As of 29 Jun 2009 I officially became an instructor in the F-16! It's been a busy, humbling and yet fulfilling 3 months since I started the process back in the beginning of April. Despite 2 weeks in the Philippines and 1 week of the Operational Readiness Inspection (ORI) I made it relatively quickly through the upgrade with having to repeat only a couple of rides...either due to my briefing or flight performance not being up the level it needed to be. I'm now responsible to teach new wingmen, future flight leads and eventually future instructor pilots how to use the F-16 tactically. It's a great feeling to have the stress of the upgrade over with! God is good!
Lana has been here the past few weeks and has been a GREAT encouragement and support to me through the many long days I was at work either planning for my next flight, briefing, flying or debriefing...sometimes up to 14 hours. I want to publicly thank her for her love and support and being an awesome wife to me; I couldn't have done as well without her!! We're looking forward to the nice long 4th of July weekend we're planning to spend most of in Seoul relaxing without any stress on my part.
There isn't too much in the near future that I want to pass along at this point. In a couple of weeks I'll be going to TDY to Misawa Air Base, Japan as an instructor with 3 other pilots from here at Kunsan to use their nice 360° simulators. So, some good sushi is in my near future! It's nice the warm weather is here and Lana and I will spend the time exploring some of the local national parks and beaches. We hope all our friends and family are doing well! Until next time...fly safe and check six!
This past week 4 of us from the squadron flew to Misawa Air Base in Japan on an Army C-12 to use their 4 Mission Training Center (MTC) F-16 simulators. We have 2 Unit Training Device (UTD) simulators here at Kunsan, but there are a lot of differences between the two. The main difference is the MTCs have a 360° field of view whereas the UTDs just have a large flat screen in front of the pilot. After the pilot sits in the sim cockpit, simply pushing a button closes the back half of the sim around him like a clam shell. The JHMCS helmet can also be worn in the simulator. They can link all 4 of the MTCs together, so in essence "flying" in the MTCs is like flying a regular 4-ship mission in real life...the best video game in the world! We "flew" 2-3 sim periods a day and by the end of the week had learned a great deal and became more proficient in certain F-16 missions.
Our first sim period each day except for Friday didn't start until 1030 so it was nice to hit the gym before work. After the last sim finished around 1830 we headed off base for either Indian (if you didn't know already, I like Indian food), sushi or Japanese steak. I guess I talk about the food when I am traveling so much for a couple reasons. First, I really like food period. Second, Korean food isn't very good so I'm always glad to have more of a selection when traveling.
Anyway, on Thursday we finished a little early and hit the base course for 9 holes of golf finishing as the sun went down. I actually shot a 40 (Brent, you'd be proud) which was very surprising. I 1 putted 4 of the 9 holes, so there was some luck involved. Friday around noon the C-12 was back to pick us up for the flight back to Kunsan. Flying on the C-12 was a great deal since we could fly direct from Kunsan to Misawa. We had our own military taxi service...kind of nice!
Well, this next week is another Operational Readiness Exercise (ORE) so more fun times simulating war time 24 hours a day. I'll be flying 2-3 times each day, so I'm relaxing this weekend to get ready. Enjoy the weekend, fly safe and check six!
