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Riddller's IFS & UPT Blog

A blog by Riddller in General

  • Entries

    100

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    74

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    201,962

About this blog

IFS first, now my fun at UPT!

Entries in this blog

Sunday...

So we're supposed to start flying again tomorrow, we'll see. Most of the new class has made it in by now, a bunch of people in my class have been grabbing them and giving them the nickle tour. Friday was nice, we were done by 0800, so most went back to sleep. I went out and grabbed a pony keg and grilled out for dinner again, good times!! Then a bunch of us went out on the town. It was dead!! There were hardly any people in the bars, and it was pretty slim pickings for the guys looking

Another 12 hour day...

Showed at 0730, got let loose at 1920, and I'm still studying for Stan Test #3 which is tomorrow. I was just supposed to have a sim today, but halfway through the formal brief this morning the scheduler IP threw my name on the schedule for the first takeoff. We didn't even have time to do stand-up or shotgun questions this morning after the brief because people had to go fly, me included. I had about 3 minutes to prep before sitting in front of an IP I'd never flown with before and tellin

T-1 Dollar Ride!

Had my dollar ride today... very cool! The plane flies a bit easier than the sim, but not by much. It was also nice to see how they do it "on the flight-line" vs. in the sim (checklists, etc...). We took off, went to a MOA for about 50 minutes, then went to McConnell AFB to do touch-and-goes. It's pretty nice to be up at 15,000 feet doing 300 indicated! Seriously cuts down on the drone time between places. We flew for a total of about 3.5 hours, split between two students, which I guess is

TD-10

Had our first official casualty of the course today. He wasn't sure about doing the pilot thing in the first place, and after a few flights here, he found out it just wasn't his thing. I've got a lot of respect for him because he studied is butt off, did great on the tests and had no problems in the plane. He gave a 100% effort and figured out it just wasn't for him. He's on the road now, headed home, and his base is working to find him another job, no hard feelings. Down to 27... Had my t

Form Solo...wahoo!

My Form Solo was this morning and it was a blast! It's so much nicer being out in the area with someone to play with (sts). The other plane had an IP and one of my classmates working up to his Form Solo. We did a bunch of lazy-8's while -2 tried to stay in fingertip (5 - 10 feet away), and bunch of pitch-outs and rejoins, then went to Extended Trail (ET) Lvl 3. ET is when both of you have your power set at 85% and -2 tries to stay in sight of lead about 500-1000 away at about their 4 or 8 o

TD-whatever+1

Another fine day for flying!! My flight went good again, except for those stinkin' steep turns again!! I was fine a few weeks ago, and now they're back to crap!! Oh well, maybe next time. Also, this plane seems a bit more squirrelly when slipping it down for a landing than the -172 was... or maybe I just need to replace the nut that holds the stick! Had some more storms this afternoon, and they're talking about moving our brief time up to 0510 (ugggh!!) to get us done earlier in the after

TD-2

Class started at 0715 today, more academics. We went through more systems, then went into reading a VFR sectional, how to land and take off, the pattern, and airspace classifications/requirements. 45 min for lunch, and we started PT at 1620. Circuit training until about 1715, then we're done! First Formal Brief is Monday morningat 0640. The IPs will demonstrate it, then we take over Tuesday and every morning from then on. DON'T expect be allowed to leave the immediate (C-Springs is ok)

Solo ride day

So I had my solo today, along with about 5 other guys. It was a blast. You have to do all your solo landings to a full stop then taxi back to the runway, but it's not a big deal. The problem comes in when you FORGET to do your full stop and just do a touch-and-go! Enter me... they understood that you build the habit patterns based on touch-and-go's, but they were still pissed after I told them about it (no one knew, the IPs were driving to the tower to watch us when I did it!). Oh well, th

Hooked my Trans Check

Doh!!! Had a great flight, only 4 downgrades, and I hook for ground stuff!! I'm a dummy, it was my own stupid fault, but I'm not going into specifics. I just need a swift kick to the jimmy. All my flights have been great up to now, and hopefully that will continue. It just sucks that I get the hook on a check ride! Oh well, guess I have to take my lumps and move on. Ground-88 tomorrow. The days are still the same. Show at 0530, start briefing between 0600 and 0700, takeoff between

Moving on...

I'm still sick, but now it's just down to a cough. Friday was a Emergency Procedure sim, full g-suit, hemet, etc... It was neat, I learned a bunch. After the day was up we went to the club to cheer on our team in the crud tournament, then went to roof-stomp the OSS/CCs house. Good times! Ended up back at the club after that and hung out for a while longer. Not a bad evening!

Checkride!

WAHOO!!! I'm DUN!!! Did my checkride first go this morning. I had some mistakes, like everyone does, but overall did great. They have checkride gouge books here with info on every instructor. It tells you what knowledge questions they like to ask, what kind of stuff they have you do during flight, what emergency procedures they run you through, etc... You just study those and glance through all the stuff you've been studying for the last 5-6 weeks and your good!! They tell you over and over a

Final Contact... here's your taco!

