It's been a while since I gave an update on the flying biz, so here goes it:
In June, I got to be an augment for the Weapons School's final exercise, called Mission Employment phase. Weapons School is one of my goals in the Air Force, so this was a chance for me to be an extra crewmember with people who are actually going through the school currently. You have to be an instructor to attend and the idea is basically that it takes you from being a normal "this is how you fly the plane" instructor to "this is how you run a war" instructor. The flying was intense since you're flying in an air war that involves just about every platform in the Air Force (including space and cyber warfare types). It was tough going from the week and a half of doing nothing but learning about weapons and flying to back at the squadron where you spend 90% of your time focusing on paperwork, admin, and metrics.
Took a good break in June/July to visit family in Chicago. But of course, for any time you take off, you have to make it up when you get back. So this month, I've been flying a lot. Fortunately, the timing was good since our other flying squadron on base (the 96th) is at Red Flag in Nellis AFB, NV (same place as the ME exercise I just talked about). That means that we get extra sorties to make up for what they're not flying. Plus, I guess it's that time of the year when we're finishing our quotas for using bombs during training. So two weeks ago, I flew in a four-ship where each of us dropped a CBU-103 cluster bomb. It's the first time most of us have dropped a cluster bomb, so it was pretty cool to be a part of. Here's a public air force video on youtube that sums it up.
We dropped in a range out in Nevada, so here's a nice view of summer storms over the Grand Canyon we passed en route.
And I've worked up the confidence to bring my new camera on board, so I've started taking videos now too. It's HD, so make sure if you're in youtube, you click the settings on the bottom right of the video and choose "1080". If you want the real BUFF experience, you can crank the volume up and see how awesome it is to listed to screaming white noise for hours and hours...
Then last week, I was pumped up about flying a 10 hour sortie to New York to drop some laser guided bombs (LGB) with Army troops on the ground (JTACs). Then Monday morning I got a phone call asking me to fly it twice in the same week. The thought of flying a lot and dropping lots of bombs is great, but I ended up flying 21 hours this week. So that was pretty exhausting. It's also been good flying lately because I'm going through Flight Lead Upgrade (FLUG). It's moving from being the Aircraft Commander, responsible for what happens in my jet, to being a formation flight lead, responsible for every jet in the formation. In the fighter world, I think you go through 2-ship FLUG, then 4-ship FLUG. But since formation in the BUFF is a little more versatile, we just go through one FLUG training and you're good to go for as many B-52s as the sky can fit. I've flown in a 12-ship before...
Obviously, this pic above is a little distorted because I was using the fisheye lens. But you can see the seeker head on the front of the bomb that looks for the laser energy that either we shoot out or someone on the ground shoots with a handheld laser. The the fins behind it move to guide the bomb in. Below is a shot of the two smoking holes in the ground after our two 500 pounders hit. I tried to get a video of our wingman's bombs going off, but we couldn't get into a good position at the right time. I'm sure the guys on the ground got a good show.
And on the way home, we met up with a KC-135 to get some night air refueling practice. We had a third pilot on board. So after I got my time on the boom, I moved back to the instructor seat (behind and in between the two pilot seats) and saw what I could get with my camera. In this video (again, make sure the quality is set to 1080), you can see what it looks like to be parked 12 feet behind another big jet in the middle of the night.
At the 0:27 point, you can see the light in the top of the video (on our overhead "eyebrow" panel) go from blue to green. That signals to use that the tanker's boom has locked into our receptacle and we have a good contact. You can also see at this point that the lights on the bottom of the tanker get brighter. These are the director lights that help tell us where we are in the 3D envelope that the boom can move to. So if we move towards a limit (like too far aft), the light moves back. Then as we add power and move forward, their light moves back to the center of the row. It's helpful at night since there's not as many visual references for us to scan on the plane. We also keep an eye on the tanker's engines and try to keep them in a certain spot in our window. You can see the tanker's two outboard engines pretty well in the video. The two inboard engines are blocked by the edges of our cockpit's windows, but you can see them from the pilot's seat. At 0:35, you can see the green light turn yellow and the tanker's director lights start flashing. We were doing a practice breakaway (as if the planes approaching an unsafe condition and you need to immediately get away from each other). So the tanker flashes the director lights and turns on a rotating beacon underneath. Our response is to pull the throttles to idle and start a descent. So the red light you see in our cockpit is the gear handle illuminating (it's set that way whenever our throttles are at idle to prevent landing without your gear down). I moved the camera up to the hatch window over the pilot's head so you could see the tanker as we dropped down and away. Lastly, here's a good shot of Oklahoma City at night with the B-52's horribly inconsistent cockpit lighting (notice how multiple gauges are pitch black while others are bright red - never fly without a flashlight!).
Next week, I'm just flying a couple 2 hour sorties. So that will be a nice break from last week. But in general, I'm still pushing to get lots of ours so I can upgrade to instructor. It's good for getting better at flying, but it's also one of the ways to help lock in my place in the B-52. Otherwise, I'm constantly stiff-arming the move lists that try to get people who have been here for 2-3 years to move to another job for 3-4 years. If the numbers game gets too rough, there's a chance I could go to Minot to avoid doing the pilot training instructor or army liaison tours. I could use some of the cooler weather and it would keep me in the B-52, but moving houses and starting over as the new guy in town is always crappy. Nothing to do but wait for now.
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