Weeks 7 & 8

Week 7

Well as far as these weeks have been going it has been pretty average. I got Friday off which was very welcome. My flying is coming along and I am getting more confident at it. This next week we solo! I can not believe that I am going to take a 5 million dollar airplane up all by myself. I am excited and a bit nervous. This week we started getting into some pretty insane maneuvers. We did accelerated spins which are crazy! You get into these by approaching stall speed with a nose high attitude and then when you slow to 80 knots you pull the stick back all they way to the seat, jam as much rudder in as you can and watch your nose drop like a rock. At the same time a wing will drop and start spinning around like crazy. From then the airplane just starts taking over. You get thrown around like its nothing and its very easy to get dizzy and lose focus on what you are doing. Everything moves so fast and you have to try and recover and anticipate what the airplane will do. I am getting the hang of it, and now they are not much of a problem, so if I ever get into one I will be just fine. They are blast though, even though you are borderline out of control hurdling at the ground at 300 miles per hour. Some other stuff we did this week is learning how to lose a lot of altitude in a short amount of time. Basically it is just winging over and going full nose down, then pulling up and starting it all over again without gaining too much airspeed. I got to the point where I could lose 20,000’ in less then 30 seconds, it was pretty cool. One more thing we did is a high altitude power loss scenario. So we simulated losing an engine at altitude. The instructor just said alright you just lost your engine and throttled back to idle. So I glided about 10 miles and began circling a private airport. It was cool making all the radio calls saying that I was coming in for a practice emergency landing and telling them to get out of my way basically. It was all about timing and calculating your energy state to see if you could make the field. I did awesome. I could not believe it worked out so well for me. I love flying, I just wish they could do away with all the stress that comes with it like the 2 tests we had this week, the daily standup, the checkrides and all the other garbage we have to go through. We just started the advanced instruments classes which is the second most failed test at UPT next to weather. So far it is pretty tough.

Week 8

Due to a scheduling error, I did not get to SOLO this week. But, I did get to fly 5 times. A couple times this week I had to fly twice in the same day. That is probably the most mentally and physically exhausting thing I have ever been, most likely because I am getting old. Every other day I flew once, and had a SIM. We just started the instrument SIMS. These could be the most boring thing I have ever done. All you do is watch your instruments and hold altitude and airspeed. It is a little cool learning how to navigate and be able to fly without even looking outside. Although I still feel safer landing actually seeing where I am going. We do instrument approaches, departures, confidence maneuvers (aileron rolls and wingovers using just instruments) fix to fix, arc intercepts, course intercepts, radial intercepts, vertical S maneuvers and all kinds of other things. My flights this week have been pretty much getting ready for SOLO. The IP’s in the back pretty much don’t say a word the entire flight (unless you do something where you could put yourself in a dangerous situation). So, the last two flights my IP’s never said a word to me. As it works out I will most likely go SOLO either Monday or Tuesday. It will be a great transition to a long weekend. Although, after thanksgiving weekend we have our advanced instruments test which is the second hardest and most failed test in pilot training. I am pretty nervous about this test because my entire flight, including me, do not get any of it. They make it all needlessly complicated. I had my pre-solo emergency procedures SIM this week as well. That SIM is the most failed SIM in UPT too. I did awesome! I was nervous going into it but everything just seemed to click for me. I was definitely blessed during that. Stanup’s are getting harder. They are becoming more obscure and strict with us. Our EPQ’s are getting harder as well. They love to pick the smallest information they can find. Oh, yeah, I had my first somewhat emergency in the airplane this week as well. We got a TAD fail during a inverted recovery. Really it is not a big deal, all it does is help trim your rudder to counteract the 1200 horsepower turbo prop engine that is right in front of you. It really was not a big emergency, but it was cool seeing all the MASTER CAUTION lights illuminating and the warning sounds going off. It was even cooler to realize that I knew what to do and how to try and fix it. That is why they drill us every day about emergency procedures and make us learn every little detail about the jet. The TAD fail did not reset, but we still had to finish our mission. But, my right leg got quite the work out. You have to use a lot of force pushing on the rudder pedals without working trim, especially at high power settings. We lost two guys in our flight this week. They could not take the pressure and stress and quit. It is hard to see people who worked so hard for something give up on it. It takes its toll on the class as well. The next day we saw them back in BDU’s instead of flight suites and they had big smiles on their faces. We asked them how they were doing and they said great, they slept in to 7, didn’t have anything to study for, and all of the stress was gone. I just smiled and asked if they knew what they wanted to do. Both said they will probably go to security forces in the Air Force.