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Riddller's IFS & UPT Blog

A blog by Riddller in General

  • Entries

    100

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About this blog

IFS first, now my fun at UPT!

Entries in this blog

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

In-processing day

Made it to IFS today. Got here about 1300. The website says be here between 1200 and 1800 in one spot, and between 1200 and 1500 in another. There's nothing bad or good about showing up early or late. I guess I wold reccomend early. Showed up in blues after my short trip from C-Springs (I DEFINITELY reccomend staying the night somewhere close by before driving in in your blues). The people were very nice, and the one officer I've met, our MTO (Military Training Officer), was very cool and hel

TD-5

Crap!! I didn't get to fly today. The weather was fine for the morning, but by the time the afternoon flights were supposed to take off, the storms had rolled in. Oh well, I was rescheduled for tomorrow at 0930. Cross your fingers!! We had CRM and ORM classes when we weren't flying (an hour and a half total), the rest of the time was spent studying in the flight room or listening to other people's briefs or debriefs (they encourage that). There's also a radio in the room that you can use to l

Day 2

More of the same. Showed at 0645, 0700 brief, lot's of shotgun questions were missed and like 4 people got sat down during the stand-up. I didn't take off until 1240, so I spent the morning taking care of queep (paperwork crap), doing another CAI, and studying for my flights. Flight went very well according to my grades but I felt like I wasn't sure what was going on a bunch of the time. It was fun though, so that's all that matters. After that, more studying until we were released at 1

More Form, Shorter Days

Done with 6 form flights now, and it is getting easier to stay in position. I only flew once last week because I messed up my back working on the house last weekend. I wasn't hydrated enough before flying on Friday and we were doing formation aerobatics. All those G's about made me puke! I didn't though, just kept flying. If you puke on any flights after you solo, it's an automatic hook, and we have had two guys in my flight blow chunks on formation flights because you're always looking aro

Sorry, Kinda Boring!

Hey all! Sorry I haven't posted for a bit, but academics is kinda boring to talk about unless your actually here. The stuff I'm learning about the plane, i.e. what all the switches do, how the electrical system works, etc... is pretty cool for me, but I'm sure you would all fall asleep if I started talking about how the DPU interfaces with the EFIS and the IAPS and is controlled by the DCP. The days are still fairly easy. I got ahead on my CAI's and so got to sleep in until 1130 on Monday

Week 2 of T-1's

Flying is going well, but I've only had two flights so far. My third will be tomorrow. I'm actually really surprised at how much better I did on my second flight than I did the first. I think it was just not flying for a month that did it. I was by no means perfect, and made some mistakes, but did some of the landings, maneuvers, etc... really well too. I'm not the only one in my class to make these comments either. The days are long, again. Last week we were in at 0500 every day and us

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

5 rides done

Had my fifth ride today, went really well. I needed to do a "pattern only" flight, so this was it. I got like 10 landings in. The aircraft control is pretty much there, and my SA is definitely bigger than most with my prior Nav time, but it's also definitely not where it needs to be. I'm starting to get to the point where I don't have to worry as much about my aircraft control and can start concentrating more on expanding my SA bubble. I missed some stuff today, but it was good training.

Getting ready to go

So, here's my Blog of going through IFS, class 07-11. I've never done a Blog before, so please no bashing if I break some rule of "Blog etiquette". There are a number of active duty pilot's there, and I'm sure at least one of them has heard of Baseops.net, so I'm not going to be doing any serious bashing of anyone, I still want to graduate!! And I won't guarantee spelling either, so suck it up if you're a grammar/spelling nazi!!! I'm driving out of my base this Tuesday for the 10 ho

TD-13

No flying again. They say the soonest we'll start again is Friday, but it might not be until next week. So, I guess I'll wait to make another post until then. If it's past Wednesday and this is still the latest post, then that's why. We did lose another student today. Same as before, flying just didn't do it for him, so he said "No thanks". He's a great guy too, and everyone in the class wishes him the best of luck. Down to 26 now... And counting... The next class shows up on Sund

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

I'm beat!

Oh man I'm tired. The last bunch of days has been non-stop! We're on the flightline at least 10 hours a day and it's still not enough! At least a couple hours a night is the minimum for studying right now, and we still don't know enough! We had our first weekly stan test on Friday (Standards test) and only one guy in the whole flight passed! Most missed 5 to 8 questions out of 20, and we studied!! So we had to take another test today but the IPs basically went over it first so everyone pas

Flightline is coming up!

We're pretty much done with Phase I but it's not "official" until Monday. We all showed up at our Phase II flight room on the flightline today at 0800 and studied for our sims and did publications updates to all our pubs. My sim didn't brief until 1100, so I got all my pubs up to date and studied a bit. The sim was another Emergency Procedure (EP) ride, so it was pretty much one malfunction after another. I did have a good time flying around when I wasn't taking care of EP's though. The

First Formation Flight

Yup, instrument complete, now straight into Form. I'm not going to lie, the first flight scared the crap out of me. Flying 10 feet off the guys wing with 90 degrees of bank just doesn't seem right (at least not when I'm the guy doing it!). Overall I had fun though, it should be a good time. Was supposed to have my second Form flight today, but due to the "mishap" we might not be flying for a bit, I don't know. Unfortunately, all we're allowed to say is that both pilots are OK, and the MIB

Leaving tomorrow...

So I guess I had to have one more post. It's tougher than I thought leaving my flight. Every single one of them are great guys and I see them doing fantastic things for the Air Force. As of the time I'm writing this, (Friday night at 2300 hours) we have one guy who washed out, and another guy who decided it wasn't for him. I wish them both the best of luck. That brings the grand total (so far) to 3 guys saying it's just not for them, and one not making it through, for a 15% "not graduatin

Sorry, I been sick...

Wow, we've been busy the last few days. A sim on Monday (more checklists) plus a test (almost everyone did fine, one fail again but passed the 2nd time). We then started a new section, Flying Fundamentals. It's all about how to fly a pattern, approaches, landings, etc... There's actually a ton of different stuff involved so it's supposed to be one of the harder tests. The test is actually tomorrow afternoon, after another sim mission. And on top of all this, my head has felt like it was

Solo!

Yeah! Solo today! Weather was great! I hadn't flown in ten days, so my pre-solo check was a bit rough the first 10 to 15 minutes, but then I figured it out and did fine. There was a bunch of people in the pattern so I had to do a bunch of go-arounds and low approaches, but whatever. For those of you not in the know, after your initial solo, your classmates grab you and throw you into the "solo tank" which is just a big tank of water. IF you can make it back to your flight room before they

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

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

Beer light is on!

So they "turned on the beer light" for my flight for the first time this afternoon. It just means you can drink beer in the flight room and tell funny stories about each other. A lot of other flights get it way earlier than we did, but with 5 guys on P-CAP they didn't want to. I also delivered our flight gift -- a kegerator me and some flight-mates built -- to the flight room today, so that probably helped! I had my first flight since my double-turn today too. Dental appointment on Wednesday

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 (

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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