Training the Best

A view of the cockpit during cross country flight. I couldn't take my big camera, so the image quality isn't what I would like, but it's not too bad for a point and shoot. The thing on my left leg is a kneeboard holding my flight plan (compass headings, VOR frequencies and IDs, CTAF frequencies, Approach frequencies, etc, etc, etc.) and my navigation chart is on my right leg.

A view of my instrument panel during flight. You can see that I'm correcting for a dip in the left wing (yoke turned to the right). I had to drop to 2,000ft to avoid some scattered clouds and the turbulence was bouncing me around a bit.  

Here's me, looking cool in my shades and headphones on my cross country solo. Don't tell my instructor I was taking pics when I was supposed to be flying! 

The T-34C Turbo Mentor, my next ride. She's not the sexiest aircraft in the world, but she's a performer. 

The cockpit of the T-34C. 

The final event of IFS is the cross country solo. In this one flight you are going to apply all the training that you have been given up to this point in order to safely make your way to an airfield 70 nautical miles away, land, and return home. After all the training flights I've done and all the check flights, I was ready to get it done. I've always flown better by myself anyway.

I took off late because my instructor's power went out and he didn't wake up on time, so my 1000 departure didn't happen, I didn't get off the ground until 1049. No sweat, I was glad to just get going at any time after all the delays we've had.

When you don't have a second pair of eyes scrutinizing everything that is going on with the plane, you begin to suffer a bit of obsessive compulsive disorder. You check your airspeed compulsively, keep checking your climb out angle, check your course, etc. Little things that just don't feel like they did in the last flight start to worry you and you go through your checklists again. Then, about ten minutes after takeoff you begin to calm down and things are normal.

The flight out to West Point Regional Airfield was uneventful, I hit all my checkpoints on time and landed without incident. I taxied back to the hold short line for runway 9 and went through my checklists. Guess I forgot that part about set trim for take off. Oops.

When you are taking off in a Cessna 172M, you accelerate until you hit 60mph and pull back on the yoke. What normally happens is that the aircraft springs into the air, you actually have to push forward a bit to keep it from climbing at such a steep angle that it stalls. When I pulled back about 1/3 of the way down the runway at West Point, something was wrong. The plane just didn't want to rotate (pilot slang for take-off). I looked again at my airspeed indicator - 65mph, I should be flying, what the hell? I looked down the runway, not much runway left; about five seconds before I am going to have to decide to shut it down if I want to have enough runway to stop. I pulled back harder, not wanting to pull back too hard, but really needing to get that plane off the ground. Finally she left the runway, reluctantly at first, then she sprang into the air. The six knot crosswind started to shove me to the left of the runway centerline and I began to fight that. This was not shaping up to be a good takeoff.

I began to apply gentle backward pressure to attain my climb-out speed (91mph) but once again the plane wasn't doing what it was supposed to be doing. The nose just wasn't high enough and the speed was climbing too fast. I pulled back harder and then it hit me - the trim! I reached down and took out the one or two turns of nose down trim that I had been using for cruising flight. During straight and level flight, you adjust a small tab on the right elevator, about six inches wide and 24 inches wide, to keep the plane level without you having to fight the yoke the whole flight. With that much nose down trim in, the nose was being pushed down pretty hard during the takeoff roll. I felt kinda sheepish, I was glad that there was no one there to see my mistake.

The flight back from West Point was as uneventful as the flight down until I got back to Quantico. There were three helicopters in the pattern; a CH-53, a CH-46, and one of The President's VH-3s as well as another Cessna piloted (as I found out later) by a Marine Lieutenant Colonel. This just screwed my mojo all up. The extended my downwind leg so that when I finally got permission to turn final I was about three miles from the runway. This isn't what I am used to doing so I came in pretty low, well below glide path. Not a big deal, I just gave it some power and straightened things out. The crosswind was pretty stiff and it made for an exciting landing, but I did manage to bring the plane down in one piece.

Now I just have one more local flight of 1.5 hours or so and I'm out of here! Next plane I fly will be the T-34C Mentor. Not the most intimidating nickname; doesn't strike fear into the hearts of our enemies like the Warthog, Hornet, or Spooky. Just for shits and giggles I've included the stats of the F-18C Hornet, my ride in about a year and a half.

