Career Day

Well, we finally came to an agreement on our class patch and it should be in this next week sometime. It's tradition for the classes to get together and design a patch they'll wear the rest of their time in pilot training. Our first one didn't get passed, but it didn't bother me too much...I didn't care for the idea. I like the second idea much better, and if you're into sports like I am I'm sure you'll agree. A couple dudes in my class "stole" the idea from ESPN made a sweet design.

This next week is going to be a good one. We had a career day yesterday here on base from about 0900 in the the early afternoon which we had to be at. The operations group commander had a bunch of different planes flown in so we could talk with the pilots about their aircraft and what we can expect if we go that route. It was a good chance to get a close up of some sweet planes. I definitely know I want to fly fighters, and the order of my top three choices are F-16, F-15C, F-15E. At least for now...the order tends to change with time. Anyway, why this coming week is going to be so good is because first we have Monday off! The second reason is I'm going cross-country to the beach. We're taking off from here on Thursday and eventually ending up at Tyndall AFB in Panama City, FL. Friday we'll hit Hurlbert Field (Destin Beach) on the way to Pensacola, FL. Saturday we're headed to Keesler AFB around Biloxi, MS before flying back up here Sunday. It'll be nice to see some different airspace and relax at the beach some. I'll let you all know how that went sometime in the weeks to come.


Yeah, we do other things besides fly here in Mississippi. Some of our friends are from one of the local colleges in town, and they asked a group of us to a formal they were having. We hit up a nice restaurant in town before going to the dance, and then it was off to relax and get our grove on with friends.
Well, as it's looking right now I may be done with Tweets in about 3-4 weeks. It's gone fast! I have a few more instrument rides and then about 8 more formation rides before those checkrides. The cross-country takes care of most if not all of our navigation rides. It'll be nice to have some down time to get back in shape and prepare Lord willing for T-38's!! =) Take it easy.

T-37 Formation Flying, Very Cool

As you know, I had my Final Contact checkride at the beginning of the week. Thankfully it all went well, and I came away with a 3 downgrade excellent...3E. My three downgrades came from minor things in acro and a slight overshoot on one of my patterns. I still have a couple more chances for that 0E I'm shooting for! As with last checkride, I was able to read some critiques from past students on the check pilot I was going to fly with, and it did help. The emergency procedure he gave me in the debrief was just like I had read about, and the general knowledge questions were as well.

On Tuesday I had my formation "dollar" ride and saw what it was like for the first time...too cool! Formation I'm sure is going to be the best part of training! It was one of those demo/do kind of flights where my IP would show me what it should look like and then give me a try with the main objective being, don't hit the other jet! =) So, we took off in formation and got up through the clouds to where I could give things a shot. I was given two main tips from other pilots I know to help me out with form:

1. Wiggle your fingers and toes
2. Lower your shoulders

The more you can relax, the better you'll fly is basically what those two things remind you to do. My first try at trying to stay 3-5 ft from leads wingtip was a little shaky and I heard, "I have the jet" from my IP a few times, but soon I was getting a handle on being light with the stick and throttles. The 3-5 ft is in the horizontal plain, so we're a little aft and below lead as we're flying. I wish I could take some pics of that to give you all an idea of how cool it looks from the cockpit. Anyway, the IP I was flying with was a former F-16 pilot, so she had a lot of good tips from all her experience flying fighters. It won't be long until we're pressing up against my form checkride, so check back over the next couple weeks to see what's up...I need to go study some more before bed.

Moving Right Along

I tell you what, the tempo has picked up the past couple weeks! We've still been having great weather, and it's made for some awesome flying. The last time I updated the site, I was coming up on my first checkride, Midphase. The day before the checkride we were assigned our check pilot. Knowing who I was going to fly with allowed me to scan through critiques students wrote up from past checkrides. I read through that info and learned as much as I could about the pilot I would be flying with.

