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General

Wed May 21

I was supposed to fly this afternoon, but, as you guessed...we had crazy winds! (This seems to be a trend!) I get to switch IPs now also, which is cool because I get a different perspective on what I'm doing right and wrong. I'm on the schedule for tomorrow morning, but winds aren't looking promising, again, so we'll see. If this weather keeps up through friday, I won't fly until tuesday (monday is Memorial Day!). This just means we'll be here that much longer than scheduled. Oh, and we ha

Tues May 20

So, I didn't end up flying on Friday, which just makes it that much more hectic for me this week. Yesterday, I flew in the morning; today I flew twice in the morning (double turning). The first flight was decent, but the second flight sucked. The winds had picked up and I was all over the place. Not to mention I got a headache as we were stepping...I fought through it, but I was beat from the first flight so that wasn't helping any. I ended up getting a good overall and for the most part, m

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

UPT Blogs Banned by AETC Leadership

I have seen a disturbing trend recently. Less and less UPT Journals (a.k.a. blogs) are making it to the "blogosphere" - and the few that are out there are being rapidly purged from the internet. Kind of smells like Mao's Cultural Revolution... Then the www.baseops.net site started receiving emails asking for links to certain UPT blogs be removed. The requests were coming from the authors of those blogs and they were citing negative feedback (and even strong intimidation) from their UPT Squ

Thur May 15

So, as of last night, wasn't scheduled to fly...but I get back from breakfast this morning and, voila! I'm on the schedule! I'm getting ready and planning, etc, and there's a stop launch because of winds....again. There were a few people that flew today, but not too many. Chalk another day up to weather. I'm thinking that i'll probably fly tomorrow since the senior class' IPs are getting freed up. Also, the new class got here today, so the place is getting crowded!

Wed May 14

Flew again today. I've been flying about every other day to start out with; but as the senior class finishes up this week, we will start getting their IPs so our class will be flying much more. I'm looking forward to flying, but not to double turning, oh well...gotta do what you gotta do. The flight went well today; had smooth air and I thought I did fairly well for the point I'm at in the program. Basically just did some steep turns, stalls, slow flight, and my IP demonstrated an area SFL

Sim on brother!

Sorry no post for a week, but I've only had one flight since my check ride, and that was last Monday. The weather was crappy after my check ride, so that's why no flights last week. This week its 'cuz I've been double-turning in the simulator every day. My 88 ride went good, I just had to fill out a boldface sheet and tell the IP how the engine worked. He was very happy. I'm supposed to go cross-country this weekend, but I needed to have all my navigation simulator rides done, which is wh

Mon May 12

Had my second flight today...ugh, not so good. The wind wasn't that bad when we started and taxied, but as we were finishing the runup, the SOF called stop launch for high winds. He cleared us all to go about 5 minutes later (there was about 6 of us waiting to go). My IP said I improved from my first flight, but the winds were kicking us around pretty bad, so the whole flight I was trying to keep altitude and airspeed. Just when I thought I had good airspeed and altitude, a downdraft or updr

Fri May 9

Another benign day of just studying. The guy that was doing our formal brief didn't know what some of the stuff was that he was briefing about (I think it was the NOTAMS: Notice To Airmen). Well, our flight commander didn't like that so much so he got a little upset and told us that he was thinking about putting us on formal release, but didn't since we had worked so hard this past week. Just means we need to keep it together and help each other out that much more. We all got out at a decent

Thur May 8

Woohoo!! Dollar ride, baby!! It finally happened and I think I did well overall. Even though I got all U's: that means I attempted the different maneuvers but wasn't that great at them, I did get the plane back in one piece! There wasn't too many maneuvers on this ride; just slow flight, steep turns, and your takeoff, landing, radios, approach and departure. Sounds fairly straightforward, but it's a lot of work to do in not much time. It's pretty exciting, and I finally know what I need to

Wed May 7

Well, didn't fly again today. I think a few flights got out this morning, but the weather came in late morning and all flights were cancelled for the rest of the day. Good news was that our flight commander bumped another guy off the flight schedule who was supposed to do his 2nd or 3rd ride to put me on there. I was going to be one of the last flights of the day, but, as I mentioned before, the weather rolled in and it started raining. I just studied all day, went out to one of the planes

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

Tues May 6

Alright, I didn't fly today...don't know if i'll fly tomorrow, either. There's 2 of us that I know of that haven't flown at all. Our IP said that he would bump some folks tomorrow to get us up in the air, so we'll see how that goes. So, i'm stuck studying the same stuff: radio calls, checklists, etc. I feel like I can't get any more productive studying done until I fly and figure out what I need to work on. Maybe tomorrow!!

