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 :)