Back in the saddle

...in the ejection seat really, its only marginally more comfortable than riding a horse. After weeks of classroom learning and hours in the simulators, I finally got a chance to ride in the backseat of the jet Im learning to fly. In jet-land, when students learn how to fly in formation, they fly wing off of an instructor in another jet, rather than switching back and forth like we did in primary. I wrote about formation flying in primary back in December of last year. Even though I not far enough along in the program to start flying it myself, I got to hop in the backseat of the jet with the instructor flying lead. We took off by ourselves, with the student following a short while later. Heres a quick video of the takeoff.



We flew out to a specific set of coordinates in the sky. After catching up, the other guy preformed a manuver appropriatley called a "rendezvous" and joined up on us.



This is what formation flying looks like from the other guys persepctive:



After about an hour or so of the instructor in my plane leading the other student through a set of basic manuvers we headed back to base, got the the airport, and split up to practice carrier-style landings as separate airplanes. The instuctor flying my plane was an old hat, he was an E-2C pilot, now is a Commander in the Navy reserve who splits his time between flying for Delta and flying with us. To practice carrier landings on land, we have a carrier-sized box painted on the runway with a fresnel lens (we call it the "ball") located next to it. The "ball", a yellow light in between a row of green lights tells the pilot whether he is high or low on approach. If the yellow light is above the green line then you are high, if its below youre low. On the actual carrier, too high on the ball means you risk missing the landing altogether and have to go around to try again - too low you risk crashing into the back of the ship. Look for the ball as my instructor comes in to land. Frankly he makes this look easy, if you watch the next video he keeps the ball centered the whole pass, right down to touchdown. On the carrier this would have been a great pass. In reality, its incredibly difficult.



All in all the jet ride was a lot of fun. And I cant wait until I get all my simulator training out of the way and get to do this for real.