Monday and Tuesday were both great weather days for flying. Clear skies, plenty of horizon, and not too many bad gusts of wind. The profiles I flew were both pretty similar to what I've been doing. Go out to the practice area, practice full stalls, traffic pattern stalls, emergency landing pattern stalls (ELP stalls), slow flight, and recoveries from unusual attitudes. Then we would go to another airport (either dogface or a civilian airport just next to Vance called Woodring) and practice different types of landings and visual approaches. I think it was Tuesday I got to see my first spin in the T-6. A spin is where you stall the airplane so it can't fly, but you induce a yawing motion so the aircraft will continue to flat-spin until you recover (remember Top Gun....spinning out to sea??) Anyways, the IP demoed the first one, then let me try the second. It's like you're in control of your own rollercoaster ride...and you don't even have to stand in line :-).
Wednesday was a little more exciting than what I had anticipated. I briefed the flight with my IP in the morning just as we had done in the earlier two flights, even though the weather wasn't that great. We suited up in our harnesses and Gsuits at life support, then humped it out to the jet for our pre-flight inspection. This time, the IP let me strap in while he did the exterior walk-around...again, because we wanted to beat the impending thunderstorm that was on its way. After getting everything hooked up in the cockpit, we closed the canopy and started it up, just like every other flight. While taxiing, we went through our last "brief" which we call R-NEWS (RAIM, NAVAIDS, EMERGENCIES, WEATHER, SID). The most important of those is the weather and emergencies checks. We look at the weather and determine what we would do in case of an in-flight emergency near the airport. We go into more detail with this brief an hour prior to the flight in the squadron, but we also discuss a little while in the aircraft. On this particular day, in case of an engine failure the clouds would have prevented us from climbing to our "high key" or the top part of our emergency landing pattern we fly when we don't have an engine. This usually isn't a problem, since there are other ways to intercept an ELP, so we kept going wtih the flight.
After takeoff, I brought up the gear and started a turn to crosswind to keep us in the pattern at Vance. When we got on downwind, my IP asked me if I heard a noise. I kept very quiet on the radio for about 5 seconds, when I could start to hear a metallic "ringing" noise, albeit very muffled. I told my IP I also heard it, when he asked me where it was. As I leaned forward to try to tell, it got louder, meaning it was in front of my position. I told him it was in front of me, and not a second later, he took control of the aircraft and pulled us into an abrupt turning climb to intercept the ELP below high key just as I briefed on the taxiway. We declared an emergency and got traffic priority for an immediate landing on Runway 35R, the closest piece of concrete to us. We climbed well over 1,000 feet above the normal traffic pattern altitude just in case we lost our engine in the process of trying to land. This type of procedure is something they harp on us and beat into our heads, and now I finally see why. From the moment we declared an emergency to the time we shut down the engine and had firefighters on our wing was probably less than two minutes. It only took about 90 seconds to climb, intercept our ELP, drop the gear and line up on runway centerline to put it down, then use our remaining energy to taxi clear of the runway. We shut the engine down as soon as we were clear of 35R and started going through normal post-flight procedures. My IP stressed to me how important it is to do all the normal checks even slower than normal during an emergency, because it's easy to overlook something easy and simple when you're all hyped up on adrenaline. As it turns out, our "emergency" might not have been anything more than a loose screw on my rudder pedals making a high pitch noise that sounded like an engine problem. But it's better to play it safe than lose the one and only engine you have on the aircraft.
So, I'm officially the first in our class to have an in-flight emergency in the T-6...lucky me ;-). Thank God it didn't turn out to be anything serious, but if it had been an actual engine problem, we were always in a great position to put the aircraft down with plenty of runway to spare. That's what training now will do to prepare us for the day when we have a real problem and we're the only ones in the plane to solve it. Hopefully that won't happen again any time soon :-).
Thanks for the prayers...got a big week ahead. I might be able to solo on Friday if I fly every day this week. If not, I will be soloing early next week. Take care!