Thursday of that week was the big day, and overall it went well. Of course, I'm kinda ticked at myself because I had flown better previously, but it's all good. It was a little tense before we flew for a couple reasons. To keep it kind of simple, the navigation aids on the ground that tell us where we're at in the Military Operations Area (MOA) while we practice decided to go down about an hour before I was supposed to check. When this happens, there's a whole different procedure for keeping track of where you're at in the air. Of course, I had never flown with these different procedures so I tried to cram them into my head about 20 minutes before brief time. Crazy stuff...but thankfully as we were stepping to the jet the nav aids I was used to working came back on line! The second reason, well it was my first checkride ever and I had those pregame jitters going on.

Finally we got to our jet, and were off. I had everything all nice and planned out how I wanted it to go, but checkrides rarely go as planned. =) The pattern was very full, and some of the requirements (like normal and single engine patterns and landings) I wanted to get out of the way right off the bat in the pattern had to wait until we returned from the MOA. The big thing the check pilot was looking for was if I could safely fly out to the practice area, keep myself in the area assigned and the fly safely back. An area is defined by a min and max altitude, and two radials off of a specific nav aid. The area work all went great, and soon I was requesting recovery to the base. The recovery radio call goes like this, "Columbus approach, Ripsaw 35 (that was the check pilot's call sign) request recovery Marble, with Bravo." That all went fine and we were soon back in the pattern to finish a couple things I didn't get a chance to do earlier. Once the flying was over I had a ground evaluation to see if I've been keeping up and learning my stuff. After about 20 minutes or so of questioning and all, it was over and I came away with a 4 downgrade good...or a 4G. I was pretty happy with that, but I'm definitely shooting for better Monday!

After a long and tiring week, it was time to relax a little bit down in Destin Beach, FL! Eglin AFB was having an airshow, so a couple of us took of Friday after we left the flightline. My college roommate's parents live right there by the base and beach, and they allowed us to stay there for a couple nights. It was a great time to just relax. Saturday morning we got up for a run, had breakfast and then headed out on the boat for a while. Their house is on a bay off of the Gulf, so we cruised out in the the Gulf of Mexico for a bit and soaked up some rays. We got back to the house around 1100 and then headed to the base to check out the planes and catch the Thunderbirds later in the day. After being down there for the weekend, I don't think I'd have much of a problem with flying F-15C's there at Eglin...it's a great base and right by the beach! Come to think if it, that would be no problem at all!
With Midphase behind me, we were right into the next block of flights...advanced acro. I know I've said yanking in the pattern is fun, but the acro is ever more so. The Monday after FL I flew twice, with the second flight being my first area solo. The first flight was a demo-do kind of flight. The IP would show me what the maneuver should look like, and then I'd give it a shot. Besides the loop, aileron roll and split-s from before, we were now doing the cuban 8, lazy 8, immelman, chandelle, cloverleaf and barrel roll. I'm sure you can read about those maneuvers somewhere else on the web, so I'm not going to try and explain them. They're fun, that's all there is to it!

Now, back to my area solo. Like most of this stuff, I can't even explain how cool it was to be taking an Air Force jet out by myself to flip and spin around alone! How awesome is that?! Not to mention this is my job!! In this block of flights, I've been able to go to the MOA 4 times solo to practice the acro in preparation for my Final Contact checkride the beginning of next week. I'm totally ready for it, and just need to keep doing what I've been doing. The only thing that's easy to do with this new stuff is to go out the top or bottom of the assigned area. If you get set up and then start stringing the maneuvers together without keeping a good eye on your altitude, you'll find yourself a little too high or a little too low. Anyway, I'm not too worried about doing that...I'll be shooting for a 0 to 3 downgrade excellent. (0E-3E).

Once Monday is over with, I'll be into formation flying...that's going to ROCK! My formation and instruments checkride will be the only two I have left before we track select into T-1's, T-38's, T-44's or a helicopter trainer that I can't remember the name of. You all know by now T-38's is my goal, and I'll be finding out 30 June at our track select party if I reached that goal. There's only one more test as well before we're academics complete, and I'm definitely looking forward to that! We had our first Navigation test yesterday, and again thank God...another 100%. I did miss a question, but it's being thrown out.

Well, that's all for now. I need to hit the gym and then meet up with some friends to study for the checkride Monday.

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!