Officer School and UPT Journal/Blog

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Another C-130 UPT Journal

6:55 PM -- 11G -- Well that is over with and I'm still alive and kicking. Wasn't as nervous as I planned on, especially since the weather cooperated and put us on the right runway. I flew a decent flight, although I boned up most of my work in the area. The checkpilot just sat there the whole flight saying nothing which was kind of intimidating. He didn't ever have to take the controls (good thing) so I was pretty confident I had passed going into the debrief. I did a quick situational emergency procedure (two engine failure low altitude) and answered a bunch of general knowledge questions. After that he told me I passed and went through my downgrades with me. I got 11 downgrades and an overall grade of "Good" on the flight. I had wanted to get an excellent but I will take the pass! After the ride went straight to academics where we are learning all the government en route charts, approach plates etc. The computer instruction on this subject is pretty crappy (Here's the map, this is the legend, figure it out!) and again I can't imagine trying to learn it all for the first time here at UPT. Got a sim first thing tomorrow morning and a flight right after that so it definitely isn't letting up! Off to bed super early again after a great meal of only somewhat rotten Kobe Beef (thanks mom, actually wasn't rotten, but definitely wouldn't have made it to tomorrow!) posted by Austin @ 6:55 PM	Wednesday, October 29, 2003
6:22 PM -- I'm a little FREAKED OUT MAN!!! -- Have my first checkride tomorrow, my midphase checkride. The purpose is to clear me to go to the MOA (Military Operations Area) where we practice, by myself. It also serves as an introduction to military checkrides. We shall see how it goes but I am pretty nervous, and the winds blowing out of the NW is not helping to calm me down! My ride is going to consist of a straight in approach to our aux field, one more landing there, then up to the high area in the MOA. There I will do spins, stalls, and a loop and aileron roll, as well as recoveries from unusual attitudes. After that back home for a few more landings and call er a day. There is then a ground evaluation (oral exam) where you do an Emergency Procedure like in the morning stand-up, as well as answer a bunch of general knowledge questions. Oh and forgot to mention I am the guinea pig from my flight, the first one to go up for a checkride. AHHHHHHH...deep breath right mom? Anyway this time tomorrow I will be sitting here knowing the verdict so fast forward to then...fingers crossed. posted by Austin @ 6:22 PM	Tuesday, October 28, 2003
6:38 PM -- Yawn... -- Had my first double turn today. Took off at 0730, flew a sortie, landed, debriefed/briefed, and took off again at 1030. Pretty tired by the end of it, especially due to the fact that the wind was blowing the wrong way today and we were flying the goofy 31 pattern. Have one more flight before my midphase checkride which will probably be Wednesday. Kind of nervous but supposedly they look at you with a pretty broad picture so hopefully I will do ok assuming I don't overspeed anything or try to land with the gear up. Was freezing here this morning, actually had to wear my flight jacket in the jet (dress to egress, in case you have to eject) which made me sweat my butt off once we were up yanking the jet around. So off to bed wicked early... posted by Austin @ 6:38 PM	Monday, October 27, 2003
3:37 PM Another week down. Had a good few flights at the end of the week so I am feeling pretty good. I kind of had an epiphany on my solo where I snapped out of the 45 degree nice smooth turn civilian flying style into the 90 degree bank 5.5 g turns around the pattern fighter style. It makes flying a lot more fun, and your patterns a lot more precise. Hey the jet is rated up to 6.67 g's so I might as well take advantage right? This coming week I have my midphase checkride to look forward to. My first military checkride, they are looking to see if you are safe enough to fly out to the areas by yourself without killing anyone. I am not too worried about it but I'm sure the nerves will be flying come checkride time. Not much else to report really, sorry no pictures but I forgot my camera...soon I promise. posted by Austin @ 3:37 PM	Saturday, October 25, 2003
7:36 PM -- Our pattern -- Also got an email today from someone asking me to explain the traffic pattern so I figured I would do it here in case anyone else was interested. You may need some flying knowledge to understand this. We basically fly two large patterns in one. It allows 12 airplanes in the pattern at one time. I will go through it from takeoff to landing. You take off and turn crosswind as you normally would and climb to 1000ft agl. You then go on what would be a super wide downwind for a civilian, then turn super wide base, and then fly right over the runway on like a final ground track, but still at 1000 ft agl. About halfway down the runway you go into "the break" where you roll to 60 degrees of bank and pop your speedbrake. You pull about 2 gs and basically roll out onto a tighter than normal civilian downwind. This gets you slowed down below 150 knots so you can pop your gear and keep slowing down to 120. Still at 1000ft agl. Once you get about 45 degrees off the approach end you roll full flaps, bring power back to 70% and pitch down about 15 degrees as you roll into 30 degrees of bank. You confirm