Chris
Joshua 1:8-9
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Week 8
Going into Monday I was a bit concerned about my airsickness that I experienced last week. I knew if I didn't get over it quickly, I'd have to go on medication and maybe some other "training" (ie, spin you in a chair until you get sick on the ground.....not fun!). In the morning I had a simulator designed to let me practice flying a normal sortie on the ground. It went really well, and in the end the instructor let me practice my landings in the pattern (which we sometimes refer to it as a closed pattern if we stay close to the runway and make multiple landings very quickly). Another choice we have in the pattern is to fly around a large rectangle that takes about 2 or 3 minutes to circumnavigate before we can make our approach to landing.
I was a little uneasy about being scheduled in the afternoon to fly (usually a little more turbulent in the afternoon), but it turned out just fine. The weather was decent and I got to practice all my maneuvers, including all my stalls, slow flight, unusual attitude recoveries, and a G-X exercise (where we practice pulling G's). The G-X is where I got sick on Friday, but Monday went really well. I think it helped that I was flying more so than my IP. I felt a little queezy while flying in the traffic pattern at Vance and at our Auxillary Field called "Dogface", but that's pretty typical for someone's third flight. In the morning, my sim IP reminded me to try to have fun while flying....I remembered him saying that when i was flying in the afternoon in the traffic pattern. To make some of our turns, we are only 500 feet above the ground at 200knots and are pulling up to 3 Gs sometimes. When I was flying part of the pattern, I looked down and saw the road that leads the front security gate of the base. Going 200 knots at about a 90 degree angle (a little steeper than I should have been)...I realized how awesome this was!! I started to really enjoy the flying, and would intentionally try to yank the plane into the turns as fast as I could, just for the fun of it. Not sure my IP enjoyed the ride in the back, so....sorry....
Tuesday we were cancelled for weather, but we flew again on Wednesday. I got a chance to perfect my maneuvers I flew on Monday, and this time I got all of them at or above the required standard. Again, we had a blast, but the weather was a little tough to navigate through. There was a point where I had to fly into a cloud during the recovery back to Vance, and had to rely on my instruments to get me back home. I felt a little disoriented at one point, because I was entering a left turn and didn't realize it. I looked up, it was all white outside, looked down, and saw I was in a 30 degree bank to my left on my attitude indicator. I quickly recovered, but it was a good lesson learned on focusing on the important gauges when flying in a cloud.
Wednesday night I read John 8:48-59. In this passage, Jesus says he is not seeking his own glory, but glory for his father. Man, if Jesus didn't seek glory for himself, how much more should I not seek it for myself! It was a good and much needed reminder for me to not seek my own glory in pilot training, but to somehow glorify God through what I do and say. It's tough when it seems like the Air Force is all about boasting about how well you fly or how bad you fly. Hopefully this blog will continue to show not how well I am doing or just how bad I'm doing, but how much God is blessing me this year. There will be some great flights, but it's not because of my own power that I flew well. It's only because God has given me the grace to overcome some of the obstacles. There will also be some bad flights that I fail or "hook"...that doesn't mean God has forsaken me. It only means he's trying to teach me something I need to learn, and haven't learned yet. Going into training brought me a lot of anxiety about trying to endure some of the hardships it brings about. But Romans 8:35-39 reminds us that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. When I am in Him, there's nothing left for me to fear, even in pilot training. I'm not there yet, but God hasn't given up on me yet :-).
Thursday I was at least 2 or 3 flights ahead of everyone else because I kept getting scheduled when the weather was good to fly. They took me off the schedule for that day and gave me an Emergency Procedures simulator where we practice what to do if our engine fails, get a fire indication in flight, uncommanded power changes, etc. The sim went well overall; I was a lot calmer about entering the emergency than the last EP sim I had. Scott, I took your advice about "winding the clock"....that helped a lot...thanks buddy!!
Friday I flew a similar profile to what I had earlier in the week, and just had a blast. The weather was almost perfect, with the exception of high altitude clouds. I still have a ton to learn and be able to do, but I'm very happy with where we are at. I have a great flight of IPs, and awesome students in the flight with me. Hopefully we'll all be able to get through this together. Thanks for the prayers everyone...we'll see ya next week!
