Sunday, September 25, 2011
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Weapons School...Half Way Through
Completing this week marked the half way point of WIC, and being busy has made the time go fast. The flying ahead will continue to get better and more difficult at the same time. Up to this point we have been flying specific missions within the air-to-air and air-to-ground arenas, but we're now beginning to integrate them together using the previous phases as building blocks.
Since my 300' checkout and dropping the live bombs, we've moved on to escort, suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD), destruction of enemy air defenses (DEAD), and surface attack (SAT). These phases will be complete, barring any busts, the end of next week before we go into another full week of academics. My research paper has reached 25 pages, and I'm about 85% through. This coming Thursday I'll give a 30 min presentation on my topic to the squadron commander, director of operations, paper advisor, and academic advisor.
Being half way through WIC also means Lana and Liam will soon arrive! They'll be here in early October, just before our 4th wedding anniversary. Lana has put up with a lot being apart and prego chasing a 16 month old, high energy boy around Germany. Thanks Lana...your support means a lot!
Since my 300' checkout and dropping the live bombs, we've moved on to escort, suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD), destruction of enemy air defenses (DEAD), and surface attack (SAT). These phases will be complete, barring any busts, the end of next week before we go into another full week of academics. My research paper has reached 25 pages, and I'm about 85% through. This coming Thursday I'll give a 30 min presentation on my topic to the squadron commander, director of operations, paper advisor, and academic advisor.
Being half way through WIC also means Lana and Liam will soon arrive! They'll be here in early October, just before our 4th wedding anniversary. Lana has put up with a lot being apart and prego chasing a 16 month old, high energy boy around Germany. Thanks Lana...your support means a lot!
Saturday, September 3, 2011
500 mph @ 100 feet
This past week our training transitioned from air-to-air to air-to-ground. Our academics and mission planning prepared us for our 100 ft familiarization flight, and dropping live 500 and 2000 lb bombs on different targets on the NTTR. All fighter pilots are qualified down to 500', but during WIC we're qualled down to 300' and get that chance to see 100'. Flying at 100' is fine until you make a turn that low going 500 mph...there isn't any room for mistakes that low. There may be a few less cows on the range after my wingman and I finished our low level training.
Later in the week we had our first night flights here at WIC, carrying either 500 or 2000 lb live laser guided bombs (LGBs) with 210 rounds of 20 mm bullets in the gun. It had been awhile since I'd dropped bombs and the first time shooting the gun at night using night vision goggles (NVGs). My wingman and I hit all of our targets, which burned pretty good. So much so, I had to pick a different strafe target for the gun since looking at the fires through the NVGs gained them down too much. This was just the beginning of our bomb dropping.
Lana, Liam, and I have used video Skype quite a bit lately since she is still in Munich with her Mom. Liam has changed so much, even since we were together at Spangdahlem only one month ago. I miss them both a lot, and they'll be here at Nellis in a month from now...really looking forward to it!
Later in the week we had our first night flights here at WIC, carrying either 500 or 2000 lb live laser guided bombs (LGBs) with 210 rounds of 20 mm bullets in the gun. It had been awhile since I'd dropped bombs and the first time shooting the gun at night using night vision goggles (NVGs). My wingman and I hit all of our targets, which burned pretty good. So much so, I had to pick a different strafe target for the gun since looking at the fires through the NVGs gained them down too much. This was just the beginning of our bomb dropping.
Lana, Liam, and I have used video Skype quite a bit lately since she is still in Munich with her Mom. Liam has changed so much, even since we were together at Spangdahlem only one month ago. I miss them both a lot, and they'll be here at Nellis in a month from now...really looking forward to it!
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