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!