Contact Checkride

These past couple weeks have gone pretty well for me in the 50th FTS...I came away from my contact check with a 3E (3 downgrade excellent), which I was pretty happy with even though I felt two of the three downgrades were retarded. =) The whole flight was normal. We started off by flying a heavy weight (full of gas) single engine touch-n-go, and it turned out great. Those are one of the harder landings since you're only using one engine and your approach speed is fairly fast...about 185 knots. It's pretty easy to make an ugly landing under those conditions. Anyway, after that it was out to the Military Operations Area (MOA) for my acro. All three of my downgrades came in the MOA...one for an improper g-strain (whatever), one for in flight planning area orientation (whatever), and one for my nose high recovery. I don't even remember, but I guess I wasn't g-straining when pulling up for my loop or something. We pull 4-5 g's in the beginning of the loop and I didn't have the proper breathing going on...a pretty lame downgrade in my opinion. The other was due to the fact I had to adjust the amount of fuel I wanted to start heading back to the base with...again, I realized my fuel state and made the necessary adjustments only to get a downgrade for that. The last one I deserved for buffoonery! =) We headed back to the pattern after that for some other landings, which all went fine. It's all good, I can't really complain having tied for the best score in the class.

With the contact phase behind us, we've been into formation flying pretty heavy along with instrument sims. Formation is too fun, and I'll be form soloing (either against 2 IPs or a student and IP in the other jet) sometime the middle of this coming week...nice! This past week, there's one formation flight that sticks out a lot due to the fact there were some great cumulus clouds to play around. Granted, the clouds make it harder to maneuver because we have to stay clear of them and we aren't always in the fingertip position like in the picture above. Sometimes we could be a mile apart in preparation to practice a turning rejoin, so you can't turn as lead and end up in the clouds...you'd lose sight and have to use other procedures to ensure deconfliction of your flight paths. We fly in fingertip through the weather a lot, but here in training that's only while going to the area and on the way back. Anyway, these clouds were huge and it was awesome while in fingertip to find holes here and there to go flying through. The clouds also give a close background making it easy to see how fast we're really going up there!

Besides the flying around in the area, doing a formation takeoff and landing is also pretty sweet. We're to the point now where we're allowed to do the takeoffs and landings...landing while flying on the wing is the hardest part. Trying to stay in the fingertip position, put your gear and flaps down and talk on the radios is pretty challenging! Especially if all of this is taking place in the clouds. My first attempt at landing on the wing was a success, and we touched down a pretty much the same time. My IP was fairly impressed...one of our objectives for that flight was to land in formation without the IP taking over and we did!

Well, I'll be in the formation phase for quite some time and won't have too much more info to pass along...I don't think. If there is, I'll let you guys know.

Flown Solo / Started Formation

We've had lots of nice weather and lots of sweet flying since the last post! So much so that we've all soloed, have had a couple formation rides and will be having our Contact checkride next week already. It's been great though! Flying the T-38 is so much fun...it's hard to explain unless you're actually the one doing it.

Once those first two instrument rides in the backseat were done, it was our turn to sit on the point of our new rocket instead of the IP! It helped a lot being in the front merely due to the fact I could see better...overall I felt the front seat help my situational awareness go up quite a bit. Just like in Tweets, the first block of rides are contact rides where we practice the same kind of acro (loop, cuban 8, immelman, split-s, barrel roll, lazy 8) and use ground references to stay in our areas . After the area work, we head back to the pattern for practice in preparation for our upcoming checkride. They told us the hardest part about flying the T-38 is landing it, but I didn't think it was too difficult. Thank God for good hands...He made me what I am. After my first flight with my new flight commander he said, "I rarely put well above average on a student's gradesheet, but I'm going to put it on yours." That gave me a lot of confidence right from the beginning.

Only after about a week of flying in the front seat we were ready to go solo. Not just a pattern solo, but solo to the practice area! I could hardly believe I was getting paid to go fly some acro in a small fighter jet by myself...a great feeling. There were times all five of us studs (students...of course) would walk together out to our individual jets for solo flights joking about how we should get a little formation solo practice in while we had the chance. The same went for the "pregame" jitters this time around too, but once I was strapped in the jet it was game time ladies and gentlemen! Your first solo in the T-38 you have to do some crazy stuff to push the limits, but what I did you will never know. We've had four solos already, and I have three more dual flights before the checkride. I'm feeling pretty confident about it. As always, I'm setting the goals high with shooting for a 0 to 2 downgrade excellent.

We also started formation this week, and like before it was sweet! The majority of our flights in the 38 are formation flights, so that's cool. We move beyond the basic form stuff we did in Tweets after a few rides and get into some more advanced maneuvers...like acro while in formation and tactical turns. Also, towards the end of the program we get introduced to 4-ship formation. I'll let you know how all that goes for sure...what a job!