Week 5 (Oct 16 - Oct 22)
Well, I had my first flight today and my first real big step to becoming an air force pilot. It was quite a rush actually being the one flying and making everything happen. Overall it was a pretty stressfull day with my first standup and flight. Everything happens so quickly and it is very busy. I really enjoyed it. We did a few patterns at the auxiallary field and then went to the miliatary operations area (airspace directed for military training). There we did some basic 
flight characteristics and some basic acrobatics (loops, rolls, ect.). I did start to feel a little quesy at the end and was happy when I landed and was back on solid ground (I was not sure how much more my stomach could handle). There were a few guys in my class who vomited and now they have to go see the flight doc and take a few rides in the barany chair (the chair that spins you around until you have an active physiological episode, otherwise known as upchuking). Its been a very long day and now I get to eat dinner, sit for an hour and play with the girls and then back to the books to prepare for tommorrow, what fun huh.
flight characteristics and some basic acrobatics (loops, rolls, ect.). I did start to feel a little quesy at the end and was happy when I landed and was back on solid ground (I was not sure how much more my stomach could handle). There were a few guys in my class who vomited and now they have to go see the flight doc and take a few rides in the barany chair (the chair that spins you around until you have an active physiological episode, otherwise known as upchuking). Its been a very long day and now I get to eat dinner, sit for an hour and play with the girls and then back to the books to prepare for tommorrow, what fun huh.
Wow, what a week! I had my dollar ride on Monday. The rest of the week was spent with my stomach in a knot from being nervous all day every day. I have never been this stressed or this challenged. I am anxious to see how I come out of this trial. Anyway, my days are all 12 hours long and start at different times. Since this week was crappy weather I spent most of the time in the flight room studying and prepping for the next day. I was able to fly twice this week, out of five scheduled. I also had a 4 SIM’s. Flying is way cool and way stressfull. I am excited to get to the point where I don’t have to feel like I need to vomit while I am trying to land. I did feel better the second time, so there is hope that with every ride I will get more used to it. My IP’s are pretty cool and my flight commander seems to be a good family guy and me being the only one in the class who has kids, he knows where I am coming from. He pulled me in his office and said that family comes first, which made me feel better about spending 12 hours a day away from my family. He said that if I ever needed time to be with my family or it got to the point where Larissa would be pulling her hair out, to not hesitate and ask for a day or two away from class. The only hitch is I would be double turning, flying twice, sometime later that week. It would not be all that bad, but flying a high performance aircraft is severely draining both physically and mentally. It is rough to think that this kind of lifestyle will be mine for the next 5 months.
On my last sortie, we went up to 22,000 feet (which is a little different than in an airliner, because my jet has a bubble canopy and you really can see almost everything, it was beautiful) and did a bunch of stalls and topped it off with a spin. Holy cow, that was freaky! It was just like in top gun, but the T-6 can actually recover from it, and goose did not get shot through the canopy. Needless to say, I had the barf bag ready after that, luckily I did not have to use it. I cant believe the power this airplane has, its incredible what it can do. My flights are only going to get more interesting and more intense.
Week 6 (Oct 28 - Nov 3)
Another week has quickly gone bye and that is one week closer to my wings, only about a million more to go. Overall it was a pretty good week. I flew 4 times, SIM’ed twice, took two tests, planned 5 missions, and spent over 60 hours at work. Flying is awesome and as long as it is a good sortie, it really makes all the other junk you have to go through worth it. However, if the flight is not a very good one, then it leaves you feeling like crap. Wednesday my flight did not go so well, I know that I am a lot harder on myself then the IP was, but everything just seemed to snowball. I really made up for it though on Friday, everything just seemed to click for me that day. My Friday flight I thought was going to be cancelled at first because of cruddy weather. There was a thick layer of grey (threatening looking) clouds from 5000’ to 6500’. My IP and I decided to just go for it and took off toward our training field to do different types of touch and go’s. After which I called approach on the radio and asked if the high practice areas (14 to 22 thousand feet) were open, luckily they were and I proceeded to climb to my designated area. We started up through the clouds and it was a little disorienting. You really can not see anything and your body tells you that you are doing something different then what your instruments tell you, i.e. you think you are going straight and level when really you are in a left hand turn and descending. Our training tells us to just get on the instruments and trust what they are telling you. It is difficult at first and quite unsettling to have your mind and body completely disagree with one another. So, I stuck to the instruments and continued our climb into the area. Once we approached 6,500’ I could see the clouds begin to change color from gray to white, but still could not see anything outside. At 6,700’ we finally broke through and it was one of the most awe inspiring things I have ever seen. All beneath me became a sea of white clouds and the visibility was endless. It was beautiful. The only depressing part of that day was having to come back to Laughlin and back into the weather and the dreariness of being below the cloud layer. It is hard for me to believe that in only two weeks I will be soloing a military aircraft.
The T-6 is an awesome jet to fly. It has so much power and can do so much. In the area this week we were practicing out of control recoveries. These are when the IP purposefully puts the airplane into very awkward situations such as going straight up or going straight down and wings cocked at all kinds of weird angles. Once the aircraft is in these situations he tells me to recover (this whole time I have my eyes closed to try and train my body to feel the different ways the aircraft can fool you), I then take the stick and recover the aircraft. We are also doing some intensive G training. It is very interesting how squeezing your butt cheeks together during a 6 G turn can make it so much more comfortable. It takes a lot of practicing and studying to be able to understand and fly everything they require of us (patterns, radio calls, departures, arrivals, different altitudes, MOA’s and all kinds of different things). Also this week I had those two SIM’s which were emergency procedures training. Basically you fly a normal profile and the IP just starts breaking things in your airplane. The cockpit turns into a Christmas tree and your helmet erupts with all kinds of different warning sounds. So you try and figure out what happened, how to fix it, who to call all while trying to fly the aircraft and get to a position where you can safely put it on the ground. It is very challenging, but good experience in case we might ever need to use it. It is a little scary that about half of the emergency’s that were thrown at me ended up with me having to eject because the aircraft was erupting in flames.
The T-6 is an awesome jet to fly. It has so much power and can do so much. In the area this week we were practicing out of control recoveries. These are when the IP purposefully puts the airplane into very awkward situations such as going straight up or going straight down and wings cocked at all kinds of weird angles. Once the aircraft is in these situations he tells me to recover (this whole time I have my eyes closed to try and train my body to feel the different ways the aircraft can fool you), I then take the stick and recover the aircraft. We are also doing some intensive G training. It is very interesting how squeezing your butt cheeks together during a 6 G turn can make it so much more comfortable. It takes a lot of practicing and studying to be able to understand and fly everything they require of us (patterns, radio calls, departures, arrivals, different altitudes, MOA’s and all kinds of different things). Also this week I had those two SIM’s which were emergency procedures training. Basically you fly a normal profile and the IP just starts breaking things in your airplane. The cockpit turns into a Christmas tree and your helmet erupts with all kinds of different warning sounds. So you try and figure out what happened, how to fix it, who to call all while trying to fly the aircraft and get to a position where you can safely put it on the ground. It is very challenging, but good experience in case we might ever need to use it. It is a little scary that about half of the emergency’s that were thrown at me ended up with me having to eject because the aircraft was erupting in flames.
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