CCX

This past weekend I got to CCX (fly cross-country) down to Key West. Basically the idea with a cross country is that, instead of returning to Whiting Field after every training flight, you travel in one direction and keep going. My instructor and I flew visual navigation, and instrument flights in several legs on the way down to and back from Key West, FL with stops in Gainesville, Tampa and Tallahassee. Again it was a humbling experience.

Over the past couple of months I became proficient at flying the instruments, and handling the aircraft in low visibility, bad weather situations - but all in the vicinity of Pensacola and NAS North Whiting. "Going on the road" as we call it is totally different. On our last leg down to Key West, we were talking over the radios to "Miami Center", an air traffic control agency that controls IFR traffic in southern Florida. The airwaves were so crowded with traffic in and out of the Miami region we couldnt get a word in edgewise. Up high (15000 ft) with cold temperatures and clouds looming ahead of us, we were concerned about the potential for icing, and wanted to climb or deviate from our assigned course to avoid the clouds, but the radios were so crowded with constant chatter that we ended up just having to hold altitude and plow into them. At one point we popped out of the clouds and the windshield had iced over, enough that I couldnt see out the very front of the canopy. It scared the heck out of me, but ended up being a non-issue. It was a miniscule amount that melted right off once we were back in the clear, and the wings (the really critical part) didnt accumulate any ice.

Aside from that difficulty the last leg down to the Keys was pretty awesome, up at 15000 ft at "max blast" (full power), we were doing about 240 knots (270 mph) over the ground. For a while we had a solid cloud layer skidding by beneath us that was lit up by the setting sun. Usually up in the air, unlike on the ground, you have little visual reference to gauge just how fast you are actually traveling. Here, with the wisps of clouds flying by us at near 300mph, I really got a feel for just how fast I was hurtling through the sky - cool stuff.

All this brings up a new difficulty - with the cross-country over, I have very few flights left in primary. Soon Ill be selecting what I fly next, and it seems that God has blessed me with the flight grades to get whatever I want - jets, props or helos. Which brings to the forefront the very real possibility that I could one day be a fighter pilot. While far from any degree of certainty, no longer is it just a pipe dream. Am I prepared to deal with the moral dilemmas of dropping bombs, and possibly being responsible for the deaths of innocent people? Am I prepared to deal with six or eight month deployments, the strain that it would place on a family - or possibly even the reality that I wouldn't even be able to have a family for many years because of the demands of the job? These questions scare me, all the more because selection looms near. The one comfort I have is that God is bigger than this: bigger than my uncertainties, my flight grades, and, yes, even bigger than the Navy machine that decides my fate. I dont know if anyone reads these musings, but if you do, keep me in your prayers. Ill be back in a couple of weeks to let you know what happened.