Mon May 5

Today I got to sit in on several briefings to see how those go and to get a better feel for what I need to do to prepare for my dollar ride. That and studying is about all I did today. I wasn't flying today, so I got to absorb all the info I could from those who were flying. I was supposed to fly tomorrow, but me and several others got bumped for guys that are doing their checkrides. I'm not complaining, though. Hopefully I'll get thrown in the mix tomorrow or Wednesday.

Final Contact on Tuesday now...

This sucks. When they first told me I was doing my Final Contact checkride I was like, "Crap! That's too soon! I need more time!!". However, the winds were way out of limits all day on Friday, so nobody flew. AND we are having a "safety day" on Monday because of all those crashing T-38's, so now I'm not checking until Tuesday. I just want to hurry up and get it over with now! Oh well. Navigation test at 0650 tomorrow, guess I'll go study...

Fri May 2

Today was the first day of flying for our class. I'm not sure about the other flight, but I don't think any of the 3 or 4 folks in our flight who were scheduled to fly did so. Winds were way too high all day. We got let go at about 1530 which was sweet. My first flight is on Tuesday so I'll be studying tomorrow and monday for that...should be fun! Oh, went and saw Iron Man last night. Pretty sweet movie! I definitely recommend it if you haven't seen it yet.

Thur May 1

Today we had our first real formal briefing and standup EP. I think they went well overall, but I don't know how much the flight commander liked it. We'll do it again tomorrow and every day until we graduate, so I we're going to do our best. We had some classes and then our academics test, and I made 100%! I'm pretty happy about that. After that and lunch, we spent a few hours in our flight room; just studying, nothing too daunting. Some folks are getting their dollar rides tomorrow (fir

Wed April 30

Well, today we learned a bit about patterns, departures, and arrivals into the 3 airports we use up here. Some of it is fairly straight forward, but a good bit of it is sort of confusing. I'm sure it will become much more clear as we start flying. My suggestion would be to get with a buddy or your class and set up a runway on the floor with tape and simply go through taxi, takeoff, patterns, landings, etc. so at least you know the procedures. That way, it should be a little bit smoother when

More flights...

Busy busy... I've been flying and simming along with more classes pretty much non-stop since my mid-phase. We started doing our navigation classes which are fairly long. I actually did my 3rd area solo today too, which is unusual because we're only supposed to have two. They ran out of instructors this afternoon though, so it was either give me the flight or lose it. I'm now technically only two flights away from my Final Contact checkride, but I'm doing a night flight tomorrow which doesn'

Tuesday 29 Apr

Today was a good break from the normal classroom briefings. We still had some classroom instruction, but we got to go out to the aircraft where some of the senior class folks showed us what a preflight is for this plane. That was a great distraction from the tediousness of the classroom stuff. I have to be honest, the academics (aircraft systems, etc) are coming fairly quick to me because of my Marine maintenance background. Don't get me wrong, though, it's definately NOT easy by any stretch

First Monday

Well, I had a great weekend...didn't really do anything! Went up to Colorado Springs and visited the Academy and Peterson AFB. I'm sure our free weekends are numbered since all the classes are a little behind schedule, though. This morning we had a boldface/ops limits test and only 3 of us messed it up...yep, I was one of em. I simply skipped over one of the blanks on the ops limits. We then went over the aircraft systems, aerodynamics, performance, airspace and radio communication. Oh,

Day One

Today was an ok day. Death by powerpoint describes it well. We had our first boldface/ops limits test today, overall, not too bad. The PFT is another beast all on it's own. If you aren't running, start running well before you get here. You lose about a minute or two on your run time because of the altitude, and there is no waiver for altitude...we missed it by about 400 feet. This weekend is free for us, but it will most likely be the last one as all the classes are backed up and we'll p

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