Still truckin

Hello everybody,

Sorry to not post in a while. Thanks for all the birthday cards and calls. The last couple weeks of pilot training have been very demanding. For the most part, it's been the full 12 hour days. Usually, an hour or so each day is for academics. It's usually at the very start of the day when we're too worried about flying to pay enough attention, or at the very end of the day when we're too tired to pay enough attention. We're learning navigation in academics right now (which we won't really be flying until a few weeks from now). And the main focus on the flight line has been getting everybody through the Contact phase (visual maneuvers / basics of flying the Tweet). There's also instrument flights and simulator sessions mixed in since the instrument phase comes after contact. So what I'm trying to say is that we're basically learning three different phases at one time. It's difficult to grasp all the info but it just comes down to prioritizing what info is necessary for you to survive that day.

Since my first solo, I've done two area solos. It's pretty fun since you get to fly out to our training areas and do loops and aileron rolls. The next big thing is my Contact checkride which should come Wednesday as long as I get a flight done Tuesday. The weather is looking questionable. Since we have spin recoveries as part of the checkride, the areas need to be relatively clear of clouds. One guy from our flight passed his checkride on Friday and a couple people from the other flight passed it this week too. The last guy in our class to get his initial solo done took care of that on Thursday so we're all glad to be past that step. We also now get to wear a different patch on Fridays (our H flight patches). It's the Air Force, so there's also some patch or some ribbon (uniform bling) every so often to keep morale going.

For any civilian flyers reading this, word of advice - stay the heck out of the MOAs. Every now and then, I catch a Cessna or something floating through our training area and it just sucks for everybody because we can't do much maneuvering if we're worried about hitting them. If other Military Operating Areas are like Sheppard, it's pretty much like they take the rectangular box that you see on the sectional and divide it up into pie pieces using DME and radials from a VOR. So one big rectangle equals like 12 training areas with at least 12 jets in it. Also, from what I understand, in the MOAs, we're not limited by the same rules as normal like having to fly less than 250 kts under 10,000'. So beware!

There's been a few hooked flights here and there (people fail a flight because of substandard performance) but everyone's been keeping a pretty positive attitude. Since we're all "post-solo", the standards are higher and there's less room for "soooo, how do I do that again?" type scenarios in the plane. I've botched a few maneuvers here and there but so far, no hooked flights ("hook" refers to the U on your gradesheet for Unsatisfactory, also known as "taco"). I feel pretty well-prepared for the checkride but the ground evaluation covers a lot of material so that's my big focus over this weekend.

Not really any big aviation landmarks for me lately. But I consistently pull 5 Gs, go 250 knots, go upside down, and climb up to 21,000 feet. So flying is still fun.

As for life off the flight line, well, we don't really have much off a life other than that... Our washing machine started leaking so we had to get a repair guy to come who charged us a bunch of money just to tell us that it's actually the plumbing in the house. So then we had to get the military housing company out here. But after a week or two of laundry backup, we're back in action now.

Ellen puts in almost the same hours as me at school with teaching and tutoring. So here's to 9pm bedtimes...