Graduation

It's already time for me to talk about another graduation...time flies when you're having fun, literally! Graduation weekend was a great time with all of my family and friends out here in Phoenix. In all I had 21 people at the graduation dinner Saturday, February 25th. People started arriving in town on Wednesday of that week, so it was nice to have some time to relax, play golf and hang out by the pool for a few days. Thursday morning after some of my immediate family arrived, my older brother and I played 18 holes of golf at the Wigwam Resort where he and his wife were staying. So, while we were chasing a little white ball around the course, the rest of my family was relaxed by the resort pool. Neither of us played really great, but had fun nontheless.

Friday kicked off with breakfast at the squadron at 0730 in the morning with doughnuts, bagels, muffins and all that good stuff. After grabbing a bite to eat, we headed into our squadron's main briefing room for a family welcome given by our squadron commander. He gave a brief history of the base, shared exactly what we had been through over the past six months or so of training and then proceeded into giving out some awards for the air-to-ground phase of training. The first seven rides of that phase went towards compiling the scores for the different awards handed out. In all, there were around 12 different awards handed out for each type of bombing delivery we practiced to include strafe (shooting the gun at low altitude). I'll add in here that when you're flying in a program such as the F-16 training program, you don't know where you stack up in the class because you're so busy flying from one day to the next. Well, I was blown away to receive eight of the awards for the air-to-ground phase of training...I could hardly believe it! God gave me the ability to do pretty well and it all goes back to Him. Needless to say it was very surprising!

After the welcome, I took my family to the end of the runway to watch some of the jets take off. It was great to watch their faces as a few F-16's roared by executing an afterburner takeoff. I heard a lot of, "I can't believe you fly one of those things!" I couldn't agree with them more...I can hardly believe it myself! From there I took six of the guys to the simulators to fly low around some mountains, shoot some bad guys and then try to land. It was cool to have them sit in the seat and see what it was like in an F-16 cockpit. After some fun time there, it was out to the flightline for burgers and pics by a jet. Some of the instructors in the squadron did the honors and grilled up some fine beef patties.

Saturday morning, my brother and I went golfing again...this time is was with our guest speaker, Colonel Wilson, and my squadron commander here in the 63rd FS. Colonel Wilson was my base commander when I was stationed at Columbus AFB, MS. Golf went a little better this time, and it was also a lot cheaper playing at the base. Our base course is ranked in the top five of Air Force courses, so it's really nice. After wrapping up another 18 holes, we headed back to the Wigwam to chill with the family before the big graduation dinner that night at the Officer's Club. At this point, all of my 21 guests had made it into town and were anticipating the evening's events. Most of them hand never been to a military dinner, so I was excited for them to experience one.

Soon, we were all sitting at the 2.5 tables it took to fit all my family and friends. After the posting of the colors and honoring the Prisoners of War (POW) and those Missing in Action (MIA), we sat to enjoy a good meal before the guest speaker. Of course with so many people, pictures were taken of everything. We also watched our class video during the dinner.

After dinner and a speech from the guest speaker, our class handed out some awards to the instructors we thought did a great job teaching us throughout the course. The squadron commander then handed out some awards to our class as were wrapped up the evening. Of the awards given out, I received the Air to Ground Top Gun award and the Distinguished Graduate Award. Wow, we had finished a tough F-16 training course and I finished at the top...dude, very awesome! It's a God thing no matter how you look at it. He made me who I am and has allowed me to experience what I have so that I can fly the best fighter in the world! While on stage receiving one of the awards, my squadron commander called my family the "Trumparazzi" (my callsign being Trump) since there were so many of them...we could hard see at thing after all the pics. It was a great night that I'm glad so many people were able to be a part of. It was another step in an awesome journey I've been having in the Air Force serving the country. Soon I'll be enjoying the Italian Alps and some great Italian food! At this point I'm still planning to update the site when over there, but we'll see...check six!

F-16 Training Course Complete!

