Midphase Checkride Next Week

Wow, a lot has happened in the past two weeks...especially this past week. We've continued to have great weather and the flying schedule has been pretty intense. Some days we've been flying twice a day along with sims and tests, (100% on the Advanced Instruments test...rock on!) so it's been busy. But it's all good!

Tuesday this past week is where the fun began...solo day! My IP and I took off about 0600 that morning to an awesome sunrise, no clouds and no wind. There are some required things I had to do in the jet before I could solo that morning and those were three landings, a break-out and a go around. Those all went fine, so we landed and taxied back to the chocks to drop off my IP so that I could have some fun on my own. After he gave me his nametag with wings on it (it's bad luck to fly your initial solo without a pair of wings on your chest) and jumped out, I started the engines back up and headed back to the runway. Holding short of the runway I gave the radio call, "Number 1, Wings 07, static patterns." The Wings callsign is what all students use for their initial solo. A few seconds later I heard, "Number 1, you're cleared for takeoff. Winds are 150 @ 6." SWEET!! It was time for a little fun tearing up the pattern alone! I can't even explain how cool it was to be up there by myself with about 8-10 other planes flying around with me. I wasn't nervous, but it felt more like game time...you know when you step on to a court or field with the pregame jitters. The whistle blows, the jitters are gone and it's game on! It's the coolest thing in the world!

Well, after the ride is over it's AF custom to get thrown in a big tank of water if you get caught. I tried to get away but the odds weren't very good with all the guys around. I decided to suck it up and go for a swim to celebrate a big and totally fun accomplishment in my pilot training career!


After Tuesday, I was able to fly twice both Wed and Thurs for a total of 7 flights during the week. Double turning like that really pushed me ahead towards my first checkride, Midphase. The purpose of this checkride is to see if you can handle flying out to the training areas alone to practice acrobatics. If the weather stays nice I"ll be checking on Wed. I'm feel ready for it, and as long as I get enough sleep and just relax it'll be fine. This checkride has been known to cause trouble for a lot of people because it's their first one and the nerves cause them to do dumb things. In addition to the things I mentioned last post about the maneuvers we've been practicing in the area, we've added the loop, slit-s and aileron roll...fun times!! That just means a few more things to polish up before Wed rolls around. Well, I'll give it my best shot and let you all know how it went in a couple weeks or so!

Solo Flight Soon

The weather finally improved around here this past week, and as long as there was light the planes were in the air. We were getting behind on flying so this kind of weather is just what we needed. I was able to fly 4 of 5 days this week, which was great because it helps solidify things through repetition. When you can't fly much due to weather it's hard to fix and improved things you need to.

Throughout any given day there are 3 periods where the jets are flying...early, middle and late periods. The early jets start flying at sunrise and the late jets land around sunset. A class doesn't fly all three periods, but only two. In order to split of up the "fun" of having to report super early for the early jets, they rotate which flights are going do so every couple weeks. The past couple weeks have been nice for us because we were on what they call late week. For those on late week, they typically report around 0700 and fly during the middle and late periods. This next week we're going to start back on early week (report can be as early as 0400 in the summer) and we'll fly the early and middle period jets. The AF requires a minimum of 12 hours of crew rest, so if we report at 0600 we have to be out of the flight room no later than 1800 (6:00 PM =). The rotation is usually two early weeks followed by two late weeks. Hopefully that helps explain what a typical day looks like for me. Those 12 hours are filled with either a sim, flying, time in the RSU, the gym or just studying for the next days events.
The Runway Supervisory Unit (RSU) is the little tower out by the runways and controls the traffic pattern. There are two for the T-37 runway, which they call Sunfish, and two for the T-38 runway, which they call Liveoak. The Federal Aviation Association (FAA) is governed by certain rules for obvious safety reasons, and they control the center runway (there are three runways here in case I haven't mentioned that before). Since the FAA is governed by those rules, they can't fit as many planes into the pattern as the AF would like for training. So, they can legally hand over control to the RSU which has it's own set of safety rules. This allows for a maximum of 12 T-37's in the Sunfish pattern at one time, which is pretty busy but cool. When the pattern gets full, it's not uncommon to be on final just about ready to touch down when another aircraft is on takeoff roll or has just gotten airborne. The minimum spacing in these conditions is only 3,000 ft when we're using opposite sides of the runway to land on! To someone not used to the way it works, it would seem pretty crazy. There are four individuals who work in the RSU at any one time and they are the controller, observer, spotter and recorder. I've had the chance to be the recorder three times now and I'm responsible to keep track of how many planes are in the air at any given time both on a computer and on paper. It's a good time to work on my situational awareness and understand where planes are at in the pattern based on their radio calls...that's a good thing when I'm the one flying.


