The Coolest Job In The World!

This week was somewhat slow due to bad weather, but overall is was good. I was able to get my studying done during the day so that I had time to hit the gym and get enough sleep. I flew once on Thursday, and it was sweet as usual. The dollar I made up for Mr. Marlin for my first flight is below...T-37's and then T-38's baby!


Thursday when I did get a chance to fly the weather was great! I was also able to have another classmate come along and take some pics of how the whole process works from getting my chute in life support through getting in the jet. Basically, I pick up my chute and helmet with my IP, jump in the crew bus for a ride to the jet, do my walk around, jump in and I'm off. Of course it's a little more detailed than that but you get the point.

I hope this next week is a little more consistent as far as the flying goes...I've had three rides, but it was about a week in between my second and third. It's hard to get and stay proficient at flying the Tweet if there's so much time in between.

This next week we start back to the academics with the Advanced Instruments course. That adds a little more work to the pile, so making the most of my time will be even more important. Speaking of that, it may be more like 2-3 weeks in between my updating the site. The next big step for me will be my solo ride in a few weeks, so that will definitely be something to write about along with how I do on the checkrides as time goes by. Well, I guess that's about it for this post. Thanks for the emails and all some of you guys send. Check six!

THIS STUFF ROCKS!

WOW!! My first two rides in the T-37 this week proved everyone wrong who told me flying the Tweet isn't all it's cracked up to be. Yeah, it's oldschool and all, but I've had a blast flying it so far. I had my dollar ride, which I mentioned in a previous post, and a second ride yesterday morning. Our first week on the flightline started Tuesday around 0700 with our Basic Instruments test (another 100%...praise God!) and then on to taking care of administrative things and lots of filling out paperwork. Along with the admin stuff we did a page count of all our new publications we're going to be studying to make sure we all had the right things and right changes if there were any. Wednesday, we were on to our first simulator rides. These have been a lot of fun and pretty helpful giving us a chance to put into practice what we've been studying on our own time to prepare. My first sim basically involved learning how to strap into the jet with my parachute, helmet and oxygen system. We also worked on some takeoffs and landings. Very cool!

The simulator instructors are all mostly retired military guys with a ton of experience. The sim instruction is all contracted out by the government, and a company call Lear Siegler Services Inc. (LSI) provides the guys to teach us. They teach T-37, T-38 and T-1 classes and simulators. For instance, all my instruction in Phase I was given my the LSI guys. They all work together over in the Operations Group Building. Anyway, I thought I'd put a pic of where they work on here. You can easily tell an LSI instructor since they wear blue flight suits instead of the green ones like the pilots do.

Thursday is when most of the fun began...with my Dollar Ride. The dollar ride is the first ride every pilot gets when starting the program, and the cool thing is it's not graded. It's kind of a "freebee" you might say. But, even with that being the case you want to show up the jet the first time with your game on. It's called a dollar ride because the students fix up a dollar bill with pictures of cool stuff and write some things so the IP has something to remember the ride with. All my practicing with the checklists in my room in front of my cockpit poster and then in the CFTs really helped a lot. I was able to get in start the thing up, taxi and everything. Of course, there are things I have to work on, but overall it went very well. My ride was at 0830 on Thursday with Major Marlin. I had met Maj Marlin last year, and requested that he take me up for my first ride. He's been an instructor for a lot of years and was pretty relaxed...that's a good thing because he let me take off, fly a lot and even land the thing once we got back from the practice area!! Our time is the area totally rocked! After a few steep turns to get our bodies used to the G's (we pulled about 3.5-4) he asked, "So, what do you want to do now?" My rely was, "How about a loop?" I was flying at the time and he came back and said, "Alright, put the throttles in military power, pitch down until 250 knots and pull back on the stick." Dang, that was awesome! I had obviously never done a loop and he let me fly the whole thing. Then he gave instructions and let me fly both an aileron roll and a split S. In a split S you roll inverted (upside down), stabilize and then pull the stick back. You end up flying 180 degrees the opposite direction at a lower altitude...the best time in the world.