with your IP your gear is down and then keep this tight descending turn going at 110 knots until you roll out on about a 1/2 to 3/4 mile final where you then land normally. Pretty cool huh? You do all this without the controller telling you so we basically control ourselves, ie we are never officially cleared to land over the radio. If while in the pattern you run into a conflict with another aircraft the one without priority (we have a pneumonic to remember who has priority) has to do a "break-out" where they climb to 1500ft agl and fly to a spot called "VFR Entry" where they turn around and re-enter the pattern about halfway through that first super wide downwind (we call it outside downwind) That is about it, except when you takeoff you can ask the controller for "closed" which means that you can pull right around to the inside pattern (basically your break and climb to 1000ft all in one) so you don't have to go around the whole "box". Easy right, you understand that mom? Anyway hopefully pictures this weekend. posted by Austin @ 7:36 PM	Wednesday, October 22, 2003
7:27 PM -- Sierra Hotel! -- Mark this one in the calendar Mom! After showing a propensity to not kill myself for the last few hours in the tweet my instructors found it in their hearts to give me the jet solo! I have been flying with the DO as I mentioned earlier and we had done the final pre-solo flight yesterday. The plan was for me to solo tomorrow, but as I am finding out the schedule isn't set until you're sitting in the jet. I was at the control tower for our tweet runway acting as recorder (keeping track of takeoffs and landings, how many in the pattern, etc. not sure if I have talked about that yet) and got a call from our scheduler saying he needed my butt back in the flight room STAT cause the Colonel wanted to solo me! They call it "Pogo'ing" here because you're call sign when you fly you initial Solo is "Pogo XX" where X's are your IP's call sign number. Since I was with the DO I was Pogo 02. Anyway I got back to the flight room, slammed a snickers and a mountain dew and reported to the DO for the brief. Everything went great and we stepped to the jet on time and took off. Flew a couple of patterns with him, as well as a breakout and a go-around (will explain later). We took turns landing (since he said I was boring him) and he said my landings were better than his so I guess I was good enough to solo! So we full-stopped and taxied back to the chocks were we quickly discovered we had a 200 pound fuel imbalance (difference in amounts of fuel in each wing) When you are in the air 160 pounds imbalance is considered an emergency so I was a little anxious. It all worked out though as we put fuel back in the jet to fix the imbalance and it started feeding normal so I was good to go. He got out of the jet, and I was all by my lonesome as I started up two turbine engines all by myself! Did all my normal checks, and with a call to ground ("Pogo Zero Two, Taxi, Victor)a salute to the colonel I was taxing out by myself. It was pretty cool to look to my right and not see someone there looking back at me with a measuring glare. Kind of reminded me of my civilian solo flight. Anyway I taxied out and took off and had a pretty normal flight around the pattern. I had to go around a few times but not due to my flying, the tower was just trying to get departures out. I actually felt like I flew a better jet than I just had with the DO in the plane...I also yanked it around a lot more, pulling around 5 g's on some of my turns (G meter was at 5.5 at the end of the flight). SO, I get land, taxi back, unstrap from the jet and my buddies are waiting to throw me in the "pogo pool" which is basically a dunk tank for us newbie solo pilots. It was a pretty cool day. Except for the fact that my truck broke and I got the estimate back of 2200 dollars....paypal donations anyone? Just kidding. So that was today, my first PIC in the airforce. Yeeha. posted by Austin @ 7:27 PM
10:09 PM Added a link on the left side to the earlier phase one pictures I posted. Will definetly have some flightline pics up in the next week or so. posted by Austin @ 10:09 PM	Saturday, October 18, 2003
9:32 PM -- Interesting week so far. -- 3 things of note so far this week. Got stood up and given a fairly benign emergency procedure during the morning brief and proceeded to screw it up royally. The funny part is I saying the right things, just doing the wrong things the right way if that makes any sense. So I got my first reality check when I got the old "Sit Down!" and wasn't allowed to fly during the next period. Let's just say the Lt. Col was not too pleased, as he has to kind of arrange his schedule around flying with me and he's a busy dude. So that sucked, had to get counseling and basically felt like a retard. Not the end of the world though. The next day I finally got to fly after a 12 day break. We did a pattern only flight where we departed to the auxiliary field, did a few patterns, and came back to Laughlin for the rest of the flight to practice landings and the pattern. I managed to pull out a pretty decent flight, and even had a few patterns better than the Lt. Cols demos! Also got a quick peek at how rank works in the airforce. Listening to ATIS it said the aux field was closed so my IP says "Don't worry about it" and proceeds to tell tower we are going there anyway to do a "pattern check". What else could they say but "Yes sir!" So I did better than I thought and got great grades on the flight...which brings me to today! So there I was...