Still going, eight engines at a time

I just had my last flight for Block I of the B-52 FTU (Formal Training Unit). There's four blocks all together. This first consisted of five flights and a lot of sims. The focus was all the basics of flying the buff, crew coordination, takeoff and landing, and air refueling. Air refueling is BY FAR the hardest thing to learn in this plane. The concept is easy enough- you meet up with some other big plane in the middle of nowhere at a predetermined time, you fly up close, connect, and hang on as long as you can. But really, trying to fly a big slug of a plane like the buff that takes a long time to react (in both lateral controls and in power), it's tough to keep it where you want. Everyone says it's one of those things that will just click eventually. The surprising part in my opinion is that in pilot training, I was able to fly this rocket of a plane, the T-38, going 6 miles a minute only 3 feet away from another T-38, upside down, pulling 5 Gs. And now, all I have to do is stay in formation with another plane at 1G, wings level. Yet it's still so much different to fly. For my checkride at the end of the program, I'll need to stay connected to the tanker for 5 minutes. So far, I've made a couple contacts (where you get the tanker's boom connected to our receiving port) but none lasted more than 5 seconds.

Lately, I've been getting a lot of experience with the maintenance side of flying the B-52. Although the airframe in general has a lot better track record than other planes in the Air Force, it's still a big plane with a lot of stuff that can break. I had a flight last week in which one of the engine gauges wasn't working properly, so they ended up having to open up the engine, troubleshoot the problem, locate the key part, replace the part, and then start up the engine and test it, all while we were sitting there in the jet. We ended up taking off about one hour late, but the morale of the story is- here in the "real" Air Force, they do what it takes to get the mission done. It's vastly different from flying in Air Education and Training Command (pilot training) where you either cancelled the mission because the jet was broke or just walked to the jet next door and used that one. There's a lot of B-52s here at Barksdale but because it takes so much work to prepare one for each flight (from the ground crew side), there not all just sitting there ready to go at a moment's notice. You also can't just bounce around from jet to jet and takeoff whenever you're ready because of all the coordination involved with each flight. Taking off late means rescheduling with the tanker, possibly running into weather problems, rescheduling your time block in the training areas, etc. All in all, the big picture is becoming more clear to me of how bombers do business (and I like it).

Last night, the space shuttle stopped through Barksdale. It does that from time to time because Barksdale is a good stopping point as it gets ferried between California, Texas, and Florida. I managed to snap a few shots before I went into work this morning and then got to watch it takeoff as we were sitting in the jet getting things started up. It was a pretty cool sight, but I have to say it was a little more dirty than I was expecting. Must be all that space trash...
So in block 2 and 3 of training, we'll get into the bombing side of business. We'll still get to practice touch and go's and AR (air refueling) but now the navs and ewo will get their time to shine since they'll be feeding us information to get [simulated] bombs on target and avoid [simulated] threats along the way. Together, that will be about 12 flights and a lot of sims. Then I'll take my checkride to be an official combat mission pilot in the B-52. Block 4 has a lot of familiarization stuff with different tactics and a lot of extras that go beyond just going from point A to point B, blowing up point B, and going home to point A. So lots of good stuff on the horizon. And as each five hour flight ticks away, the pressure increases to get my business together and glue myself to the tanker.

On the more peaceful side of life, Ellen and I were high rollers at the horse track last weekend. We ended up walking away 16 dollars richer than when we walked in. We bet on about 5 races, one of them being the big annual Super Derby that they hold here. Out of the 5, I think we won 3 of the bets. There's usually 7-10 horses in a race and we put down money that our horse will come in the top 2 or 3. There's programs with the horses' past performances and stats, etc. But what it really comes down to is seeing which horse looks like a winner when they walk them around before the race starts. Ellen and I are pretty conservative with our money, but it's a lot more fun to watch horses race than to sit in a dark smokey casino watching little cherries and 7s spin around as your money disappears. Ellen usually starts getting the crazy "winner winner chicken dinner" look after she wins her first race or two, but I keep her from getting swept up by a bookie for risking our whole bank account. We took advantage of all the promotions we could to get free dinner at their buffet, free programs, and free play in the slots. The food wasn't that great until it came to dessert and then we pigged out. There was also a B-52 doing pattern work that day and since the track lies just outside our pattern groundtrack, it was like having a flyover every 15 minutes.

It was cool enough that we opened all the windows in our house for the first time this weekend since we moved in this last May. It was pretty nice, but then we freaked out when we got home at night and realized that all the windows were still open with the creepie crawlies lurking around. Another month or two and maybe we'll finally get to enjoy our patio set and fire pit. There's room for visitors!

One last B-52 pic before I go. This is a shot of the nose art on
one of the jets I flew here.