paperwork here, faxing orders and travel voucher stuff to my unit in NY, moving into my dorm, and trying not to get too bored. 

I just got my internet and television hooked up today so that's great and I'm fortunate to have another guard guy in my class that went through AMS (my commissioning program) with me, and we've been hanging out a lot and keeping busy. We were only here 2 days and decided to cruise out to San Antonio for the weekend and do Six Flags which was a lot of fun

I guess I'll describe the program here a bit in my first post to everone. 

Our class only has 3 guard guys, the rest are active duty folks along with 3 Italians that just arrived. It's definitely nice to be ANG because we already know what aircraft were flying and where were going to be after UPT (aka: home)

I start Phase I on 23 July which lasts 6 weeks and is all classwork and tests and NO flying. 

Phase II begins right after that and lasts 4.5 months. This will be the most difficult part of my training but also the most fun if I get a chance to enjoy it. I'll be flying the T-6 and working on a number of different facets of military flying. 

Phase III is the final part of my training and lasts about 6 months. I'll be flying the T-1 which is the track aircraft for those going to Cargo or Refueling missions. This won't be as intense as phase II and will consist of a lot of cross country and instrument flying which will be very cool.

That's about all I have for now. I'll do my best to get some pictures and keep this page updated and things move along and try to keep everyone informed. Thanks for keeping tabs!