I've been buffed

I had my first flight in the B-52 this week! It was pretty awesome, all five and a half hours of it. And supposedly that's a short sortie compared to normal. Here at the FTU, we're being transformed since the active duty training squadron is combining with the reserve squadron here on base. It's part of the Air Force's whole "Total Force Integration" plan to get active duty, reserve, and guard working together more (to save money). I think the FTU used to fly sorties more around 9 hours whereas the reserve squadron usually flew much shorter. So they're still looking for a middle grounds. I believe we're the first class that's actually doing all of our flight training from the reserve squadron (although the active duty instructors still fly with us). Some other differences are that the jets tend to be kept in much better shape (since the same crew chiefs have been working on them for so long) and there's a lot of people who show up to work in shorts and t-shirts (because sometimes a person has the same job in the reserve and on the civilian side so they have a different title depending on what day of the week it is).

For our first flight, it was only the pilots and navs from our crew with our instructors (no EWO, he'll join us later in the syllabus). Our class has been split up into crews so we always fly as the same two pilots, two navs, and one ewo. It's nice because you can get used to how the other people work and it makes it a lot more fun when you're talking about the flight afterward. Since I'm training to be a copilot, the majority of my work is done from the right seat. The guy in my crew who is training to be an aircraft commander (AC) (since he was a first assignment instructor pilot out of pilot training and is a Captain now) does most of his training in the left seat. But since the syllabus changed a while back, we both get a lot more familiarization with the other seat. So there's a lot of "seat swaps" that take place throughout the flight. It makes it even more busy when there needs to be an instructor in one of the seats (like in the traffic pattern or during air refueling).
As you can guess with that many people in one plane, the communication can get really overloaded. We also have a lot of radios to communicate outside too so it was hard to keep all the settings straight and make sure that I was talking to who I wanted to talk to when I keyed the mic button. What we did on the flight was actually pretty simple in the big picture sense. We took off, flew somewhere to meet up with a KC-135 tanker, practiced air refueling, and then came back to the pattern and practiced approaches and touch and go's. Although it was probably the longest flight that I've ever flown in an airplane, it actually went by relatively fast. One of the goals of these first flew flights is to get the students used to the environment, particularly for the non-pilots. This is their first time flying with helmet/mask and a parachute. They also don't have any windows downstairs or in the back where the EWO sits (plus the EWO sits facing backwards). So overcoming airsickness is a common problem. One of our navs filled up a few barf bags while we were in the pattern. But he was fine as soon as we landed and he could get off the mask and into fresh air. Usually the big problem seems to be doing all the things that you would normally do in a 6 hour period (eat, drink lots of water, pee, stand up occasionally). But it's easy to forget that when you're worrying about what's coming up next every step of the flight. I managed to eat a sandwich and drink some water so I felt good during the flight. Mostly, I was just happy to be flying again since it had been about 7 months since I last flew back at Sheppard.

Air refueling (AR) on our first flight sounded like an intimidating concept when I found out. They really didn't teach us much about it in academics and the books that describe it are very hard to interpret. But since the navs do so much of the work on arranging the rendezvous, it seemed like my main job was just to look out the window and do that pilot stuff. For our initial meet up with the tanker, I was in the right seat and the instructor was in the left seat. The tanker seemed to almost come out of nowhere and after a couple turns we were lined up. The IP demo'd moving into contact (linking up together) and then backed away. Then I took the jet and just tried to stabilize in the precontact position for about half an hour. The IP took it for a minute here and there just to let me shake out my hands and drink some water since flying the buff takes a lot of work. It's not the nice "point it where you want to go with a couple tiny fingertip movements and it's done" concept like in the T-38. Overall, it was pretty awesome flying such a huge plane like the B-52 behind another relatively big plane, the KC-135, and linking up over the middle of nowhere. Here's a good pic of what the boom operator sees out his little window in the tanker (yes, we can see each other through the windows). I couldn't find any good pictures of what it looks like from our cockpit.

After I had my 30 minutes or so, I swapped seats with the AC and he did the same. After we were done with air refueling, we turned around and headed back to Barksdale. I think we got about 2 hours of pattern work which was a combination of instrument approaches and visual patterns. For the pilots reading this, we didn't do any overheads although we will do that later on. After the AC did his hour, we swapped seats and I got to finish up the last hour including the full stop landing. With the realism of the sims, I actually felt pretty comfortable going into my first pattern. I don't remember if I had to go around on any of them, although I did have trouble keeping the wings level as we rolled down the runway during touch and go's. With the four landing gear arrangement, the plane lands a lot differently than most planes do (with the tricycle arrangement). And since I'm sitting on the right side, it takes some getting used to in order to realize what a "level picture" looks like. We have tip gear on the end of the wings and when you initially get into the plane, both are touching the ground (or close). But by the time you come back to land, since you've lost the fuel weight in the wings, they don't bend down as much. So you're actually taxiing in with one wing touching and the other not (a slight tilt). It's a weird idea looking from the pilot's seat.

So it was a good flight. I'm happy to be flying this beast of a plane. The flight helped stress that there's a lot of areas I really need to study more. My next flight this week is going to be pretty much only pattern work so that will help solidify my landings. We only get another 4 or so flights in this block and then we move into actual bombing tactics. So no time to waste in picking up the basics.