6:49 PM -- Typical Flight --

Right now I am about 7 rides deep into the transition phase with about 9 rides left. So here goes for the typical transition ride.

We take off from Laughlin and fly out to the MOA. It is a different MOA than we used in T-37's but it is essentially the same thing in that it's a whole bunch of airspace to go practice in. Once there we practice steep turns at 160, 200 and 230 knots. Then we do Vertical S's just like in tweets, followed by traffic pattern stalls, again like in tweets. That's about it in the area then we take off and head to an outbase. For transition phase we are usually going to one of the following: Dyess AFB, Midland, TSTC Waco, Laredo, Kelly AFB, Robert Gray, and San Angelo. It is pretty cool to finally get away from the local area and land on different runways and talk to civilian controllers. We get to the outbase and do vfr patterns that look a lot more like the normal civilian pattern than the one we flew in tweets. We actually turn crosswind and base! We do touch and go's for about an hour then fly back to laughlin to fly one to a full stop.

That's about it for the flight. It takes about 3 hours and you split the time up with your partner in the jump seat. Usually you switch seats in the Area, then the other guy flys to the outbase, then you switch at the outbase again and the guy who started flies home.

More on the badass systems next time.

 
3:06 PM -- ARgghh --

We showed up at 0420 (was going to be the norm for the next 2 weeks) for our formal brief. They last about 5 minutes as a student briefs the weather and anything else that would affect the days sorties. After the brief we have a quick round of shotgun questions that were a lot like the ones in t-37's except the IPs treat you like a human (no yelling, berating, etc.) Once those are done we are cleared off and usually have anywhere from 5-20 minutes to make the final preparations before we brief our flights. If you have the first flight of the day you are looking at more like 5 minutes so it is generally good to have most of the preflight planning (weather, notams, etc.) done before you show up. TOLD (Takeoff and landing data) is especially time consuming and we usually do it the night before. It involves all the numbers you reference during a flight, and includes everything from your takeoff distance, to power settings in the climb, to the speed you can get on the brakes after you land. It's about 20-30 numbers which takes quite a while to figure the first couple of times but eventually gets quicker, as a lot of the numbers are only temperature dependent so you can whip out yesterdays told (so to speak) and use it again.

We report in to our briefs 2 hours prior to takeoff (as opposed to 1 hour in tweets) with a quick salute and brief up the flight just like we did in tweets. It takes a little longer as flights involve a different departure everyday since we usually go to an "out-base" to do our pattern training.

The first day the IP did our brief so we could see what was expected then we were off to base-ops. This is the building most people who have been to a local FBO would be familiar with. Here we check the weather, file our flight plan, and re-check notams before we step to the jet. With our WANS check done (Weather, Activate flight plan, Notams, S***) we jump in the crew bus and are off to our airplane. There are 2 students on every ride in this phase of training so one of us does the exterior check of the jet while the other gets the cockpit ready to start engines. It was pretty badass to get in there on my dollar ride and start flipping switches. The cockpit lights up like a christmas tree when you throw on the battery and the radio master switches, especially at 545 in the morning.

My ground ops on my dollar ride went really well and both me and my partner got props from the IP for being well prepared. We taxied out to the runway and got cleared for takeoff. I was flying first so I got the pleasure of rotating the jet 15 degrees nose high and climbing away from the ground like a banshee. Pretty impressive. It handles really stiffly but there is definetly an excess of power. We flew to Midland and did a ton of patterns before returning back to Laughlin for a full stop. I will write more specifically about how a daily ride goes next post.

Me and Jeff (guy im flying with) are done the first block of transition (the first phase of t-1's) and are 1 ride into the next one with 11 rides left before our checkride. I am really feeling comfortable with the jet so hopefully 11 rides will cement that and I will rock my checkride. Anyway sorry for the hiatus, more soon.