The mountains look nice

but they'd look a lot better from the air!

Since our class started flying Wednesday, 32 out of 34 people in our class have gotten to fly. Some made their third flight today. I, however, got stuck with an IP (instructor pilot) who came down with strep throat right when I was supposed to start. So no flights for me yet. And of course, I didn't find out each day until I showed up for my preflight briefing and the only way I knew he wasn't there is because he didn't show after 15 min. I guess that's the effect of mixing civilians and military in one operation. And I'm normally a patient guy, but when I'm up at 3:45 am, sit through a formal brief and emergency standup evaluation every morning, then ready to go for my preflight brief at 0510, it's a different story. So all three days, I've been studying, practicing in our cockpit trainers, practicing my preflight inspections on the planes outside, and listening to other peoples' pre- and post-flight briefs. Since our class is still on formal release, we can't leave the flight room until the end of the duty day (which has been around 1530/1630 lately).

We've got a quiz next Wednesday and I have a feeling that if we all pass that, then we'll get off of formal release. At UPT (real pilot training, down at Sheppard), formal release lasts a few months. The whole idea is that they're basically forcing you to stare at the books all day until you've proven you can handle it. At this point, I feel like I could probably take my first flight and then be ready for the final checkride. But I'm sure I'll change my mind once I see how the plane actually handles. Either way, I'm just eager to get back in the air. The more time that passes since I've last flown, the more uneasy I get. And my last flight was in the beginning of April. And that's great compared to my peers, but for me it's too long, I need some lift.

So to put it all in perspective- I've been here about a week and a half now. I've got about 4 and a half weeks to go. And in 1 1/2 weeks, the senior class graduates, we become the new senior class, and the next class arrives. (There's two classes here at one time). It'll be interesting since the class sizes are supposed to just keep getting bigger and bigger. And as nice as this place is, there's a lot of quirks they need to fix before they're ready for a few hundred wacky lieutenant pilot-trainees.

I've been working out for more than an hour every day which is great. There's a bunch of guys here who are right at my skill level for volleyball so I play a few games just about everyday. After 12 hours of studying, it's a good time.

On a sad note, yesterday 2 people from the senior class failed their final checkride (or maybe it was the recheck of their final checkride). So it sounded like they washed out (which means they don't go to pilot training, and the Air Force throws them back in the mixing bowl for career fields). And I think today 1 other person from the senior class failed. So a few of the guys in our class who have no flight experience got a little nervous about that, but I think our class is a little sharper than the senior class.

I plan and taking some pictures next week to show everyone what this place is like. I didn't want to do it earlier since we had a hard enough time getting through our morning briefings and proving that we're airworthy.

Quote of the day:
Student: "Sir, I have a thousand feet to lose so I will pitch the nose forward to gain airspeed up to 137 in an attempt to restart the prop spinning"
Instructor, callsign Bonemass: "and what's that gonna look like"
Student: "Well sir, I'm gonna be looking at a whole lotta ground out my windshield at that point"
Instructor: "Well isn't that comforting!"