Next stop, Kingsville

I just found out today, Im headed for Kingsville,TX for advanced flight training. In pictures, heres what this means. In Kingsville I will be flying the T-45C:

Which means that theres a comparatively small chance ill ultimately fly the E-2C:

And a much better chance that Ill end up in one of these:


Right now, I couldnt be happier.

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.

flying the needles

There are days I wonder why I joined the Navy, why I want to be a pilot, and how did I ever end up in Milton.

Today was not one of them.

Most instrument flights we sit in the back with a canvas bag covering the canopy so that the student flies only on reference to the instruments while the instructor monitors the flight from the front seat with an unobstructed view. About 30 min into todays flight the instructor decided I was doing well enough and let me take the bag off. We were flying approaches into NAS Pensacola which had us flying several miles out over the water at 1500 ft. If youve never flown over the water - its quite a sight. Also, most of the low level thermals that cause turbulence over land at low altitudes are gone, so it makes for a smoother ride.

Coming back into NAS Whiting, we flew racetrack patterns (called holding) over a pretty solid low cloud layer. One of the best parts of instrument flying is going from a cloudy day on the ground, and popping up through them into the sun on top. If you go high enough, its always a sunny day. Its so cool having puffy whitness everywhere you look, illuminated by a sun low in the sky, I wanted to quit flying the needles and just look outside. Ive had several of these moments - like when I was in a tailspin through a beautiful red cloud near sunset. Or on one of my formation flights, I glanced outside to see another formation 1000 ft below us maneuvering through several turns (just as we were) like some high-speed waltz in the sky. You want to just quit flying for a moment and watch...

Instrument Ground School

This past week I started IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) ground school. Basically it consists of two weeks were the Navy tries to teach us everything we need to know about flying and navigating in bad weather. Above is a picture I took of what my bedroom floor looks like while I try to study. An incredible volume of knowledge is needed to be able to take off, fly into the clouds, navigate to a destination, approach and land safely without being able to see where you are going. Not only that, but the procedures for flight have to be closely regulated and monitored because of the massive volume of traffic in US airways. Its intimidating to start ground school because you realize just how much you dont know about flying. After the solo, you THINK you know how to fly. Now you realize, all you were doing was playing around at low altitude in good weather. Real pilots fly up high in all kinds of miserable weather conditions.

Flight school seems to be an endless cycle. First you realize how little you know about controlling an aircraft. Then, spurred on by a desire to prove yourself, you put your head down and learn massive amounts of material, pass the test/checkride and move on. Your confidence balloons as you master new skills in the air - only to be deflated all over again at the start of the next phase. I'm currently being re-humbled, for what certainly is not the last time.

In Formation

This is hard ^^

No, I take that back. Its REALLY hard.

It is an entirely unnatural thing to try to make one airplane stay in one exact point in space relative to another. The airplane you are flying will buck and shake and generally do anything it can in order to get away from the other one (or at least thats what it feels like). Compounding this difficulty is the fact that when your aircraft successfully gets a little separation from the other, it isnt always obvious what to do to get it back into position. For example, you are flying wing, trying to hold position on the lead aircraft (the one on the left in the picture above) and lead is in a turn. Say you drift outside the turn and slightly away from lead, common sense tells you to angle in, to get closer. If you do that, you'll move in and also behind lead. To correct this you have to angle in and simultaneously increase power to keep from falling behind. Now you're back in position, but you're also going to fast. Once you've caught back up to lead, you have to take the power correction out to hold position. Inevitably at this point something else is wrong (you're too low, too high etc) and you have to input the correct combination of power, elevator and aileron to correct for the new error. Sound hard? It is. At to all this some choppy wind gusts, lead aircraft turning, speeding up, leveling off or lowering his landing gear and it gets more and more difficult. But when you get it, when you're mind starts comprehending the situation faster and faster, and you can correct and hold position with out consciously thinking - its a real rush...I'm not quite there yet :-)

If you have ever seen the Blue Angels fly, you know they make tight formation look easy. But they make formation look easy the way Yo-Yo Ma makes the cello look easy. Right now I'm still trying to hammer out a few notes.

Solo!

Finally after a week of rain and bad weather, I passed the checkride and took the T-34C out, sans instructor, on my first solo. The more I think about it, the more I find it slightly ridiculous that the military entrusts me with a million-dollar airplane after all of 25 hrs in the front cockpit. Fair warning to all civilian pilots: STAY AWAY from southern Alabama. The skies are filled with student aviators with entirely too little experience flying airplanes with entirely too much power.
That said, I'm glad the Navy and the taxpayers let me do it. Theres a real peace at 8000 ft with nothing but you and the steady humm of a turboprop...

Post 0

After moving from the energetic, buzzing metropolis of Austin,TX to the sleepy town of Milton,FL I find myself with long stretches of time with little to do. Ive traded the "Live Music Capitol of the World" for the "Canoe Capitol of Florida" (I didn't make that up its all over the road signs here). Ive left one of the most creative and interesting cities in the country for a small town near the Alabama/Florida border. Ive traded 6th street for Main St and live music joints for bingo parlors. How the heck did I end up here? Oh right - FLIGHT SCHOOL!


Recently Ive started Primary Flight Training here at NAS Whiting Field. Which, regrettably, is in the middle of nowhere. However, all the drawbacks of the location are outweighed by one thing - I get paid to fly.

Right now I'm in the contact phase (the very beginning) which focuses on teaching us to safely pilot the T-34C Turbomentor. It looks like an old WWII plane, and lends itself to daydreams of me being an old fighter ace. Daydreams which are inevitably shattered by the instructor in the rear cockpit pulling the throttle all the way off and saying "Simulated Engine Failure." Training right now is mostly about learning how to fly the military landing pattern and handling the aircraft in all kinds of system failures. On a typical 2 hour flight the instructor will make the engine "fail" or "catch on fire" 5 or 6 times. The instructor pilots (or IP's as we call them) love to try and fluster the students with constant simulated emergencies, all the while criticizing us from the rear cockpit as we try to simultaneously recall the emergency procedures (EPs) and keep from crashing. Its not a whole lot of fun, but after a couple more weeks of this Ill be able to solo. Which means Ill finally be able to kick the instructor out the back of MY airplane and take it where I want to.

Thats all for now, back to the books...