As I said earlier, the nice weather helped a lot of us push forward toward soloing this week. As it looks right now, I should get to solo within two weeks...it might be more like 1.5. Anyway, that's going to be an awesome day and I'm stoked about it! They're going to let me buzz around the pattern in a jet for awhile alone...too cool! I had a great confidence booster after my eighth flight this past week when the IP told me, "If the syllabus would let me, I'd solo you right now." I was like, "lets do it!" I figured I'd try, but didn't happen. =) I just took his words for what they were, and pressed on...confidence is what it takes. I still have a ton of stuff ahead of me to let things like that go to my head!

Well, that's about all I have time for this round. I'm just working on stalls, spins, recoveries (even inverted recoveries), slow flight and other things while flying. It won't be long until the aerobatics start!

The Coolest Job In The World!

This week was somewhat slow due to bad weather, but overall is was good. I was able to get my studying done during the day so that I had time to hit the gym and get enough sleep. I flew once on Thursday, and it was sweet as usual. The dollar I made up for Mr. Marlin for my first flight is below...T-37's and then T-38's baby!


Thursday when I did get a chance to fly the weather was great! I was also able to have another classmate come along and take some pics of how the whole process works from getting my chute in life support through getting in the jet. Basically, I pick up my chute and helmet with my IP, jump in the crew bus for a ride to the jet, do my walk around, jump in and I'm off. Of course it's a little more detailed than that but you get the point.

I hope this next week is a little more consistent as far as the flying goes...I've had three rides, but it was about a week in between my second and third. It's hard to get and stay proficient at flying the Tweet if there's so much time in between.

This next week we start back to the academics with the Advanced Instruments course. That adds a little more work to the pile, so making the most of my time will be even more important. Speaking of that, it may be more like 2-3 weeks in between my updating the site. The next big step for me will be my solo ride in a few weeks, so that will definitely be something to write about along with how I do on the checkrides as time goes by. Well, I guess that's about it for this post. Thanks for the emails and all some of you guys send. Check six!

THIS STUFF ROCKS!

WOW!! My first two rides in the T-37 this week proved everyone wrong who told me flying the Tweet isn't all it's cracked up to be. Yeah, it's oldschool and all, but I've had a blast flying it so far. I had my dollar ride, which I mentioned in a previous post, and a second ride yesterday morning. Our first week on the flightline started Tuesday around 0700 with our Basic Instruments test (another 100%...praise God!) and then on to taking care of administrative things and lots of filling out paperwork. Along with the admin stuff we did a page count of all our new publications we're going to be studying to make sure we all had the right things and right changes if there were any. Wednesday, we were on to our first simulator rides. These have been a lot of fun and pretty helpful giving us a chance to put into practice what we've been studying on our own time to prepare. My first sim basically involved learning how to strap into the jet with my parachute, helmet and oxygen system. We also worked on some takeoffs and landings. Very cool!

The simulator instructors are all mostly retired military guys with a ton of experience. The sim instruction is all contracted out by the government, and a company call Lear Siegler Services Inc. (LSI) provides the guys to teach us. They teach T-37, T-38 and T-1 classes and simulators. For instance, all my instruction in Phase I was given my the LSI guys. They all work together over in the Operations Group Building. Anyway, I thought I'd put a pic of where they work on here. You can easily tell an LSI instructor since they wear blue flight suits instead of the green ones like the pilots do.