Chris
Romans 8:35-39
I was a little uneasy about being scheduled in the afternoon to fly (usually a little more turbulent in the afternoon), but it turned out just fine. The weather was decent and I got to practice all my maneuvers, including all my stalls, slow flight, unusual attitude recoveries, and a G-X exercise (where we practice pulling G's). The G-X is where I got sick on Friday, but Monday went really well. I think it helped that I was flying more so than my IP. I felt a little queezy while flying in the traffic pattern at Vance and at our Auxillary Field called "Dogface", but that's pretty typical for someone's third flight. In the morning, my sim IP reminded me to try to have fun while flying....I remembered him saying that when i was flying in the afternoon in the traffic pattern. To make some of our turns, we are only 500 feet above the ground at 200knots and are pulling up to 3 Gs sometimes. When I was flying part of the pattern, I looked down and saw the road that leads the front security gate of the base. Going 200 knots at about a 90 degree angle (a little steeper than I should have been)...I realized how awesome this was!! I started to really enjoy the flying, and would intentionally try to yank the plane into the turns as fast as I could, just for the fun of it. Not sure my IP enjoyed the ride in the back, so....sorry....
Tuesday we were cancelled for weather, but we flew again on Wednesday. I got a chance to perfect my maneuvers I flew on Monday, and this time I got all of them at or above the required standard. Again, we had a blast, but the weather was a little tough to navigate through. There was a point where I had to fly into a cloud during the recovery back to Vance, and had to rely on my instruments to get me back home. I felt a little disoriented at one point, because I was entering a left turn and didn't realize it. I looked up, it was all white outside, looked down, and saw I was in a 30 degree bank to my left on my attitude indicator. I quickly recovered, but it was a good lesson learned on focusing on the important gauges when flying in a cloud.
Wednesday night I read John 8:48-59. In this passage, Jesus says he is not seeking his own glory, but glory for his father. Man, if Jesus didn't seek glory for himself, how much more should I not seek it for myself! It was a good and much needed reminder for me to not seek my own glory in pilot training, but to somehow glorify God through what I do and say. It's tough when it seems like the Air Force is all about boasting about how well you fly or how bad you fly. Hopefully this blog will continue to show not how well I am doing or just how bad I'm doing, but how much God is blessing me this year. There will be some great flights, but it's not because of my own power that I flew well. It's only because God has given me the grace to overcome some of the obstacles. There will also be some bad flights that I fail or "hook"...that doesn't mean God has forsaken me. It only means he's trying to teach me something I need to learn, and haven't learned yet. Going into training brought me a lot of anxiety about trying to endure some of the hardships it brings about. But Romans 8:35-39 reminds us that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. When I am in Him, there's nothing left for me to fear, even in pilot training. I'm not there yet, but God hasn't given up on me yet :-).
Thursday I was at least 2 or 3 flights ahead of everyone else because I kept getting scheduled when the weather was good to fly. They took me off the schedule for that day and gave me an Emergency Procedures simulator where we practice what to do if our engine fails, get a fire indication in flight, uncommanded power changes, etc. The sim went well overall; I was a lot calmer about entering the emergency than the last EP sim I had. Scott, I took your advice about "winding the clock"....that helped a lot...thanks buddy!!
Friday I flew a similar profile to what I had earlier in the week, and just had a blast. The weather was almost perfect, with the exception of high altitude clouds. I still have a ton to learn and be able to do, but I'm very happy with where we are at. I have a great flight of IPs, and awesome students in the flight with me. Hopefully we'll all be able to get through this together. Thanks for the prayers everyone...we'll see ya next week!