The day after my flight up to Hill AFB, UT I finished the F-16 Initial Qualification Course here at Luke. It was a great feeling to land after that sortie and know I had taken another big step forward in my Air Force Career! To celebrate everyone finishing up, we took a squadron trip up to Los Vegas, NV to visit Nellis AFB. Most F-16 classes take a trip up north to see the base because there's a lot of cool stuff going on. They have what is commonly referred to as "the petting zoo" which is a collection of foreign military equipment for guys like us to see first hand and learn about. We also were able to get a couple classified briefings on some of the future capabilities of the F-16 and on the Air Force's newest fighter jet, the F-22 Raptor. Lets just say that the Raptor will kick the tail of whoever it goes up against...hands down. I had never seen one up close, but we had a chance to walk around one and check it out.

From there we stopped by the Air Force Thunderbirds hanger to check out their operation. I had mentioned before that a flight commander of mine here at Luke is a new member of the team. We met up with him and had a tour of the place...as we walked out the back of the hanger to the flight line, the diamond formation was just landing and taxied back while we were out there. It was pretty cool to see...a few years ago I could only dream of flying a fighter jet as I watched the Thunderbirds perform and now I am! There were a ton of other aircraft parked out on the ramp as well since there was a Red Flag exercise going on like the one I explained a couple entries ago. Almost every jet you could imagine was flying in the skies over the base...even foreign jets. Of course, we also hit up the Vegas strip while we were there. It was a cool place to see at night with all that was going on. Good food and good times!

We start into the Night Systems and Targeting Pod academics on Monday already to start preparing for flights that start in March. I'm not looking forward to sitting in the classroom again since it was so nice to be done with that stuff for awhile. But, I guess I aught to be doing something to earn that paycheck! I'll get back with you all soon.

Video:

Flying The Grand Canyon

These pictures couldn't wait to be posted later...it's one of the best pics taken to date. I took off this morning on my flight up to Hill AFB, UT and soon flew over the Grand Canyon just like we did for the UTTR LFE. One of my bros in the class took this pic of my jet as we flew over...how cool is that?! I'm going to have to blow it up and put it on the wall somewhere.

About 45 minutes after the Canyon, we had landed at Hill AFB. It was awesome around there with all the mountains and now...definitely a place I'd like to be stationed and fly the Viper someday. We grabbed lunch at this philly steak place, relaxed for awhile and then flew back here to Luke. On the way back we flew down low over Lake Powell, which is part of the Colorado River that's been dammed up on the east end of the Canyon. That too was an awesome thing to see. From there, we also flew down over the Barringer Meteor Crater about 35 miles east of Flagstaff, AZ. It was an awesome ride to basically finish the program on, and one I'll definitely remember! Hope you enjoy the view as much as I did!

Two Rides Left...

Two rides left in the course...with things going as fast as they have, I'll be back here in the states pretty soon as an instructor in the jet! I have an out and back flight to Hill AFB, UT tomorrow and one more close air support (CAS) ride on Tuesday. The week after I dropped the live Mk82s, we had a simulated desert deployment down to Gila Bend AAF (auxiliary air field) to give us a flavor for what it'll be like real world in the "sandbox" as it's called. Gila Bend AAF has an 8,500 ft runway and is 45 min south of the base. We use it for visual approaches to take a load off of the traffic pattern at Luke. I realize that Iraq will be a lot different, but it was a change flying out of and into a different airfield that's out in the desert. While there, I had my first CAS flight. During a CAS scenario, there are ground troops (Army, Marines, Special Forces, etc.) in close contact with the enemy and that are in need of some direct fire power on a specific location. We had some Army ground controllers supporting us on this flight as well as a Joint Forward Air Controller (JFAC). The JFAC (also flying an F-16) works with the ground controller and has his eyes talked onto a target that needs destroyed or the position of enemy troops. Once he's in contact with the position of interest, he's cleared in hot and marks it with smoke rockets. That's where we come into play...we are then cleared in on the marked target and either strafe it with our gun, or drop some bombs. We were dropping training bombs (BDU-33s) on this flight. It was really cool to see how the whole process works and realize that I may be called on someday in the future to save some of my military bros on the ground.

