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Riddller's IFS & UPT Blog

A blog by Riddller in General

  • Entries

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About this blog

IFS first, now my fun at UPT!

Entries in this blog

Fast and furious!

Was supposed to do an out and back last Thursday and broke in Arkansas! My IP and I had to drive back to Vance... 4 hours!! That sucked. My cross country started on Friday. We were supposed to go to Amarillo to get gas, then on to Albuquerque for the night. On to Denver on Saturday, then back to Vance on Sunday. Turns out that my plane had an inspection due so we had to come back to Vance on Friday. They had a plane for us on Saturday, so I made it out to Denver on Saturday night. 2 fl

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

Doin good...

Had three rides in the "Nav" phase of training now. Good times! Pretty much every ride in the Nav block is an Out and Back, so now I've had lunch in Lubbock and Ft. Worth with the T-1. I'm planning on going to Abilene on Tuesday 'cuz I hear there's a fantastic steak place open in the evenings called the Beehive. We'll see! The flights are usually two hours out then 2 hours back. You fly someplace about 30 min away, do a bunch of approaches, then continue on to your "outbase" another 30-4

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

Day 2...

So 0800 at the OSS, in short sleeve blues, began the day. The head civilian instructor started us off with a brief about both what the civilian instructors do here (everything except flying) as well as how to survive UPT (don't get in trouble, study a lot). Then we had briefings from our Asst. Flight/CC, and a Government Travel Card brief. After an hour for lunch, we came back and got issued like 50 lbs. of publications (literally, 50 lbs, try stacking about 8 reams of paper [at least] on to

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

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 (

Cross Country complete

Just got back from my cross country. We only get one while we're in T-1's and more than likely it will just be a one-nighter during the week. Some people get to do them over a weekend, by not many. The other student I was with and I went to Omaha then spent the night in Denver. On the way back, we stopped in Rapid City then came home. It was cool getting out of the local area and doing mission planning on the road. I'm now finished with the first half of the Nav phase of training. I,

Couple more weeks to checkride

So I'm about 3-quarters of the way through the Nav phase of T-1's now, which, they say, is the "meat and potatoes" of T-1 training. Had my first low-level flight yesterday, it was fun flying 230 kts at 500 feet, but the completely flat terrain of northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas doesn't exactly inspire youtube videos of yanking-and-banking through canyons... not that the T-1 ever would anyway! There's a number of guys in the "senior class" of my flight who are now Nav-check complete, and

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

Checkride Saturday

Did my checkride yesterday, went well, I passed no problem. I actually thought I busted standards on a couple of the maneuvers, but the IP said they're more looking for people who notice when they bust and try to correct right away, which I did. I solo with like 5 other people on Monday. Everyone in the class should be checking within the next few days, then doing their solo's. Yes, they are back to letting us solo by ourselves in the pattern. I've got 5 more flights in the syllabus after my

Chamber day

So we all got our chamber rides today. For those of you not in the know, the "chamber" is a little room they sit you down in, with a bunch of oxygen regulators. They depressurize it up to 35,000 feet, then bring you back down to 25,000 feet. Then they tell you to take off your mask and do really simple things like writing your name and simple math problems. Within a minute or 2 everyone starts feeling different symptoms of hypoxia, and when you feel you could no longer fly an aircraft (i.e.

CAI marathon...

So we had one CAI (Propulsion 2) this morning at 0800, then had our propulsion review with our instructor at 0930, then 4 more CAIs after that!! Environmental controls, ejection system, canopy systrem... Ugggh. The good thing is that most were done by 1430. So my whole class has to go to the graduation of class 08-05 tomorrow... in service dress. I guess it's tradition that the class one year behind the graduating class goes to "take the torch" or some such. Oh well, should be interesting. Th

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

Been a while...

Sorry it's been a while since my last post. We've still been crazy busy on the flightline. Flying, simulator missions, academics, studying for stand-up and shotgun questions, it just doesn't stop! Top that all with the fact that I got food poisoning last Thursday night! I was up all night with that (I'll spare you the details) then got put on quarters for Friday. I crawled back into bed at 0800 on Friday and didn't leave it until 1100 Saturday! I think I'm finally back to normal today.

Back to Aerospace Phys.

More classes today, this time on managing stress, etc... Then after lunch we took the FACT (Fighter Aircrew Conditioning Test). It's basically just a weight-lifting and endurance (push-ups, crunches) test and EVERYBODY said it was harder than they thought it would be and were wore out afterwords. Unfortunately, my tubby butt failed miserably (well... maybe not that bad, but still a fail). It just means my chances of getting a fighter went down (I want heavies anyway), but you can retake it as of

Another day, another dollar...

So it was nice not having to show up to class until 0900 this morning. We had 2 CAI's this morning: Aerodynamics 1 and 2, which I was done with by 1030. Then we waited for the review which started at 1400. That was done at 1530, then we had our "Intro to Operational Procedures" until 1630. Basically just a "here's what's in the checklist". We were done after that. Tomorrow starts at 0700... ugh.

Another day in the sim

Had my first "Contact" sim today and it was in one of the sims with the full wrap-around screens. Very cool! It doesn't move but I actually caught myself getting queasy a couple of times! I've been told they've had a ton of students yak in there. Anyway, we took off from Vance, flew up to Dogface (the aux field north-west of Vance) and did some pattern work. Then went to one of the training areas, did a spin, some slow flight, and a power-on stall. Came back to Vance after that and beat up

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

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.

1st Saturday

Went to C-Springs for a steak at Outback w/ a bunch of people last night. Came back and had a few too many Captain and cokes in the lounge last night. Had a great time, but had a hangover like you read about this morning. Didn't study much during the day. One of the security guys has a crap-load of DVDs that he gave me (class leader, the old guy) to let everyone use for free (check-out of movies at the front desk costs a couple bucks). Watched a couple, then did some chair-flying/studying with s

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

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!

08-05 graduation

So like I said, we all went to 08-05's graduation yesterday. It was cool, I'm glad I went, gives me something to look forward to. After that I hung out in the computer lab for 4 and a half hours studying for our systems 2 test on Tuesday. The simulator mission after that was cool, we went through all the buttons and switches and stuff more in depth, then got to fly around a bit. I did a loop or two and the guy I was with practiced his prohibited maneuvers (where else can we do them?).

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