Officer School and UPT Journal/Blog

Air Force Officer School/Flight School Journal/OTS Blog/UPT Blog

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Another C-130 UPT Journal

7:24 PM -- Booya --

Mission Fam check today. Had an Air Refueling sortie, kind of funny since I will never do it again in my career in all likelyhood. The weather was perfect, and other than the fact that the IPs hated my kneeboard (the little card you make with all the mission data on it, the ride went pretty well. I ended up with a 4G. Downgrades were for mission planning (the data card), my landing (last landing ever in the T-1 sucked!), Wingman consideration since I gave my buddy one more rejoin than I had to (hehe he got a downgrade on the rejoin too...), and FMS usage. The last one bugs me since I am the master at programming the box. He didn't like that I didn't put the flightplan back to base in there at the beginning. I usually throw it in once we are cleared back to DLF, but he wanted it in beforehand. Oh well I'll take it.

So yes...with my mission fam check behind me, as long as I don't kill anybody in the next week I am getting my air force wings next friday. We even have the velcro patches with our names and the wings on them already, but I can't wear them until I officially get my wings on friday.

Graduation should be fun, have the whole fam coming down with plans to go on a cruise with the boys right after. Then it's off to Little Rock on the 31st of August for C-130 school...my next hour of flight time will be in the Herc, hard to believe. Will update this thing then if you goons are still interested.

Booya I'm outta here.

posted by Austin @ 7:24 PM

Thursday, August 05, 2004

10:46 PM -- Drop Night --

So we had our drop night on friday. That's the night where all the active duty guys find out their next airplane so it is pretty exciting. Not so much for us reserve/guard, but it is still cool to see where your buddies are headed. Plus there is free beer...although not really because our class still pays for it. We had lets see about 3 or 4 C-17's, 2 C-21's, 3 KC-135's, a T-1 FAIP, and I think that's it. The fighter guys got two T-6 faips, an A-10, 2 F-16's and an F-15C. They also got 2 B-52s.

Flying is going pretty well, I have 3 flights left and a checkride and I am done. Pretty hard to believe actually. I am done all my airdrop sorties, and have 2 more refueling rides to go. Airdrop was exactly the same as a low level except you are in formation, and do 2 simulated drops where you both slow down to 140 knots over the target. Refueling is a lot of fun, although I'm never going to do it after Laughlin. There is a lot of math required to get two airplanes going towards each other at 800 knots to turn and end up 1 mile in trail going the same direction, and it is pretty cool when it all works out. We also get to use all the gizmos in the jet now, so it is pretty cake when you can see the map of where you go on the screen with the exact time you are going to be somewhere right above it.

Added some pictures from drop night, you can see them here

posted by Austin @ 10:46 PM

Sunday, August 01, 2004