Chris
Romans 8:35-39
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Week 7
Monday and Tuesday was spent finishing our weather classes and reviewed all the lessons we learned up to this week. Monday afternoon I had my last simulator ride before I hit the flightline on Thursday. It's purpose was to go over all the traffic pattern procedures and radio calls I would encounter on my dollar ride (first T-6 flight). The sim itself was in an OFT, the highest quality sim we have. It's a lot like flying in a planetarium theater, just on a smaller scale with a T-6 cockpit in the middle of it. The comical part of this sim was during the debrief when the IP said I should get a nose job so my oxygen mask would fit better! He was a very honest IP! He also proceeded to say I say "Yes Sir" and "Uh, huh" too often and it's annoying! Although this seems rather rude, I'm glad he was trying to help me. He gave me high marks for the sim, saying it was the best sortie of that kind he's seen from a student this far along in training. I think he was just making up for the previous two comments he made, haha.
The exciting part of the week came after we took our weather test on Wednesday. We ended the test, enjoyed a quick lunch, then went straight to the flightline for orientation. 14 of us went to the 8th Flying Training Squadron's C flight (myself included), and 15 of us went to D flight. In C flight, we learned about the squadron's policies for flying as well as some administrivia and how to build a formal brief. A formal brief is a presentation we have to give every morning. It includes local weather observations, forcasts, status of operations, and how the weather affects how we will fly the sorties. Sounds simple, but we only have 10 minutes every morning to build it, set up the room, and know what to say in front of all the IPs. All 14 of us have specific jobs related to building the brief and setting up the room. My job is to print off ops notes for the flight commander to brief to us, convert the zulu (UTC) times in the weather forcasts and observations to local time, and to build a slide that shows which direction to crab the aircraft to compensate for the winds at different altitudes at different points in the pattern. After doing this a couple times, I feel we've gotten the hang of it. Thursday's formal brief in the morning was a little rough, but they let us try again in the afternoon.
Thursday morning after the formal brief, we met with our instructors for dollar rides. I met with my IP and we talked for about an hour and a half, suited up in our G-suits and Parachute harnesses, then rode a bus to the jet. We did a quick walk-around the plane, then hopped up on the wing and strapped in. I went through all the preflight and start-up procedures just like I had done in the sims many times before. Everything worked well, although I was slower getting the thing started than I ultimately need to be. The IP flew the take-off because the field was under IFR conditions. We lined up on the runway, turned off the nosewheel steering, and pushed up the power. As soon as the engine spooled up, I was actually pushed back in the seat and we were off. Once we climbed past about 5,000 feet, we broke through the cloud layer and it was a bright sun that greeted us. Unfortunately, our auxilary field known as "Dogface" was closed due to the weather, so we were stuck doing basic aircraft control in the practice area above the clouds. He let me take the aircraft and do some steep turns. After about 30 minutes, I wasn't feeling so hot, so we came back to Vance on an instrument approach and landed after 1.1 hours. Thursday afternoon, we had a stand-up and shotgun questions. Stand-up is when the whole flight, students and IPs alike, sit in the flight room and listen to the flight commander describe an in-flight emergency situation. After the description of the situation, the flight commander will randomly select one of us to analyze the situation and handle the emergency as if we were flying. It's designed to put pressure on us to simulate the stress we will likely feel in the aircraft. "Shotgun" is another high pressure situation when every student is stood up and asked random general knowledge questions. Again, it's designed to make us think on our feet under pressure situations. If we can't answer general questions when we're at 1G and 0 knots, there's not a chance we can handle an emergency 2 miles above the ground at 200 knots while pulling 4 G's inverted. Flying is an inherently dangerous business, which is why they try to make pilot training such a stressful environment.
Friday, my airsickness got a lot worse. I was still just passively sick, meaning I didn't fill up any vomit bags. However, we almost had to cut the flight's profile short towards the end. The IP had control of the airplane and pulled about 4Gs. I've pulled 4 Gs in an airplane before and had no problems, even without a Gsuit. But for whatever reason, my airsickness really got to me and I almost Glocked. My vision went away and my whole body felt tingly. I still knew what was going on and could hear my IP talking, but I was probably only a few seconds from passing out. I couldn't tense any muscles in my lower body to help keep the blood in my head because I was too sick. Part of it is probably dehydration, part of it may be diet. Whatever the case, hopefully Monday will be a little better.
