Week 41 & 42

Week 41

I have not written for a while, and it’s been pretty busy. Flying is going really good. We started our Air Drop portion of training and I like it a lot. It is pretty much just flying a low level, except you do it in formation with another plane. You also do a simulated drop where both planes climb 500’ and slow down to 150 knots at the same time. Once we drop our "cargo" we do the escape where we descend back down and accelerate to clear the area. This past week I flew every day and sometimes twice a day which brought me to now where I have my last checkride in pilot training on Monday. I am so excited to be almost finally finished. It is such a good feeling knowing I am so close. I just hope I don’t screw it up. Friday night we had our drop night. They hold it at the Officer's Club and our theme was the Price is Right. We all wore big yellow name tags and it was way crowded. They call you up one at a time in front of a big screen where they flash a slide of you and some info about you. Then we played a plinko game that was rigged for the chip to fall where your going to go. It was pretty cool and even cooler when I got my plane. My future lies in the KC-10 to Travis which was our number one choice. We are very excited to go to California and start the rest of our lives. It worked out pretty good and almost everyone got a plane that was in their top 5 choices. There were a few disappointed people, but I guess that is inevitable.

Week 40

Week 40

This was a pretty normal week of flying. I am enjoying these flights more and seem to be a little less stressed. We did not find out our drop this week because of the holiday, but I am told should be early next week. I really hope they have what we want. We took our last EPQ that counts for anything and our flights that go into our class standing stop next week. Something new we did start this week was the air refueling portion of our training. We train for both the tanker and the receiver parts. For the tanker I think it is a lot more mentally tasking, but for the receiver you really have to be on your game as far as flying is concerned. The tanker is responsible for the majority of the rendevous. He coordinates with air traffic control and the receiver to ensure timing and safety of the mission. The tanker also has to do in flight calculations to find out the closure speed of the two aircraft, offset, turn radius, and distance to begin the turn to roll out 1-3 miles in front of the receiver. How it works is like this, imagine a long straight line with the beginning called the initial point (IP) and a control point (CP) at the other end. The objective is to be refueling by the CP at an exact time. The tanker orbits the CP and waits for the receiver to call IP inbound. Once that happens the two fly right at each other. That is where the calculations come into play. You usually start your turn back around between 16-19 miles to roll out in front of the receiver headed towards the CP. Once both are going that way the receiver pretty much takes over from there and begins closing the distance until you are in a Pre-contact position with about 12 feet separation between the two aircraft. Then the tanker clears him for contact. The receiver closes the gap to about 3-5 feet and begins the simulated refueling. You have to stay in that position for a minute. It is pretty hard and even harder when the tanker has to turn. I do like the challenge of it though. Next week I am scheduled for my first formation air drop. That should be way cool.