(the way war stories always start) taking off after my straight in to the aux field, feeling pretty good. I then flew an entire pattern around the box, 200 knots, doing great, fat dumb and happy. We go into the break, I fly a great perch and do a touch and go. On departure we get a call from the box saying "Departure leg, Wizard" "Departure leg, go ahead" I reply. "Yeah departure leg, we see your landing lights down, confirm" ....... "Tiger Zero Two, Departing..."I managed to spit out before I unkeyed the mike well, don't read lips. Long story short, our landing lights have a extended limit of 135 knots, which I basically busted by 65 knots. So I hooked the ride, my first Unsat. Not the end of the world, I actually got an E grade on most of the other stuff in the flight, but doing what I did was an automatic shank. This Colonel must think I am a retard... Now I get to sit on that unsat all weekend since I'm not flying tomorrow. Plus I get to listen to my buddies and IPs bust on me...good thing we don't get callsigns yet or mine would probably be picked by now. Have a good weekend. posted by Austin @ 9:32 PM	Thursday, October 16, 2003
11:31 PM Well due to weather I didn't fly ALL week. I am pretty sure I have forgotten how to fly and am very sure my next sortie is going to be gruesome. Other news I have been chosen out of my flight to get soloed by the Squadron DO. He is basically second in command of the flying squadron and is a Lt. Col. So it is kind of an honor I guess since they don't want to give him someone that shouldn't be too much of a hassle to teach but it is quite a bit more stress flying with a big-dog like that. I will be flying with him for the next 3 flights or so and for my initial solo and may actually end of flying with him regularly. One good thing though is I am less likely to have flights cancelled to let other people fly since they aren't going to be messing with the DO's schedule. Hopefully he is a laid back guy in the jet. Other than that, just enjoying the long weekend. Saw the movie Kill Bill on Saturday (awesome, don't take your mom though) and did the usual trip to Mexico. Actually in Mexico I was in the bathroom at the bar and saw one of the "Policia Auxiliar" shaking down a few highschool kids. They tell you they are going to arrest you and then take all your money. He patted them down, not looking for weapons but for cash! He wasn't too happy since they only had like 20 bucks and was in the process of handcuffing them when I got out of there before he could grab me too. So Monday off and back into the plane Tuesday weather permitting (still sucks outside). posted by Austin @ 11:31 PM	Sunday, October 12, 2003
4:31 PM -- Sim Sim Sit -- Crappy weather ALL week...I have had a flight cancelled every day. Had two more Instrument sims which were pretty fun, got to shoot an ILS or two. We are all getting pretty close to solo and would have had some already if the weather had cooperated. The first solo though is actually about to go airborne right now so we are all going to go out to watch him hopefully not die. Oh yeah, writing this at the flight line, if you are curious about the time. Things are otherwise pretty slow due to the weather, but it is definitely going to start going quick when we get weather and can start flying again since we are a few days behind schedule. posted by Austin @ 4:31 PM	Thursday, October 09, 2003
9:26 PM Still no flying...weather has been pretty bad this week and we are losing a lot of our jets. The last two days I have done shifts in the RSU which has been pretty interesting. It is a small tower which controls the runway all the t-37s land on. I am there as a recorded to keep track of all the aircraft coming and going, when they are due, how many are in the pattern, etc. It gets pretty hectic, especially since the call signs are really hard to hear on those crappy tweet radios. I get back in the air tomorrow morning weather dependent and then 4 more rides to solo. There are guys across the hall in B flight who are due to solo tomorrow though so it should be pretty cool to see. Kind of sticks in my craw though that I am behind them but not much you can do about the schedule. At least that's the only reason I am behind. More tomorrow. posted by Austin @ 9:26 PM	Tuesday, October 07, 2003
1:03 PM Well another week down. The week started off easy enough. Due to fiscal year concerns we didn't fly on the Monday and actually had Tuesday off. Felt like a 4 day weekend...but basically turned us all into idiots in the airplane when we strapped it back on on Wednesday. I flew like garbage Wednesday AND Thursday and felt pretty crappy going into Friday's flight. I managed to turn it around though and had a great flight giving me some confidence going into next week. You only feel as good as your last flight so I was glad to end on a good note. My IP said that if not for one mistake I made at the end she would have been ready to solo me after that flight (I still have 5 or 6 more before I solo). She said it kind of loud and the room with all my peers kind of went silent so I was kind of embarrassed, but I guess it is better to be embarrassed that way rather than by getting reamed during a rough debrief with everyone watching. So that's where I am this week, about 6 more flights until they give me the jet to take by myself, good thing they don't know about my plans to defect to Mexico! posted by Austin @ 1:03 PM	Saturday, October 04, 2003