Thursday is when most of the fun began...with my Dollar Ride. The dollar ride is the first ride every pilot gets when starting the program, and the cool thing is it's not graded. It's kind of a "freebee" you might say. But, even with that being the case you want to show up the jet the first time with your game on. It's called a dollar ride because the students fix up a dollar bill with pictures of cool stuff and write some things so the IP has something to remember the ride with. All my practicing with the checklists in my room in front of my cockpit poster and then in the CFTs really helped a lot. I was able to get in start the thing up, taxi and everything. Of course, there are things I have to work on, but overall it went very well. My ride was at 0830 on Thursday with Major Marlin. I had met Maj Marlin last year, and requested that he take me up for my first ride. He's been an instructor for a lot of years and was pretty relaxed...that's a good thing because he let me take off, fly a lot and even land the thing once we got back from the practice area!! Our time is the area totally rocked! After a few steep turns to get our bodies used to the G's (we pulled about 3.5-4) he asked, "So, what do you want to do now?" My rely was, "How about a loop?" I was flying at the time and he came back and said, "Alright, put the throttles in military power, pitch down until 250 knots and pull back on the stick." Dang, that was awesome! I had obviously never done a loop and he let me fly the whole thing. Then he gave instructions and let me fly both an aileron roll and a split S. In a split S you roll inverted (upside down), stabilize and then pull the stick back. You end up flying 180 degrees the opposite direction at a lower altitude...the best time in the world.

My second flight was very similar to the second and a lot of fun. I took off and did a pattern delay before we headed back out to the practice are for some more fun. A pattern delay just means we did 3 touch-n-gos before leaving the pattern. I guess my instructor thought I was doing a decent job and he let me land and take off on all the touch-n-gos. Once we take off and get the gear and flaps up, we level off around 300-400 ft above the ground. Once at a minimum of 150 knots, you yank the stick sideways, putting the plane into about a 60-70 degree bank, and pull. It's awesome doing that so close to the ground! Oh yeah, I've mentioned we're in Spaatz flight but forgot to tell you all what our call sign is...we're Skunks. So, whenever I'm up in the air I make all radio calls something like, "Skunk 56, request straight-in."

Well, I should get off this computer and get back to studying. I'm SO thankful God has brought me to where I am today...there are so many things that make it clear this is His will for my life and I can't explain how great that is. I'm in His will and He's giving me the desires of my heart! Couldn't get any better than that!

Phase I Complete

You know how they say "time flies when you're having fun"? Well, that has definitely been the case over the past six weeks for me...I can't believe we hit the flightline this coming Tuesday already! I'm ready to hit the ground running with our Dollar Rides either Wednesday or Thursday. I'll explain more about dollar rides in my Phase II section.

Anyway, the past couple weeks have been in a lot of ways uneventful, and that's why I didn't post an update last weekend. We've been doing the regular routine of classes, working on our cockpit flow in the CFTs and preparing as best we can for the flightline. Academics is still going very well since I was able to keep the 100% test average alive with a 100% on our T-37 systems test earlier this week. We're now in Basic Instruments, which is taking all of us a little more time to grasp. It's not that hard to understand, but there's a lot of things that could get confused if you're not too careful. I've been able to crasp the concepts (key word) pretty quick, so it should be all good come test time. We have that test Tuesday morning at 0700 before we report to the Spaatz flight room at 0905. The reason I say "concepts" is a key word is because it cuts out of a lot time just trying to memorize facts or info you don't really understand. If you get what's going on behind the words, you're that much farther ahead and can apply the "concepts" to a bunch of different questions and scenarios. I guess that's the engineer in me though...at least I'm using something from those four hard years.
Besides the classwork and regular academic stuff, we did have a chance to get some lessons on the game CRUD. Now, for those of you in the military or those who've been around it, you know the game. It's a lot of fun once you get the hang of it. First of all, the game is played with just two pool balls...the cue ball and a target ball. No cue sticks are used either because the cue ball is aimed and thrown at the target ball with your hand. The object of the game is to keep the target ball from rolling by only using the cue ball, or hit the target ball in one of the corner pockets using the cue ball. The tough thing is the cue ball can only be thrown from the ends of the table and you have to do this with an opponent from the other team trying to block and push you. The game is played on either a CRUD table or pool table, whichever is available, and the CRUD tables are much bigger with only have corner pockets to hit the target ball in. There are two teams of 5 to 6 on average who play against each other. I know most of you are really confused right now, so I'll leave it at that...if you want to know more about it find a friend who knows how to play and have them show you.