My second flight was very similar to the second and a lot of fun. I took off and did a pattern delay before we headed back out to the practice are for some more fun. A pattern delay just means we did 3 touch-n-gos before leaving the pattern. I guess my instructor thought I was doing a decent job and he let me land and take off on all the touch-n-gos. Once we take off and get the gear and flaps up, we level off around 300-400 ft above the ground. Once at a minimum of 150 knots, you yank the stick sideways, putting the plane into about a 60-70 degree bank, and pull. It's awesome doing that so close to the ground! Oh yeah, I've mentioned we're in Spaatz flight but forgot to tell you all what our call sign is...we're Skunks. So, whenever I'm up in the air I make all radio calls something like, "Skunk 56, request straight-in."

Well, I should get off this computer and get back to studying. I'm SO thankful God has brought me to where I am today...there are so many things that make it clear this is His will for my life and I can't explain how great that is. I'm in His will and He's giving me the desires of my heart! Couldn't get any better than that!

Phase I Complete

You know how they say "time flies when you're having fun"? Well, that has definitely been the case over the past six weeks for me...I can't believe we hit the flightline this coming Tuesday already! I'm ready to hit the ground running with our Dollar Rides either Wednesday or Thursday. I'll explain more about dollar rides in my Phase II section.

Anyway, the past couple weeks have been in a lot of ways uneventful, and that's why I didn't post an update last weekend. We've been doing the regular routine of classes, working on our cockpit flow in the CFTs and preparing as best we can for the flightline. Academics is still going very well since I was able to keep the 100% test average alive with a 100% on our T-37 systems test earlier this week. We're now in Basic Instruments, which is taking all of us a little more time to grasp. It's not that hard to understand, but there's a lot of things that could get confused if you're not too careful. I've been able to crasp the concepts (key word) pretty quick, so it should be all good come test time. We have that test Tuesday morning at 0700 before we report to the Spaatz flight room at 0905. The reason I say "concepts" is a key word is because it cuts out of a lot time just trying to memorize facts or info you don't really understand. If you get what's going on behind the words, you're that much farther ahead and can apply the "concepts" to a bunch of different questions and scenarios. I guess that's the engineer in me though...at least I'm using something from those four hard years.
Besides the classwork and regular academic stuff, we did have a chance to get some lessons on the game CRUD. Now, for those of you in the military or those who've been around it, you know the game. It's a lot of fun once you get the hang of it. First of all, the game is played with just two pool balls...the cue ball and a target ball. No cue sticks are used either because the cue ball is aimed and thrown at the target ball with your hand. The object of the game is to keep the target ball from rolling by only using the cue ball, or hit the target ball in one of the corner pockets using the cue ball. The tough thing is the cue ball can only be thrown from the ends of the table and you have to do this with an opponent from the other team trying to block and push you. The game is played on either a CRUD table or pool table, whichever is available, and the CRUD tables are much bigger with only have corner pockets to hit the target ball in. There are two teams of 5 to 6 on average who play against each other. I know most of you are really confused right now, so I'll leave it at that...if you want to know more about it find a friend who knows how to play and have them show you.

Week #4...Flight Line In Two Weeks!

Got the 4th 100% this week on our 4th test of academics this week! All the praise goes to God! We finished up Aerospace Physiology earlier in the week with a test on Tuesday morning. Monday was kinda cool when they showed us the effects of a rapid decompression in the altitude chamber. There are two separate chambers they sealed off with us in one of them. They raised the altitude of our chamber to 10,000 ft and the altitude of the other was left at sea level. They caught us off guard and quickly equalized the pressures between the two chambers to where we stabilized at 5,000 ft in a matter of a few seconds. Lots of wind, cooler temperatures and condensation in the air was the result. Good times!

After Physiology we were into Flight Basics. This class was just that...basic. In about 3 days were through the material and had a test Friday. A lot of it I had seen in IFT, so it was pretty much just a refresher class. Friday we also determined how we would be splitting the class into two flights in preparation for the flightline. There are two Tweet squadrons here on base and we will be going in the 41st Flight Training Squadron for Phase II. The 41st is named the Flying Buzzsaws. Within the squadron are six flights and a class takes up two of them at one time. So, half of the class will be going into Spaatz Flight and the other into Arnold Flight. I'm going to be in Spaatz Flight. I can't wait to get over there and into the flying...it will be harder, but at the same time more enjoyable.