At the end of the program, we fly in what they call a Large Force Employment (LFE). I flew in one this past Monday up to the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR), and then in another local one on Friday. It's where everything we've been learning over the past 5 months comes together into a big simulated mission into "bad guy" territory. For the LFE to the UTTR, we took 14 F-16s from Luke to destroy four different targets. Providing red air support were four F-18 Super Hornets from CA simulating Russian Mig-29's. We also had two tankers giving us gas before the fight. You can already see there's a lot of coordination and planning that goes on for an exercise like this. The day before each LFE is spent in the planning room with about eight guys working to bring everything together under the direction of the Mission Commander. The UTTR LFE I flew in was 3.5 hours from gear in the well until touch down, so that was about 2.5 times longer than the usual sortie. The flight up and back was awesome with great scenery. The Grand Canyon is incredibly huge from both the air and the ground...I could hardly believe how far it stretched! Once in Utah, the mountains were covered with snow and shot up pretty high. During our fight there were times we flew below the snow covered peaks. We could also see the Great Salt Lake just to the north of our airspace. I'll be seeing some more of the awesome mountains around Salt Lake City tomorrow.

Our LFE this past Friday was a little smaller, but not my much. It included 10 F-16s with six F-15C Eagles providing our red air support again simulating Mig-29s. Since it was a local flight, there were no tankers needed. I actually got to see a couple Eagles up close during the fight...my flight lead and I shot them both! Later on as he and I were leaving the fight due to our gas being low, an Eagle rolled in behind me and shot me up pretty good. But, it didn't count at that point because of our gas...in real life it would have though. The LFEs were a great experience as a young fighter pilot! It was only a glimpse of what a Red Flag Exercise at Nellis AFB, NV will be like someday. Those exercises include close to 75 airplanes in a mass "war." Looking forward to it!

The end of next month I have a ton of family and friends heading out here for my graduation, so I'll be sure to take some pics and fill everyone in. Until then, have fun, fly safe and check six!!

Christmas Break...Live Bomb Drop

It was good to get home again and see the fam over Christmas. The last time I was home was July 4th weekend, so it had been a little while. I was able to catch up with friends I hadn't seen in an even longer time and just relax. Of course that meant eating way too much, so I'll be working to shed the few extra pounds I put on over the break. I'll be seeing my family again out here in Phoenix for my F-16 graduation late in February.

My last update, I told everyone I thought shooting the F-16s 20mm Gatling gun was great. Well, dropping 6 live Mk82 bombs off the jet is just a good! We're nearing the end of the program now with only 5 more flights until I'm complete with the F-16 initial qualification course. There are some cool things coming up in the near future that I'll get to in a bit. In the basic surface attack (BSA) rides, we learn the site pictures for different types of dive bombing deliveries that range from 10-45 degrees of dive. From there we move into a more tactical surface attack phase where we plan the low level route and type of attack we'd like to fly against a specific target on the ground. That could be a simulated runway, surface-to-air missile site, a convoy of trucks, etc. The military ranges south of Phoenix actually have fake targets like I just mentioned for us to use on these missions. So, we start off as before flying a low level ingress to a specific target in order to stay low and out of sight. Once through the low level and within approximately 5.0 miles of the target, we climb out of the low altitude structure in preparation to roll in and complete a diving bomb delivery like we practiced in the basic phase. The amount of time from the 5.0 mile mark to weapons release is about 10-20 seconds. Once the bombs are dropped, we immediately fly back down to low altitude. Today, we did just that with four F-16s, each with 6 live Mk82 bombs on board. The Mk82 is a 500lb general purpose bomb which can be modified for both GPS and laser guidance, but ours had neither. I was number two of the 4-ship and had a nice show once I was off target and had a chance to roll up to take a look at the explosions from number one and myself! I thought, "That has to be the coolest thing I've ever done." I know, it seems like I say the same thing pretty much each time I post an update, but today it was definitely true. Shooting the gun is a close second behind dropping live bombs.

The last couple flights of the program are going to be the culmination of many different areas of training we've gone through over the past months. We're planning a mock war scenario, which will be taking place up in Utah airspace against F-18s and F-15s who will be simulating Russian Mig-29s. We will take off out here at Luke AFB with about 14 F-16s, meet a tanker on the way north and then fight the 4-6 "Migs" on our way to drop our simulated bombs on a predesignated target. We'll also be flying another local mission out of here against Marine F-5s. The F-5 is what they used as the Migs in Top Gun. They're somewhere between the size of a T-38 and F-16 and will be tough to visually acquire. I'll let everyone know how the last few rides finish up next month sometime. Oh yeah, as of today I'm academics complete for the initial qualification course here in the F-16!