Luke Air Force Base - LAFB

After a very long drive, my dad and I finally made it to Phoenix, AZ. It's going to be an awesome place to live and fly! So far I haven't done too much besides move into my new house and chill out with some family in the area. The house is located in a nice place close to the base and has F-16s flying overhead a lot throughout the day. Thankfully it has a pool in the backyard to help deal with the heat! I'm headed to the base today to get my initial paperwork going and check in at my new squadron. I've been assigned to the 56th Fighter Wing, 63rd Fighter Squadron here at Luke AFB known as the Panthers. I'll be starting early next week with F-16 academics. It should be around a month or so before I start flying, and soon after that I'll have my first solo! I've had instructor pilots tell me their first solo in the fighter jet they were assigned to out of pilot training was the most memorable flight of their flying careers. I have an awesome 7-8 months of training ahead, and can hardly believe I'm going to be flying an F-16 around solo for the majority of the time! God's good!

IFF Graduation

We finished up IFF on Thursday with a small "graduation" ceremony. It pretty much consisted of the usual fighter pilot nonsense of making as much fun of each other as possible before handing you your certificate. I'm pretty sure I was given the most crap by my flight commander for things I had done throughout pilot training. The first thing he had on me was the website. If any of you out there start your own site and then get into fighters, be ready to take the heat from the dudes you work with. In reality they think you're really cool and wish they had one of their own, but they have to make fun so they feel better about themselves. =) The next was the callsign the guys back at Columbus AFB gave me, Turd. It comes from the SNL Celebrity Jeopardy clips from back in the day where a guy calls himself Turd Ferguson...anyway, that was also fair game at graduation. Lastly, I had made a comment during one of my first few flights something to the effect of "Jester's dead" after shooting a simulated air-to-air missile. Yeah, that didn't go over too well at the time, but it made for good laughs after the fact. IFF went well and I was able to come away with the air-to-air Top Gun award and I finished second in the air-to-ground phase of training. Good stuff, but now it's on to the real deal! After graduation, I drove all the way back to Columbus, MS picking up my dad at the Atlanta airport on the way. I finished out processing the CAFB, packed my things into a rental truck, loaded my car onto a trailer, had dinner with friends in the area and then left town Friday night. On to FTU!

IFF Complete

As of yesterday afternoon, I"m officially done with IFF! I've had a great time in the program. God was good to me as always and allowed me to adjust quickly to the flying here making it a lot of fun. I finished up the SA portion of my training here with a 4-ship to the bombing range flying the tactical pattern. This pattern simulates there is a high concentration of surface threats (surface to air missile sites for example) in the area, and we need to ingress to the target low and fast. For this tactical pattern, we fly at 500' and 420 knots between a series of ground references to a pre-determined "pop" point. This point is where we pull the nose of the aircraft up to either 15 or 30 degrees nose high (depending if we're doing 10 or 20 degree passes), acquire the target at our left 10 o'clock or so in the climb and then roll in to bomb the target. This all happens pretty quick, so keeping yourself ahead of the jet is a must. These rides were definitely up there on my list of fun rides! Once I finished the SA rides I was on to my last two HABFM flights. High aspect is just that...we fly nose to nose each around 400 knots each and at the merge (when we pass each other) it's time to fight and kill the other dude like we did in OBFM and DBFM. Both went well and now it's time to press to Phoenix!

We'll pass the next couple days with last minute paperwork and crappy stuff like that before we graduate on Thursday. I'll be packed up and ready to go as soon as graduation's over with because I have to finish some things back at Columbus AFB before I start the long drive to Phoenix this weekend. I'll give a IFF graduation update once out in AZ. Until then, peace out!

Three More Weeks

The end is now in sight...only five more flights and three sims before I'm done here at IFF. Things are going and IFF has really allowed me to enjoy the new type of flying and challenge every flight brings. It gives a fighter pilot wannabe confidence to know he's doing a decent job. I finished up both the OBFM and DBFM phases this past Thursday with my second solo flight, which was the best flight I've had here at IFF so far...perfect timing! It's hard to explain exactly what goes on during an engagement without you seeing it, but bottom line the instructor in the other jet never "killed" me! We simulate taking both missile and gun shots at each other if we can maneuver our jet to point at the other guy, but I was able to do what I had been taught well enough to keep him from getting any shots on me. It felt pretty good, but I have five more flights left so I have to keep focused!

The next phase of training is surface attack (SA), or in other words we're learning the basics of dropping bombs. We do a variety of different passes on the range here close to the base to simulate bombing (it's all done electronically by the jet) a target they have set up. I think it's an old Army truck or something like that. We bomb at 10, 20, 30 and 45 degree angles in the conventional pattern. The steeper angles really feel like your racing at the ground pretty fast since we aim to drop our "bomb" at 420 knots at a predetermined altitude specific to each degree. For the 10 degree pass, we fly a rectangular pattern at 2100' before rolling in on the target. For the others it's, 4800', 7000' and 14000' respectively. Once we pickle the "bomb", we execute what they call a safe escape maneuver. This involves getting to 4g's within 2 seconds and pulling the nose of the jet to 30 degrees nose high before rolling to the crosswind leg of the rectangular pattern. When I drop bombs for real in the future, this escape maneuver will be done to keep my jet from flying through the fragmentation pattern of the bombs. Once a bomb explodes it sends a bunch of shrapnel into the air and that's a bad thing to have fly down the intake of your engine! I'm going to enjoy this phase a lot...it's closer to the ground and there's a lot going on! After surface attack I have two High Aspect BFM (HABFM) flights, and that will be it. In two months I'll be flying the F-16 and soon after I'll be dropping bombs for real! Oh yeah, I'm a 1st lieutenant now...can't believe I've been in the AF for two years already!

First Flying Block Complete

Friday was a good day when I finished the first block of five rides without much trouble. These rides are flown to make sure we learned what we should of in pilot training, and they also give us a chance to shake rust off our tactical formation. Mine flights all felt pretty solid. We also started with some "baby" BFM in preparation for the Offensive BFM (OBFM) block of four flights, which I start tomorrow. The instructors here are a lot more picky then at Columbus with the admin stuff like I talked about before. Starting the aircraft, moving all the right switches at the right time and being on the right radio frequency on time are things they'll nail you on if it's not right. Attention to detail is what you'll hear a lot if you come through IFF. They'll hammer you for not flying good tactical formation too because it should be second nature by now.

OBFM is just like it sounds...we'll be flying behind another T-38 (on offense) learning how to shoot missiles and fire our gun at him to kill him. The dude in front will be flying what they call defensive BFM (DBFM), although he's pretty much a steady platform for me to practice on. There are different set-ups and flying "drills" we go through to learn the basics of air-to-air engagement while in the OBFM and DBFM phases. After four OBFM rides, I'll move into DBFM and then from there into High Aspect BFM (HABFM). I'll talk to all of that later. BFM in general is an aggressive type of flying...a lot more so than pilot training. We've learned how to fly, now we're learning how to use our jets as a weapon. Yanking and banking all over the place, in afterburner on second and in idle the next. The stick full aft to full forward, full right then left...all while trying to keep the bad guy in sight, employ your weapons and keep situational awareness of what's going on around you. It's definitely a good workout both physically and mentally! But, that's why I love if...it's a challenge and a ton of fun! God knew where I should be and I'm grateful for it! OK, I'm going to finish studying and then catch a movie!