Engine
C-172- 150 horsepower horizontally opposed
T-34C- 400 horsepower turboprop
F/A-18C- 35,400lbs of thrust from two turbofans

Top Speed
C-172- 146 mph
T-34C- 257 mph
F/A-18C- 1,350mph (1.8 times the speed of sound)

Ceiling
C-172- It would take you so long to get there, why bother?
T-34C- 25,000ft
F/A-18C- 50,000ft

Empty Weight
C-172- 1,400lbs
T-34C- 2,970lbs
F/A-18C- 12,500lbs

Unit Cost
C-172- $100,000
T-34C- $1,000,000
F/A-18C- $39,500,000



God I love my job.

I am a United States Naval Aviator

My countrymen built the best airplane in the world and entrusted it to me. They trained me to fly it. I will use it to the absolute limit of my power.

With my fellow pilots, aircrews, and deck crews, my plane and I will do anything necessary to carry out our tremendous responsibilities. I will always remember we are part of an unbeatable combat team: the United States Navy (and Marine Corps. - Josh's Addition)

When the going is fast and rough, I will not falter. I will be uncompromising in every blow I strike. I will be humble in victory.

I am a United States Navy flyer. I have dedicated myself to my country, with its many millions of all races, colors, and creeds. They and their way of life are worthy of my greatest protective effort. I ask the help of god in making that effort great enough.

No, I'm not talking about the dinner and a movie kinda date, (haven't had one of those in months either) I'm talking about a date to report to NAS Penasacola for flight school! 15 Aug 2005, I'll check in and begin to wait.

I won't be able to start flight school for about two months, but I will at least be down in Pensacola. I know there are parts of the Navy culture that's going to really irritate me, but it's flight school: I'll be ok. I'm looking forward to finally flying something with some power. I just learned today that the T-34 can fly inverted, whoo! It can only fly inverted for eight seconds before the engine becomes starved for oil, but have you ever seen a Cessna 172 fly inverted? Yeah, if you did it was about five seconds from hitting the ground.

As I was talking to a Marine Corps buddy of mine it hit me how unique my chosen lifestyle is. He has been in the Marine Corps reserve for six years, he actually joined three months before I did, and he has never ridden in a helicopter. He's never even been that close to a military helicopter. I live two hundred yards from a landing zone which has CH-53s flying in and out of it daily and I have probably been on a military helicopter more than a dozen times. I can't imagine my friends from UNC who majored in business administration live the same life. There are times that the military life sucks, but when you take a step back and look at the experiences we have had and the responsibilities especially the officers have it's pretty freakin awesome. By the time I'm twenty eight I'll be in command of a 40 million dollar jet flying missions which have international policy implications. Awesome.

Anyway, the date also means that I'll leave TBS on the 8th of August for Charlotte where I'll be for a week before heading on down to Pensacola. I also intend to spend the weekend of 5-7 August in the Chapel Hill area if anyone is going to be around. Drop a line if you are going to be around!

Well finally, after not really going anywhere, I got to use my flight skills to go somewhere. It is called a cross country flight. A long time ago I thought that meant across the United States, but no I know that doing that in a Cessna 172 would take a loooong time. Cross country just means that I land at a different airport than I take off from and I use navigation and charts to get there. I was actually really looking forward to it.

So my flight took me about 70 miles southeast to an old WWII airport we call West Point. I was supposed to fly at a cruising altitude of 3,000', but the weather didn't really cooperate with us. As I was climbing up to altitude, we encountered clouds which caused me to cut short my ascent. We started to make the flight at 2,500' but that wasn't even low enough. The other problem was the decreasing forward visibility; I could not see more than 4 miles in front of our plane. The minimums for my current rating are a cloud ceiling of 1,500' and 3 miles visibility. By the end of the flight down to West Point, we were really pushing that.

I flew into West Point without incident, but then things got a little hairy. Another student from the IFS program was right behind me doing the same flight, but I never heard him on the radio as I was landing. West Point is an unontrolled airport, which means there is no tower to talk to, so you announce all of your intentions and flight actions on a Common Traffic Advisory Frequency (CTAF). I should have heard him announce that he was approaching the airspace and should have heard him announce he entered the landing pattern, but I never heard that. So when I was pulling up to the end of the runway and saw him in the downwind leg of his landing approach, I asked my instructor. "We didn't hear him announce, so he's not coming here" was the response, but before he could finish saying that, the other a/c turned base (perpendicular to the end of the runway he's landing on). Guess we'll have to expedite that takeoff.

We took off without any incident, but I think my instructor underestimated how close they were. Before we turned crosswind (the first left turn after takeoff) they were at the end of the runway. It was more of a situation of us cutting them off than us being in danger. Hey, they deserved it, we found out later that they had dialed up the wrong frequency and thought we were the assholes.

