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!