Eagles and vipers and bones, oh my!

So... 1 year and two weeks, and I'm still in pilot training. Last week, I took my formation checkride and it went pretty bad. I passed the flying portion, but with 10 downgrades. But then I busted for the Emergency Procedures portion, which is a really bitter thing to bust for. It wasn't really that I didn't study enough or didn't know my sh-tuff. But my brain, my mouth, and the IP's ears, weren't all working together on the same page. I didn't complain or try to argue about any of it because there really isn't any point after the instructors make up their mind, but I went in the next for my ground eval and passed that. On the same note though, we've had about 7 guys from our flight take the checkride, and about 5 of them have busted on the first try. I don't really have much idea how the other flight is doing. So rough times in Mob flight.

To keep perspective, I have two checkrides left until I get my wings. Next will be advanced formation (which is the last checkride before assignment night, so sorta the last one that really counts for a lot). And after that will be low-level navigation (which is also flown in formation by the way).

Last Friday was the assignment night for the class ahead of us so everyone in our class (09-01) was real eager to see what was dropped. So here it is...

UAV x 3 (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle / Drone....BAD!!!)
RC-12 (I honestly don't even know what this prop plane does)
NSA (ditto)
F-22 (F-22, the newest bad-ass state of the art fighter jet we have)
F-15C (my dream jet, air-to-air, single seat)
F-15E x 2 (same design as the F-15C, but has a navigator in the back seat to help with dropping bombs)
F-16 x 2 (1 was Guard) (my number 2 choice, a sweet single seat fighter)
A-10 x 2 (1 was Guard) (low and slow, single seat attack plane)
T-6 (First Assignment Instructor tour in our newer UPT plane, which is a prop- yuck)
T-38 (First Assignment Instructor tour in the plane I'm flying now - not too bad)
B-1 (a pretty cool bomber)

So in general, it was a pretty good drop. There were three UAVs, which was sickening, but that pretty much replaced the handful of U-28s we were having in the drops before. (The U-28 is one of the many new reconnaissance special ops type propeller planes that they've been coming out with, in the same group as NSAs and RC-12s). The F-22 was half-expected, but it will be the last one to get dropped to fresh UPT students for a while since they're still only doing one class of F-22s a year or so (in other words, that will not be a possibility for my drop). The big surprise was the 1 F-15C and 1 F-16 (that wasn't a guard guy). We were told that those wouldn't be dropped at all for us in pilot training anymore because the pipeline is either full or just plane old done because the F-15C is getting replaced by the F-22. I haven't been able to figure out if the F-15C being dropped is a sign of their training unit still being open and more F-15Cs to come, or if it's just from someone who got it as an assignment before and then needed to be replaced. And no one knows for sure if the F-16s are over for us or not.

The bottom line for my assignment night is that there's no guarantees about anything (both for good and bad). Our assignment night is on Dec 5th so I'll post more when/if I find anything out.

I'm getting closer to the end, but everything still keeps getting more and more difficult. And with checkrides counting for so much of my assignment, it's hard not get demotivated after a big bust. But, I still have to saver every hour I get to fly the T-38, since it's a pretty kick butt jet when it comes down to it. Just look at all those enticing buttons!