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!