Yup, first flight I hook, and it's a check ride! I did fine in the air, screwed up some aerobatics, but no big deal. Had some crazy dealings with ATC, but handled them very well and my IP said he was very impressed. The problem came after the flight during the table-top Emergency Procedure. They give you a situation after every flight you do, and you have to talk through how you would get through it. It's the same with check rides. Anyway, if there's a boldface involved, you have to say it

1st day of UPT!

So, I'm back. I had some friends who wanted a better idea of what it was like at UPT, and the blogs they found out there just weren't doing it, so now I'll blog UPT as well! I'm in class 09-05 at Vance AFB. Today was our "official" start date, so now I'm in Phase 1, academics. We're supposed to be done with Phase 1 on 10 March, then we'll move to the flightline and start flying the T-6 in Phase 2. The end of Phase 2 is scheduled for 22 July, and the end of Phase 3 (and winging) on 12 Feb

Day 1

Yesterday was "Day 0" of the 15-day program (the scripted harassment of the first 15 days on the flightline). They showed us all how it was done yesterday, then we had to perform today (Day 1). That meant us doing the formal brief (that was a cluster-f), then stand-up and shotgun questions. The shotgun questions all come from required reading they give us each day, including the "notes, warnings, cautions" (NWC) out of the Dash-1. There can be up to 7 or 8 NWCs for each emergency procedure (

Everyone's still here!

So everyone passed the test yesterday. The Navy students had a 96.3% average and the AF students had a 95% average. The Navy guys got a kick out of that, but they've only got 7 students to our 18, no biggie. The rest of the day was taken up with an Anti-terrorism brief, a JAG brief, another brief from the T-38 squadron (this time from the commander) saying, "If you want to be a fighter pilot, don't change your mind while flying the T-6!" This was followed closely by him saying, "Sorry, you g

Death by powerpoint!

So today was the first day of Aerospace Phys. Powerpoint all day. We had Physiology in all it's forms, then parachute stuff, and egress. One of the cool parts was night vision (not NVG) and Oxygen intro. They turned off all the lights and had REALLY dark powerpoint slides for the night vision class. You couldn't even see them fully until your eyes adjusted. The Oxygen intro had us in the high altitude chamber (they didn't depressurize it yet) and just ran us through how to use all the stuf

09-05 Track Select!

Got my #1 choice... T-1's! We had two get T-38's, two got UH-1's (they both wanted them... including one of the Top Sticks!), two got T-44's (they put T-38's first but are happy with T-44's), and the rest of us got T-1's (including the other Top Stick). We start T-1 academicsat 0830 tomorrow... I'll let you know! Half-way done with UPT!

T-1 Academics

Back to doing CAI's again... (that's "computer aided instruction" for those of you who don't remember my posts from 6 months ago... what, you don't study these things??) The day after track select (yesterday) we showed up at the T-1 squadron at 0830 and got a couple of briefings from the flight commander and the SQ/CC. We'll still have another "15 day program" and be on formal release at first (12 hour days) but we were told it's much more of a "big boy program", i.e.-not as much IP harassme

LOTS of computer classes

So we're back to our normal training now, and back in blues. About 90% of the instruction we've received so far has been on the computer, which is actually working really good. Each section (Hydraulics, Navigation, Communications, etc...) has it's own ~1 hour "class" on the computer. They have rooms full of computers so everyone can "take the class" at the same time. You just click through the pages, they each have maybe 3-8 sentences and a picture or video, and answer the quiz questions at the

Still here...

I'm up to 9 flights now, still doing good. I need 4 more flights before my first checkride, the "Transition Check". I went to Amarillo today to do touch-and-goes. Nice, place! LONG runway, but lot's of birds. Which reminds me, I hit a bird a couple flights back, and didn't even know it! We got on the ground and did a walk-around after the flight, and had a big bloody smear across the right of the nose! It didn't do any damage (to us anyway) so it was no big deal. These 0530 show times

Instrument Check Ride Complete!

Wahoo! Only one more checkride to go and I'm done with phase II! Check ride went really good. Sorry if I have to brag, but after hooking my last one, I hope you understand. I'm sure no one who already has their wings will care, but it's a big deal at the moment. Anywho, the IP only marked me down on one item, so like I said, I'm pretty flippin' happy! I'm academics complete (our Formation test was last week), and I only have two sim missions left (formation and Low-level). The formation sim w

Third Form Flight

My formation flying is getting better, I can hang with lead a bit easier than for the first 2 flights. Our days are shorter now. If we fly first go, then we only have to hang out until second go leaves to go fly, then we can go home. Works out to be about 7 hour days now. The weekly stan tests are still kicking peoples butts. Luckily I haven't busted one since the first one, but a lot of people have been busting multiples, which means they have to take a retest, then another retest if t

Lots of sims now

Sorry about no post for a week (again) but it's been kind of boring. I finished all of my flights (except for the one before my Instrument checkride) in the middle of last week, but I still needed like 6 sim missions before I can do my checkride. It pretty much sucks, same-old same-old stuff over and over. I should be doing my checkride on Thursday or Friday though, which I'm excited about. One good thing: We finally got off Formal Release last week (week 10 of Phase II) because everyone fi

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