Another week down

After about 5 flights in the T-37 now, I'm starting to feel a little bit like a pilot again. I've gotten more comfortable with all the checklist flows starting up the plane and shutting it down. The radio calls are getting there, although it's hard because the Air Force calls are so scripted. It makes it easy to learn/remember, but at the same time, there's no room for the civilian "uhhh, roger, we'd like the left side and uh, cleared to land, uh Archer three five". In the Air Force, you don't even get cleared to land- it's just assumed if you don't hear the contrary. I've still got a long way to go before I start flying this thing the way I'm supposed to. However, only about 10 flights left on the syllabus until we're supposed to solo. Hmmm

This upcoming week, we've got an academics test, our first EPQ, and standup EPs will begin. EPQ stands for Emergency Procedure Quiz but in reality they're based off tons of different info from our regulations, procedures, etc. I think we get one a week or so. Standup EPs are one of the big things that UPT is famous for. Every morning after our formal brief, the instructor will call up a student at random. You stand at attention while the instructor tells you the situation (you're just lifting off the ground on take off, passing 75 knots, and you see a blinking red light in the corner of your eye). From there, you have to go through some scripted lines, then completely analyze the situation, and go through the entire process of what you would do from there in painful detail. The whole thing can last up to an hour sometimes because of all the checklists and variety of things there are to jack up. It's hard to study for because of the span of things that could go wrong and you have to really understand the systems to get through it.

My flights have been going pretty good so far. After studying all last weekend, some concepts clicked in my head. Now we're going to be introducing a lot more maneuvers and the basics of taking off, getting to and from the training area, and landing are expected to be out of the way. I hadn't really stopped to think about it until this week was done, but they really don't spend a lot of time here teaching the basics like I just mentioned. They pretty much expect you to read the study material, spend one or two flights practicing it, and move on. Never once so far have I heard an instructor talk a student through the aim-point concept and what you're supposed to be looking at during the flare to level off and what you're supposed to be doing with your power and pitch as you go through the flare. But on the other hand, every student in our class either has previous civilian flying time, or has gone through their respective military's introductory flying program (IFS for Americans).

All this week has been start times around 7-8 am and release times around 6-7 pm. Starting this week, we'll switch schedules with our sister flight (the other half of our class) and we'll haves show times around 5 am. It's good because the weather should be clear and we'll get done with the stressful parts of our day early. But it's hard because you don't get the morning to prepare and mentally go through your flight. Lately, I've been getting the nervous sick feeling in my stomach leading up to each flight. I know what it is, so I continue the flight and forget about it once I step in the jet. But maybe with the early go's, my stomach won't have time to realize what I'm doing. On that same note, I think this week I start doing G-exercises during each flight. It's basically rolling into a 90 degree bank and pulling back for 2, 3, and 4 Gs to see how your body is feeling before practicing the rest of the maneuvers.

Personal aviation landmarks reached this week:
5 Gs
~260 knots
(they happened at about the same time... My instructor told me I can try entering our practice area by going inverted. Turns out what he meant was to just roll over and let the plane naturally fall into the altitude block. But what I did was roll over to inverted, pull back the stick, and take the area by storm. About halfway through the pull, the instructor took the controls, rolled over and pulled us back to straight and level flight. Miscommunication can getcha like that, luckily he was understanding about it)

Ellen and I attended a "changeover party" on Friday where the class that was previously in our flight room (H flight), was celebrating leaving the Tweets and going to the T-38s. They all took turns calling out their IPs and telling funny stories about them. Lots of drinking was involved... looooooots of drinking... There's gonna be a lot of working around tradition in this journey to fighter pilot land.

And today, Ellen and I went to this Hangar Bazaar that the spouse clubs sponsor on base. We didn't really know what would be there but it turned out to be another Texas knick-knack-palooza. There were about three booths (scented candles, boring jewelry, and stuff relating to the Texas star to decorate your house) that just repeated over and over and over and over.

Tomorrow's Sunday and everyone knows what that means - back to the books! ...dang