CQ!

After nearly eight months, an update is long due. I apologize to all family and friends for the delay. Te recap the last several months, I selected the "Strike" pipeline, which means that Ill ultimately end up flying either an F/A-18 (C , E or F), or an E/A-18G. Practically it means that Ive spent the last few months learning the very basics of being a fighter pilot. Training in the strike pipeline started out with learning how to fly in formation at night (acutally not as bad as it sounds). Then it progressed with the WEPS phase where I learned how to drop dummy practice bombs. Initially in order to learn the basics of bombing, we try to hit the target without any sort of aid. Basically we have a fixed sight on the aircraft heads-up-display, and try to line the sight up with the target at precisely 450 knots and 3000 feet above the ground. Its harder than it sounds, and I wasnt very good at it. I am eternally grateful to who ever developed laser- and GPS-guided bombs because Id hate to have been a WW-II pilot and have some poor soldier on the ground depending on my dive bombing skills.

After weps I learned started gearing up to land on the carrier for the first time. After two solid weeks of touch-and-gos at home field practicing carrier style landings, on June 8th I did the real thing. I took off solo from Cecil Airport outside of Jacksonville,FL and trailed an instructor out the the "boat". After two touch and gos through the landing area (or "LA" in aviator parlance) I trapped on board the CVN 77, USS George HW Bush the Navy's newest aircraft carrier.

The first trap itself felt a little like a car crash. It was much more violent than I expected. Me and my little 12000-lb airplane were hauled to a stop from 140 mph in about two seconds. The first cat shot was even more intense. In order to launch from a carrier, you taxi onto a steam catapult. A small fitting called a shuttle hooks onto your nose landing gear. An enlisted man on the flight deck tells you to run your engine to full power, then the catapult flings your airplane off the bow of the ship, accelerating you from 0 to 150mph in about a second and a half.

Its the ride of your life.

I have two phases of flight school left, air combat manuvering (ACM) or dogfighting, and some low-level bombing flights. Hopefully Ill be done in a month or so and off to fly the Hornet.

CLEAR THE SKIES!

The Navy is letting me take a $25m dollar jet out for a spin tomorrow...


...by myself.

Rough Day...

Ah the joys of flight school. After finishing the Radio Instrument phase I was benched for a month waiting for the next phase. Just yesterday I started the warm-up process. The day started at 5:30am. No big deal, it was a practice simulator session. Basically that means an ungraded 1.5 hrs in the T-45C simulator to help me get back into the swing of things. No grades means no pressure, and its always nice to practice flying with no pressure. About twenty minutes into the session, however, I accidentally bumped the "Emergency Off" button. The whole sim went dark, sound went off, and the seat moved down to the bottom of the sim. Yeah....I felt really stupid. I didn't even know the sim had an Emergency Off button. Fortunately, neither did the instructor. After the sim guys rebooted the machine (which took about 10 minutes) we finished without incident.

That afternoon I was scheduled for a backseat ride in the jet. The training rules state that if we are out of the cockpit for more than 30 days (I was at 28) there is a whole list of things we have to do. To avoid that, the squadron gives us backseat rides, so now I'm good for another 30 days. The trouble was, originally I was on the schedule for a flight beginning at about 3pm, then I was switched to one at noon - and no one told me. As luck would have it I ran into the other student in the flight who told me I was flying in the same formation flight as him, 20 minutes before we were supposed to start briefing. I ran home to get my flight gear, scarfed down a couple powerbars from the gas station (I hadn't eaten lunch yet), and got to the brief just in time.

This particular flight was in a stage called "Cruise Formation". I flew in the backseat of a jet with an instructor who lead the 2-plane section. The other student flew in the other jet, maintaining formation off of us. Cruise Forms comes after the student has been flying formation for a while. As the flights progress, the student gets practice going through more and more dynamic maneuvers, culminating in barrel rolls in formation. It looks like this:



Needless to say, this was not the flight to go on having skipped lunch. I never really got sick, but my stomach was letting me know the entire time that it was not enjoying this. The flight ended up with a tailchase, basically a mock dogfight where the student starts about 1000 ft behind us in trail. The instructor puts the plane through a series of maneuvers while the student works the angles and tries to keep up. I had been ridden on one of these before, but not with a Marine Harrier pilot who really enjoys smacking the T-45 around the sky. First he snapped hard right, so hard in fact that my helmet bounced off the canopy - Klonk - and then pulled. We hit 5.5Gs momentarily and even at 280 knots indicated we were on the edge of a stall. The whole aircraft buffeted. I would been having a blast, had it not been for the fact that my intestines were staging an all out mutiny. In the end though I was happy just to make it back to earth without puking, and without hitting the turkey vultures that whizzed by us as we approached the airfield at about 350 knots.

What a day.....

Tangent...