The rest of the flight went without any excitement at all, we flew back to home direct, using the GPS, because someone else was waiting for the plane.

That is all I have left though, a couple more cross country flights and then I am on to Pensacola. The Mike Company XO, Capt. Segisi, wants me to go to SERE school Aug 22d for ten days, but I'm not so sure about that. I want to go to SERE school (Survival, Escape, Resistance and Evasion), but the problem is that if I don't check into NAS Pensacola, I'm not officially on the waiting list and it will just be that much longer until I start flight school. SERE is pretty nasty too, it is a school designed for aircrews, special forces, other people who may be captured behind enemy lines, and it teaches them how to deal with being a prisoner of war. And not a Geneva convention prisoner of war, a prisoner of war in a country which doesn't give a damn about the Geneva convention. We'll see.

"Quantico tower, this is 75 Lima, we're going to make that a full stop."

Doesn't mean much by itself, just a standard landing clearance call, but today, while approaching the runway for the fourth time that flight, it meant that I was about to take the first major step towards being a naval aviator; my first solo.

My instructor, Kurt Kaiser, was indicating to the tower at Quantico Marine Corps Air Station that instead of doing anohter touch and go landing, we were going to come to a full stop so that he could get out and send me on my solo. I would like to say that I was knee shakingly nervous, but I was suprisingly calm. We taxied to taxiway D and, he gave a last few words of advice, and hopped out. The plane was mine.

The cockpit is a very calm and soothing place when there is no instructor there. I'm sure it has to do with the fact that there is this incredibly complicated machine before me and I know what to do with it. I had just been thinking to myself earlier in the day how my confidence had been shot lately due to the difficulty I was having with landings and all of the sudden that changed.

I took a few seconds to look over my checklist before calling the tower to continue and when I looked over my left shoulder to check the pattern for traffic, something caught my eye. My baggage door was open. Crap. I called tower and requested clearance to return to the aero club to fix it, I can't just hop out on the taxiway and fix it with the engine running and traffic moving about. I got clearance to contact ground control and proceed when another plane came off the runway, blocking my turn to head back. He saw my baggage door and proceeded to signal me that it was open. I knew this and needed him to get out of the way, but couldn't convey this to him. Finally my instructor came over the radio and said that he was going to fix it. He ran over, slammed the door shut and I was off.

My flight was to be three take offs and landings, never leaving the pattern. It was the most fun I've ever had flying. I caught myself smiling in the cockpit for the first time in a while. Everything went as planned, but I also knew that if something went wrong that I could handle it. My landings were probably the three best I have ever done. The goal in landing a plane is to put it down "on the numbers" which refers to the number markers at the end of the runway, and I did it every time. Nice and smooth, uneventful landings. A good landing is one you can walk away from, but a great landing is one in which you can use the plane again.

MOUT town, the training facility here in Quantico where we did all our urban combat training. I found these images while surfing the Getty Images website and thought they may help illustrate some of my urban combat postings. The images are of some enlisted Marines conducting training in conjuntion with a week long journalist training course conducted here at Camp Barrett. 

A Marine takes advantage of one of the many 'mouseholes' in MOUT town. These little fuckers are everywhere, many at ground level, and you can't see into them because it is dark in the basements of the buildings. This Marine is actually using it incorrectly, pulling the barrel back just inside the window would conceal him from sight and conceal his muzzle flash too.  

A couple of Marines drag their buddy to saftey during MOUT training. You can see the protective masks we wear and you can see a bit of MOUT town in the background. 

A group of Marines "popping" a corner in MOUT town. This is one of the techniques we learned to look around a corner without getting shot. Also from the Getty Images website. 

A bunch of journalists running through what looks like LZ-7, the landing zone right behind our barracks which we used to board choppers for all of our field exercises. In the background, that is one of the CH-53Es that we rode into the field. This image, from the Getty Images website, came from a series of images of journalists training with the Marine Corps in Quantico prior to embedding with US forces for the Iraq war.  

Well we can chalk the week of July 4th through the 8th as a loss. Due to the Independence day holiday, runway repairs, and inclement weather due to Tropical Storm Cindy, I ended the week with exactly as many flight hours as I started with; 8.2. Grrr.
I need 25 flight hours to get out of this place, and I want to get those hours as quickly as possible. The flying is fun, but there is absolutely nothing to do here while I'm not flying.
This week should be better, I have five flights scheduled, and if I get them all done, it should put me over 15 hours and that much closer to getting out of here. I should also do my first solo this week, a major step towards getting out of here. It I can get that done, I think I'll be out of here before the first week in August. Here's hoping for the best.