Leading My First Cross-Country

Sometimes it really pays to be in the right place at the right time...like doing your job in the scheduling office when the DO walks in and says, "Who wants to take a 4-ship cross-country 14-17 March?" After a little thought (.51 seconds to be exact...Buzzards Rule!) I threw up my hand with a "I'm all over it Sir!" That's all it took and I was in charge of coming up with a plan to lead 4 jets around Europe for a weekend on my second cross-country. Mind you, I had just finished the FLUG a few weeks earlier so it was pretty cool to get the chance to lead something like this as a young flight lead. After a few iterations on the planning, my final draft for the trip looked like this:

Friday: Fly to Rota Naval Air Station, Spain and get gas at Garons Air Base, France on the way. Saturday: Relax in Cadiz, Spain on the beach and drive later to Gibraltar to check out the Rock. Sunday: Fly to Grosseto Air Base, Italy and get gas at Zaragoza Air Base, Spain on the way. Monday: "fight" the Italian Eurofighters stationed at Grosseto twice and then fly back to Aviano.

Rota NAS was the perfect spot to fly into...it's on the Southwest coast of Spain and close to a lot of cool places. One of those places is Cadiz where we stayed for a couple nights. The weather was nice and warm; the beach great. Thankfully for us it wasn't peak tourist season, so we found a really nice hotel for cheap as you can see above. The first night we grabbed some good Spanish food and sangria before hanging out in town until it was pretty late. After sleeping in the next day, I went for a run on the beach before we headed to the old city...the town goes way back to even before the Roman Empire. After the sightseeing, we decided to take a nap the then press on to Gibraltar, a little peninsula the British have owned for many hundreds of years in a very strategic military location...right on the straights which enter the Med called The Straights of Gibraltar. I didn't know it was a British colony until the planning phase of the trip, and while there we learned some pretty interesting stuff about it. Back during WWI and WWII it was used to port Allied battle ships and house bomber planes using a runway about 2 miles long which spans the width of the peninsula on the Northern end. Seriously, once you drive across the border the road crosses the runway. From this position they could control any traffic entering or leaving the Med during the wars. Inside the rock today are hollowed out sections used for military storage of munitions, fuel, water etc. Most of this we learned the Royal Army guys we met who were celebrating at a local pub over a rugby match England had just won.

After our time in Spain, we took off from Rota on our way back to Grosseto, Italy. The weather was perfect, so I coordinated with air traffic control to fly at 500' along the coast and around the Rock of Gibraltar...what a memory. As we passed, the northern part of Africa was easily seen only a few miles to the south. We eventually made it to Italy after getting gas in Zaragoza and spent the evening enjoying the town. The next day we had arranged to take off our travel pods in preparation to "fight" with the Eurofighters. The jet is very capable, and I learned a lot...I have to say we were pretty much even since it can turn better at low speeds than the F-16. We landed from our first sortie, had pasta in their squadron bar and then flew a 4 vs 4 as their red air support before flying back to Aviano.

Leading the cross-country was a great learning experience for me as a young flight lead. Thankfully all the planning and preparation went as advertised and we were able to get some good training with different fighter jets. What a cool job getting handed the keys to 4 multi-million dollar fighters and being told, "Be safe, have fun, get some training out of it and we'll see you on Monday!"

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Cross-Country Mar '08

Snowboarding in Zermatt, Switzerland

Lana and I had such a good time snowboarding in Nassfeld, Austria that we decided to drive a little further over to Zermatt, Switzerland for a weekend in early March. It was a great drive (actually had to stop and buy snow chains since I couldn't make it through the pass in the mountains) there with the mountians and snow giving great scenery along the way. We had tried to book a hotel room online a few days prior to the trip, but we couldn't find anything within our budget. So, we decided to be spontaneous and find a place when we arrived. That spontaneity worked out well, and we found ourselves a nice pensione about 30 min from the Zermatt ski lifts. Zermatt is a completely electric town, so we had to park our car and take the train the two days we snowboarded. The Zermatt ski slopes are right in and around the base of the well known mountain called the Matterhorn...what a cool place to snowboard! The slopes were endless, the snow was fresh and the scenery again was amazing.

After the first night of snowboarding, we enjoyed a good typical Swiss dinner along with some local wine. The next day was the same with more snowboarding checking out new runs...the park went on forever. We found out at the top of the mountain we could have actually skied down the far side into Italy, but decided to stay on the Swiss side since we had a lot more still to see. We enjoyed a nice dinner in Zermatt that night before heading back to our pensione just down the street. Sadly, we were on the road by mid morning the next day back to Italy...about a 5-6 hour drive. We hope to get back to Zermatt before leaving Italy if we can, or at least to another ski part somewhere in Switzerland.

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Zermatt, Switzerland

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510FS Change of Command

On Friday, February 22 the 510th Fighter Squadron had a Change of Command (CoC) ceremony to say bye to the outgoing commander and welcome the new. Our outgoing commander was good and lead us through a successful deployment to Iraq and back safely. He's now on to bigger and better things in the Air Force. The CoC ceremony has a lot of tradition associated with it of which you can probably read about on the internet. One is the passing of the squadron guidon. The guidon is a wooden pole with the squadron flag at the top of it. The outgoing commander passes the guidon to the Operations Group Commander (he's in control of all flying squadrons on base and oversees the ceremony) who then passes it back to the incoming commander. There is also a passing of the last/first salute to the outgoing/incoming commanders from the squadron who stands in formation below the ceremony stage. I enjoy things like this where the military traditions are carried out...it sets the stage well for a new commander to take over the squadron.