The exciting part of the week came after we took our weather test on Wednesday. We ended the test, enjoyed a quick lunch, then went straight to the flightline for orientation. 14 of us went to the 8th Flying Training Squadron's C flight (myself included), and 15 of us went to D flight. In C flight, we learned about the squadron's policies for flying as well as some administrivia and how to build a formal brief. A formal brief is a presentation we have to give every morning. It includes local weather observations, forcasts, status of operations, and how the weather affects how we will fly the sorties. Sounds simple, but we only have 10 minutes every morning to build it, set up the room, and know what to say in front of all the IPs. All 14 of us have specific jobs related to building the brief and setting up the room. My job is to print off ops notes for the flight commander to brief to us, convert the zulu (UTC) times in the weather forcasts and observations to local time, and to build a slide that shows which direction to crab the aircraft to compensate for the winds at different altitudes at different points in the pattern. After doing this a couple times, I feel we've gotten the hang of it. Thursday's formal brief in the morning was a little rough, but they let us try again in the afternoon.
Thursday morning after the formal brief, we met with our instructors for dollar rides. I met with my IP and we talked for about an hour and a half, suited up in our G-suits and Parachute harnesses, then rode a bus to the jet. We did a quick walk-around the plane, then hopped up on the wing and strapped in. I went through all the preflight and start-up procedures just like I had done in the sims many times before. Everything worked well, although I was slower getting the thing started than I ultimately need to be. The IP flew the take-off because the field was under IFR conditions. We lined up on the runway, turned off the nosewheel steering, and pushed up the power. As soon as the engine spooled up, I was actually pushed back in the seat and we were off. Once we climbed past about 5,000 feet, we broke through the cloud layer and it was a bright sun that greeted us. Unfortunately, our auxilary field known as "Dogface" was closed due to the weather, so we were stuck doing basic aircraft control in the practice area above the clouds. He let me take the aircraft and do some steep turns. After about 30 minutes, I wasn't feeling so hot, so we came back to Vance on an instrument approach and landed after 1.1 hours. Thursday afternoon, we had a stand-up and shotgun questions. Stand-up is when the whole flight, students and IPs alike, sit in the flight room and listen to the flight commander describe an in-flight emergency situation. After the description of the situation, the flight commander will randomly select one of us to analyze the situation and handle the emergency as if we were flying. It's designed to put pressure on us to simulate the stress we will likely feel in the aircraft. "Shotgun" is another high pressure situation when every student is stood up and asked random general knowledge questions. Again, it's designed to make us think on our feet under pressure situations. If we can't answer general questions when we're at 1G and 0 knots, there's not a chance we can handle an emergency 2 miles above the ground at 200 knots while pulling 4 G's inverted. Flying is an inherently dangerous business, which is why they try to make pilot training such a stressful environment.
Friday, my airsickness got a lot worse. I was still just passively sick, meaning I didn't fill up any vomit bags. However, we almost had to cut the flight's profile short towards the end. The IP had control of the airplane and pulled about 4Gs. I've pulled 4 Gs in an airplane before and had no problems, even without a Gsuit. But for whatever reason, my airsickness really got to me and I almost Glocked. My vision went away and my whole body felt tingly. I still knew what was going on and could hear my IP talking, but I was probably only a few seconds from passing out. I couldn't tense any muscles in my lower body to help keep the blood in my head because I was too sick. Part of it is probably dehydration, part of it may be diet. Whatever the case, hopefully Monday will be a little better.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Week 6
This last week was the last FULL week of Academics until we finally start flying. Monday began the 3 day string of simulator rides to demonstrate procedural competance. We flew departures, arrivals, recoveries, and a few straight-in landings to show the IP we could run in-flight checks, make radio calls, while still keeping up wtih the Aircraft. It really is a juggling act, and is very apparent how important it is to memorize certain things. The more you have memorized, the less you have to try to read while in the airplane and the more you can keep your eyes outside the aircraft. Monday afternoon was our Flying Fundamentals Exam. I wasn't sure how I would do going into the test, and about 30 minutes into it, I wasn't sure how I'd come out! I kept couting the questions I thought I might have missed, and I kept coming up with the max number of questions we were allowed to miss! To my great relief, I only missed two somehow, and I lived to fight another day.....
