Phase III Complete - Low Level Check...0E!

Don't go passin' out because I'm updating the site again so soon...I have to pass on some great news! I ended up flying my low level check this passed Tuesday after the crappy weather moved through the day before. It went great! Everything went as planned, and I had a good day flying. After the flight and ground evaluation were done with, I was very surprised to hear the check IP say, "Well, I have no downgrades for you. You flew and excellent ride!" I was totally pumped, and could hardly keep myself from yelling "SWEET!" in his office. Praise God I was able to finish up my checkrides with a bang...I'll take a zero downgrade excellent any day!

The day after I flew a formation flight down the LA and then had a night nav flight back here to the base. As we were planning our formation flight, the weather was supposed to be decent at our destination except for some cloud layers...no big deal. Well, that wasn't the case as we found out in the air. It was cloudy pretty much the whole way, but things didn't really start to get interesting until we got closer to the airport we intended to land at.. I was flying in fingertip on the wing when we started to get into some pretty dark, thick clouds with rain...and oh by the way, some pretty heavy turbulence. I had never seen that before. Lead's jet looked like a rag doll being tossed around so much, as were we. I told my IP, "Sir, I'm going to hang out a little behind lead to keep from hitting him." He also thought it was a good idea while lead coordinated for vectors south around the storm. After about 10-15 minutes of that we popped out of the side of the thunderstorm to see sun and a layer of clouds below us. "Man, I was getting a little anxious there for a second" is what came from the backseat. I too was wondering how this was going to play out, but as a student you have a sense of security with a dude in the backseat who has his wings. This whole time we had been keeping an eye on our gas and also and eye on the closest divert base, which at that time would have been New Orleans, NAS (Naval Air Station). Once clear of the weather and headed toward the airport, it was obvious we were going to have to split the formation and do separate approaches...we were going to have to go back into the weather to land on a wet runway. We're not allow to do a form approach and landing with a wet runway. To make a long story short, we split up and we ended up going in first. My IP says, "Make sure you're strapped in good and all your crap is secured before we go into the weather again." I got all my stuff together and shot the approach only to pop out of the clouds in the pouring rain...thank God for runway lights! =) No sooner had we taxied to the parking ramp did it start to rain even harder with lightning and thunder. We ended up sitting in the jets for about 20 minutes while it dumped, when finally we said screw it and made a dash to get inside. We were all soaked! It was easy to laugh at once on the ground, but in the air it could have gotten pretty hairy had the weather gotten much worse or the runway closed for some reason. It was a good learning experience and will make for a good story.

Unless something really cool happens between now and assignment night, I probably won't post anything...I just had to pass along the good news!

Video:

One Month Until Assignment Night!

Well, as with most things in pilot training, your plan for the day is never official until you're actually stepping out the door to the jet. The day of our solo x-country, the weather at Lake Charles, LA wasn't going to allow us to fly into there. So, one of our IP's mentioned we should try for Wright Patterson AFB (WPAFB), OH. I was down with that because I had worked there and had family in the area. A trip that takes me about 10 hours to drive only took about 55 minutes to fly in the T-38...and being able to do that solo was even better! We took of in a train of seven T-38's with IP's in their own jet leading the way and bringing up the rear. We spaced out our takeoffs by about 5 minutes or so. The flight itself was actually pretty uneventful, but fun. We flew up there at FL370 (37,000 ft) where it was cold enough to frost my canopy...I had never seen that before and it called for the use of the canopy defog. Once I started my decent into WPAFB, I started looking around to find places I knew. It was pretty cool to see the building I used to work in at the base, my old college Cedarville Univ. and even the 178th ANG Fighter Wing...it was cool seeing all the F-16s sitting on the ramp. After landing, I was able to meet up with some dudes I knew from the area, so it was a good time to catch up on the latest in their worlds. After a quite bite to eat, we blasted off for our flight home. As I was flying along both to and from WPAFB, and had to sit back and really think about what God was allowing me to do...I was flying a supersonic jet trainer solo to a base I had never been to. My training and God given ability had brought me to the point where I was able to do that, and do it well. Totally awesome!
I was able to fly a formation x-country to WPAFB the next week as well. The first trip was a last minute thing and I wasn't able to see any of my fam. So, this time I gave them a little more of a notice and it worked about to grab some dinner together before I had to leave. I was also able to show them the jet. We did a single ship night flight back to Columbus, so it allowed us to have a little fun during takeoff for the fam. As I was holding short of the runway I called tower and asked, "Tower, Poison 81 holding short 23R request unrestricted takeoff." Tower's response, "Poison 81 standby for coordination." So, I waited for a minute of so while they checked to make sure there wouldn't be any traffic conflicts in the air and came back with, "Poison 81, you're cleared unrestricted to 10,000 ft." Nice! I had never done an unrestricted takeoff before, but I wasn't that hard...plus, my fam got to see the whole thing. It was also just getting dark, so with the afterburner lit we shoot a little bit of a flame out the back. The fam liked that too. =) We took off, stayed low, kept in in afterburner until 400 knots and pulled it about 60 degrees nose high to 10,000' where we rolled inverted, pulled the nose to the horizon and then rolled back upright...good times!


The reason I have time to update the site today because my low level checkride got cancelled...the weather is crappy again. It's obvious the winter season has arrived here in Mississippi with all the rain we've been getting lately. Too bad it's not a little colder so it would all be snow. Low level flying is pretty awesome, especially when in formation. Low level form takes the principles we learned up high in the practice area and employs them at 500' and 360 knots. There's a lot more going on down low like looking for towers, finding your turn points and thinking about how you're going to turn the formation at each point. Too cool! I completed my six low level flights pretty quickly, but the weather has held us up some. I'm really looking forward to finishing this checkride because I'll be checkride complete!

The class before us, 05-03, had their assignment night this past Friday and if ours is anything like it I shouldn't have a problem getting an F-16. There were a total of 4 F-16s with one being ANG, one F-15E, a T-37 and T-38 FAIP as well as a B-1. After a lot of thought and talking to IPs, my first four on the dream sheet will be as follows: F-16, F-15E, F-15C, T-38 FAIP. The rest is up to God to give me when He thinks I should have. I'm off to the gym...