In perfect timing for the new commander to take over was the arrival of our new squadron jet coming to use from Cannon AFB. The actual tail number of the aircraft is 510, and with the new paint job look very nice sitting in the hangar for the ceremony. We're all looking forward to the months ahead with the new commander in charge to lead us on into the future.

The middle of March I'm leading my first 4-ship cross-country similar to the one I went on last year and I'm also coordinating Joint Multi-National Readiness Center (JMRC) flights for our squadron coming up soon to Grafenwoehr Range in Germany. These flights involve pre-tanking and then going to the range to shoot the gun and simulate dropping bombs before flying back to Aviano. While there we also work with Army ground controllers to practice as if we were actually operating in war. It's a great view going up and back over the Alps! Hope everyone is enjoying the info. Fly safe!

Finished The Flight Lead Upgrade

Towards the end of February I finished the flight lead upgrade (FLUG) and am now officially a 4-ship flight lead. This means I'm responsible for leading around the other three jets in my formation of 4 F-16s in case you didn't read my earlier post. The three or so months it took to finish were definitely a learning experience and it's nice to be in the lead now. It's completely different to be the one standing in front and briefing your flight members what you want them to do when the past couple years were spent listening and being told what to do. There were many long days and stressful evenings preparing and studying for the next days flight, as Lana can attest to. A few times she even sat across the kitchen table from me pretending to be a flight member as I practiced my flight brief...she was a great help and encouragement to me; I love you Lana!! Overall, the upgrade went well and thankfully I didn't "bust" or fail any flights...although I came close once.

As mentioned before the FLUG consisted of 10 flights in different areas of the F-16's mission. We start off air-to-air with BFM or dogfighting flights consisting of offensive, defensive and high aspect. From there we moved into air combat maneuvering (ACM) maneuvering together with a wingman to "kill" the adversary...in BFM you maneuver as a single jet verses another. Tactial intercepts (TI) are next where we start beyond visual range (BVR), analyze the formation and range with adversaries are from us, shoot them BVR if they're hostiles or maneuver our two F-16s to a position to visually identify (VID) the "bad" guys and "kill" them without being detected...this flight is typically a 2 vs 4 blue to red. It builds to 4 vs 4 which incorporates everything learned in the previous flights, plus more specifics regarding defensive counter air (DCA) operations. In the air-to-ground area we have a close air support (CAS) flight, which is what our flights in the desert consisted of. Then, our last two flights of the FLUG are opposed surface attack. Essentially we simulate we're part of a strike package (those tasked to enter "bad guy" land and destroy targets on the ground), but along the way there is an air and surface to air threat (surface to air missiles and artillery). So, we combine the air-to-air with the air-to-ground aspects together and execute one mission. All of these flights are very similar to the building blocks I went through in F-16 training.

For those of use who are experienced at the completion of the FLUG (more than 500 F-16 hours) we're put into the supervisor of flying (SOF) upgrade. The SOF is a pilot who sits in the tower and is a direct line between the Operations Group Commander and what's going on with daily flying. We're responsible for setting the weather status, assisting those airborne if they have an inflight emergency and a number of other things. We have two dedicated radios which pilots use to talk with the SOF if they need assistance.

In the squadron I'm now the 510FS Chief of Training, another area of increased responsibility. After the desert I worked in the scheduling shop for about one year, before I was given my new job. I'm responsible for tracking flying and currencies, as well as working with the scheduling shop to make sure those in upgrades are scheduled for the appropriate events. Those in higher positions on base use the numbers we track to gauge how well the squadron and wing are doing in regards to flying, so it's an important job. The picture below is of our squadron scheduling board...it's a huge puzzle every week to figure out every pilot's duties for the week.

Lana and I plan to do some snowboarding soon in Switzerland to take advantage of the good snow while it's around...yet another blessing of being located where we are here in Europe! I'll update everyone on how it was soon.

Snowboarding in Nassfeld, Austria

A couple weeks after returning from Zaragoza, Lana and I along with some friends of ours from the squadron, went to Nassfeld, Austria for the weekend to snowboard. The trip was only about 2 hours, but the snowboarding and weather were great. The only thing that would have made the trip a little better was some fresh powder. We ended up staying in a nice pensione called Gusthof Winkler in the town Tropolauch on the north side of the mountains. After getting settled in to the rooms, we had dinner downstairs and enjoyed some games and hot tea into the late hours. The pensiones owner's father actually fought in WWII and was told us some stories of fighting the Russians not too far east of where we were sitting...Lana translated everything for us since he was speaking in German. It's cool to hear stories from those who were around during those times, just like Lana's grandpa and grandma talk about the Americans bringing candy and chocolate for the kids. Lana's grandpa was one year away from going off to Hitler "Camp" as they called it to train for war. Anyway, we didn't stay up too late since we wanted to hit the slopes early the next morning.

After a day of snowboarding, we headed back to Sacile ready to start another week. We are planning to hit up Nassfeld again soon before the snow season passes. Sadly, this will probably be the last winter we have a chance to snowboard in the Alps before moving. But, we're enjoying everyday we're here and are very blessed!

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Nassfeld, Austria