Up to this point my blog has been limited to new on the flight school process. My posts have been few and far between mostly because I haven't been flying much. Difficulty managing the numbers of students, combined with the slowdown resulting from a crash in the training command last spring, have caused a tremendous backlog in training. To work on clearing the backlog, the squadron decided to consistently fly students in the latter half of the program because the skills they were learning are more critical and perishable, i.e. carrier quals, air combat maneuvering (ACM) etc. Those of us starting out don't really know anything yet, so we cant really forget much either. As a result, I have not been flying much. Currently I am waiting for the backlog to clear a little so I can start learning to fly from the front seat. All of this adds up to a lot of junior naval officers sitting in Kingsville with nothing to do. Right now I am essentially being payed to do absolutely nothing. This is a colossal waste of taxpayer resources, but that is a topic for another discussion.

This free time has been both a source of joy and frustration. On the one hand its given me nearly unlimited time to pursue interests, hobbies, read about what interests me. On the other it leaves me (along with all of my friends down here), directionless, without a clear purpose for each day, for weeks at a time. This is compounded by the fact that we live in a town of 25000 on the edge of the United States. Not the place most 20-somethings dream about living in.

But rather than leave month-long gaps in this web log, I thought I might share a number of the thoughts, ideas, and discoveries that have been flowing through my mind throughout the past few weeks and months. I tend to think a lot. And Ive had a lot of time to think. Hopefully some will gather value from some of these musings. And I hope some will spark discussion. If nothing else it will serve as a public journal to record a few of the multitude of stray ideas and trains of thought that swirl through my brain.

I just finished reading an intriguing book on the history of the CIA, called "Legacy of Ashes." It paints a picture of American foreign policy since WWII that is intriguing and appalling. Some of what is in the book is common knowledge, most of it was new to me. Throughout the cold war the CIA repeatedly meddled in the affairs of foreign governments, fixing elections, sponsoring military coups, even plotting assassinations - and all in the name combating the spread of communism. Some of the real gems include the overthrow of a moderate democratically-elected prime minister of Iran (because he confronted British oil companies that were cheating his country out of millions), as well as the installation and support of two of the 20th centuries most cruel dictators - Joseph Mobutu and Augusto Pinochet. It is staggering the effect that this organization has had, and continues to have, on world events. The overthrow of Iran's prime minister (Mohamed Mossadeq), and the installation of the shah helped to fuel the rise of radical Islam and Ayatollah Khomeni. In fact, the ayatollah was part of one of several groups that the CIA funded to help over throw Mossadeq. The funding and arming of rebel groups in Afghanistan put tremendous pressure on the Soviets, and contributed greatly to the collapse of the Soviet Union. But our subsequent abandonment of the groups we funded left a massive power vacuum - which was filled by a number of wealthy Saudis who moved into the country to buy power and influence over the Muslim mujaheddin. This was the beginning of al-Qaeda. I continue to get the sense that every immoral and unjust action that we ever took as a nation in order to combat our enemies (no matter how heinous they were) is coming back to haunt us.

Ah, it is all fascinating (and terrifying) stuff. And encouragingly, what I know of the conduct of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are finally learning from some of our 20th century foreign policy missteps. Despite what is prevailing public opinion, I think we a starting to get it right. Unfortunately, it is costing us dearly, both in terms of dollars and lives, in the process. I pray that we continue to learn. I desperately want to be part of an American foreign policy machine dedicated to promoting peace, security and freedom throughout the world, and not the opposite.

Colorado!

After a long summer of very little flying, the squadron let me go on a cross-country to finish up my remaining RI (Radio Intrument) stage flights. Basically it was very similar to what I did in primary, except that it was in a jet, and I flew from the backseat. In jet advanced they teach us to fly the instruments before learning how to takeoff and land. So the instructor (in the front seat) flies the the t/o and landings, while the student in the back navigates, works the radios, and flies the instrument approaches.

Navigating at 26000 ft is a challenge. For most of the flight this is what occupied my attention:

In the T-45C we have MFDs (multi-function displays) rather than conventional steam gauges. All the attitude/airspeed information is displayed on the right, navigation/GPS data on the left. If you look closely, you see we were at 26000 ft, doing 363 kts (417 mph) over the ground. The jet can go faster, but we were throttled back to save fuel.

Enroute we stopped at Lubbock Airport for gas:

And finally landed in northeast Denver at Rocky Mountain Metro airport:

On our way to Denver we got a pretty good view of the mountains.

All in all it was a lot of fun. I got to spend time in CO with my aunt & uncle, and grandparents who live nearby. It was a blessing too as I dont get to see them much. The only problem was that I only was there for one night because the Navy needed us back the next day. And with the exception of a few equipment failures (the microphone in my mask quit a couple of times) it was pretty good training as well.

After this comes the FAM stage, where I will learn to fly the jet from the front seat, including the Navy carrier-style landing pattern. Though Im told there will be a bit of a delay. So for now, its back to waiting...

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.

Centrifuge Face

Ive started advanced flight training down in lovely Kingsville,TX. In between primary and advanced the blogging dropped off mostly becuase there wasnt anything new to write about. Right now Im learning all about the T-45C, the new jet Im going to be flying, although theres a lot of book learning and time in the simulators between now and my first flight. Sorry for the lag, there will be more to come soon. In the meantime, enjoy a shot of me at 7.5Gs