Tuesday and Wednesday was spent doing our Emergency Procedures simulator. I crawled in a UTD sim on Tuesday, and tried starting the aircraft, taxiing out to the imaginary runway I couldn't see (UTDs don't have video screens in front of the cockpit...only the guages work), taking off of 17L, departing to the area, and working in the area. During each of these phases, the IP would trip an emergency and expect me to apply the boldface to the problem. Overall I did pretty well and got an Excellent. However, we did the same exact type of profile on Wednesday in an IFT simulator (one WITH a video screen) and found myself fumbling around the cockpit all day long. I was moving entirely too fast because I thought I knew the procedures really well. The problem was, I DID know the procedures. I would flip switches too fast and wouldn't spend enough time ANALYZING the problem and trying to think through the steps. I was pretty iritated at myself for making dumb mistakes on Wednesday and couldn't wait until the next time we could get in a simulator and try to make up for it. BIG lesson learned: in an emergency, take a second to think about what the airplane is telling you BEFORE you apply the boldface procedures. For instance, during an engine failure on takeoff, you're supposed to wait to kill the engine until after you stop completely on the runway. I would get too far ahead of myself and shut down the engine while I was still rolling on the runway. Gotta Slow Down....
Thursday we spent the whole day in the classroom learning about weather. Our weather exam here is notorious for being the worst of them all...we don't test until this coming Wednesday, so there'll be plenty of time to study for it.
Friday we spent time continuing weather lessons, then took our Contact Exam. I got a 100% on this one thank God. The afternoon was spent on the flight line getting oriented to our new duties on top of flying. I don't have time to go into the details, but needless to say, it feels a bit overwhelming. Wish I could go into more detail with this blog right now...maybe I will be able to update it next weekend when I have more time. I have my dollar ride (first flight) this Thursday, so I'll do my best to give you some nice detail on how it goes. Plenty of studying to do...
-Chris
Psalm 18:2
Tuesday and Wednesday was spent doing our Emergency Procedures simulator. I crawled in a UTD sim on Tuesday, and tried starting the aircraft, taxiing out to the imaginary runway I couldn't see (UTDs don't have video screens in front of the cockpit...only the guages work), taking off of 17L, departing to the area, and working in the area. During each of these phases, the IP would trip an emergency and expect me to apply the boldface to the problem. Overall I did pretty well and got an Excellent. However, we did the same exact type of profile on Wednesday in an IFT simulator (one WITH a video screen) and found myself fumbling around the cockpit all day long. I was moving entirely too fast because I thought I knew the procedures really well. The problem was, I DID know the procedures. I would flip switches too fast and wouldn't spend enough time ANALYZING the problem and trying to think through the steps. I was pretty iritated at myself for making dumb mistakes on Wednesday and couldn't wait until the next time we could get in a simulator and try to make up for it. BIG lesson learned: in an emergency, take a second to think about what the airplane is telling you BEFORE you apply the boldface procedures. For instance, during an engine failure on takeoff, you're supposed to wait to kill the engine until after you stop completely on the runway. I would get too far ahead of myself and shut down the engine while I was still rolling on the runway. Gotta Slow Down....
Thursday we spent the whole day in the classroom learning about weather. Our weather exam here is notorious for being the worst of them all...we don't test until this coming Wednesday, so there'll be plenty of time to study for it.
Friday we spent time continuing weather lessons, then took our Contact Exam. I got a 100% on this one thank God. The afternoon was spent on the flight line getting oriented to our new duties on top of flying. I don't have time to go into the details, but needless to say, it feels a bit overwhelming. Wish I could go into more detail with this blog right now...maybe I will be able to update it next weekend when I have more time. I have my dollar ride (first flight) this Thursday, so I'll do my best to give you some nice detail on how it goes. Plenty of studying to do...
-Chris
Psalm 18:2
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