A friend of mine sent me the picture below recently, and I think it's very cool. Notice the shape of a cross caused by the light of the sun shinning through the flag. It was just a reminder to me that God is in control of this whole pilot training process I'm going through. Ultimately, I will be flying whatever plane God's plan has in store for me and I wouldn't want anything else. Of course everyone knows I have my sites set on fighters, but His plan in best. He's all knowing and I am not, He's infinite and I am finite...He's God and I am man. Having a God centered perspective on life, especially as it applies to this year, takes so much worry and stress away. All God requires of me is that I follow and listen to His word, the Bible, and do the best with the abilities He has given me wherever life leads...everything else is in His hands. Check 6!

Week #3, More Aerospace Physiology

Week three was a fun week. Yeah, we had the usual PowerPoint stuff in class and all, but like last week we were able to physically practice a lot of things being taught in the classroom. First we practiced the emergency egress procedures from the T-37, and worked on getting strapped in and hooked up properly to the ejection seat. Along with that, they gave us a brief demo on what the body would feel when ejecting. They used a seat with a highly pressurized tank of air under it to simulate the ejection. Once we're strapped in with our heads pushed back against the headrest, we pulled the ejection handles releasing the air and went for a ride! The following day we reported at 0600 in order to practice using some of the signaling equipment such as the flares.

This week also involved and fun ride in the altitude chamber and the Bernie Chair, along with the night vision stuff (not with NVG's). The altitude chamber profile went something like this. Thirty minutes of de-nitrogenation (getting the oxygen out of your system), up to 5,000 ft then back down to help the ears and sinuses adjust, then up to 35,000 ft before heading back to 30,000 ft for the hypoxia demos. Half the room took off their oxygen masks at a time and were asked to complete some easy tasks involving math and other things. Yeah, there's a reason God put us in an environment with plenty of oxygen to breath. My symptoms were lightheadedness, tingling in the legs, air hunger and even slight memory loss. I guess the instructor asked me how many 4 cent stamps are in a dozen, and I said 3. Obviously I was wrong, but the weird thing is I don't even remember him asking the question. Anyway, after that fun stuff we did some visual demos without the oxygen and then were taken back to "earth". By the way, the decreased pressure on the body does some serious work on the GI track and the fumes were definite evidence of that when the masks were removed.

The Barany Chair is something I hope I don't have to come back to for airsickness, even though it wasn't that bad. There are a few different things they can have you do while spinning to acclimate your body and inner ear to such motion as experienced in the plane. I wanted to see what my body felt like after doing a hard "profile" in the chair, and thankfully I didn't feel too bad...nothing close to puking. I had to cross my arms across the chest with my eyes closed, and then move my head around when told to while spinning. Something like "right ear to right shoulder" or "left ear to left shoulder" are a couple of the movements I made. For any of us in the class who experience airsickness, we get to use the chair again until we're used to spinning and pulling G's even if it makes us yack.



The most fun we had this week was parasailing! We all had the chance to practice the PLFs we learned last week in a real setting this time, and it was a blast. When most people think of parasailing they think of a boat and water, but for us it was a Dodge pickup and the earth. =) There's a big open grass field here on the base logically named the parasail field where this took place. We were strapped in, given a little instruction and off into the sky for a good time.

We had a couple chances to practice our procedures. The first ride took us up to about 200 ft and then down slowly for a somewhat light landing. The second was to around 300-350 ft. without a nice controlled decent from the truck. The second ride the truck stopped and we took it from there. The checklist from my last entry would have been used at this time, but we were too low for that. We just grabbed the rear parachute risers, turned into the wind and prepared to land. For us dudes that are a little bigger, our decent rate was a bit quicker than the lighter ones since the same size chute is used for everyone. My landing was fine just like all the others in the class. I wish I could have had the chance to go again! Aerospace Physiology wraps up early next week with another test before we're on to The Basics of Flight.















As the baby class at the base, we're responsible to help out at the graduation for the class that is exactly 1 year ahead of us. In this case, it's Class 04-04. Call me crazy, but just being at the graduation put chills up my back watching them all walk across the stage to get their wings. That will be us in a year!! To help out, some of us were ushers, program guys or distinguished visitor (DV) greeters. I was one of the greeters. We stood outside in front of theater waiting for the base commander and a Major General to pull up. We were called to attention, saluted as the vehicle approached and dropped the salutes after it stopped. After saluting the commander and general as they approached to shake our hands individually we finished up and headed inside for the ceremony.

You all might be tired of me saying this, but I can't believe I have this kind of an opportunity. We're training to fly for the world's best Air Force...being one of those guys to too awesome! I couldn't think of a better job!