Week 9

Week 9

SOLO!!!! Well, it finally happened, I took a 5 million dollar aircraft up all by myself. What an awesome experience it was. I flew my end of block (flight training is divided up into blocks) ride on Monday and did well. On Tuesday I flew the pre-solo (make sure I won’t kill myself or break something) flight in the morning and flew my solo ride in the afternoon. It was so cool signing out my own jet, getting my equipment on, and stepping to my own aircraft. It was a little weird doing everything myself. I was a little nervous taxiing to the runway and getting clearance to takeoff. Once I took off and did my first closed pattern and my first touch and go, I was not nervous anymore. I had the time of my life. It was great to just be able to fly the jet and not worry about someone critiquing every little thing I did. The pattern at Laughlin works out just right that I fly over our house every time I fly. I can not wait for the day that I can just fly by myself all the time, but that is a long way away. Once I landed for my full stop, I taxied back to my spot and got out. I saw Larissa and the girls waiting for me at the POGO pool. POGO is your call sign when you go on your initial SOLO, so I was POGO 33. You use this for all your radio calls and such, i.e. POGO 33, initial, request high key, ect. The POGO pool is an Air Force tradition that every new pilot on his first SOLO ride gets thrown into this pool. Your objective is to try and make it back to the flight room without getting caught, if you can do that then you escape getting dunked. The water in the pool is cold and nasty, and on the day of your SOLO they encourage you to bring an extra flight suit and a change of clothes. Luckily, I remembered, because I did not make it back to the flight room. It was great having the girls there to experience this with me and to able to see daddy flying around and waving to them. They brought me cookies and were so excited to see me. They even gave me a hug after I was thrown in. I have a great family. After you SOLO you are presented with the flight patch. So, SOLO’ing is kind of like a right of passage

On Wednesday I took our weekly test and did good. I also flew this day and had a SIM. I was introduced into a few new aerobatic maneuvers. I love doing aerobatics. They are so much fun. I did not realize how difficult they are however to do correctly. I got the hang of them now and are no problem. We did some more accelerated spins and this time the airplane reversed itself and turned inverted and started spinning that way. The recovery is more difficult for these but, I am still here so I did ok. We started doing Split-S’s on Wednesday as well. These are basically when you roll the airplane inverted and then pull as hard as you can. When you are pointed straight down your airspeed really increases and the G’s really take there toll. It is a little unnerving to be headed at the ground at over 400mph. Flying is very tiring. I am getting more used to it, but it still makes me exhausted. We have our advanced instruments test next week, I am a little worried about that one. I think I told you that it is the second most failed test here. I can see why, they expect us to learn about 400 pages worth of stuff and master it in a week. This is so fast paced and it is hard to keep up. Also next week I have my mid-phase check ride. This is a very big deal and is extremely hard. I hope I do well.