Sunday, March 12, 2006
Ground School
It seems that every military school I have gone to has been preceded by rumors of how unbelievably hard it is going to be, mostly from people who have never been to the school or people who like to dramatize everything.
I was told that the three week ground school before you start flying in Primary was twice as hard as API, with three times the information and half the time to learn it. Yeah, it was a lot of information, but it was well taught and not that hard to learn. I got a 100% on the systems test and 98% on weather.
CPTs followed. Cockpit Procedure Trainers are events designed to test our knowledge of checklists and emergency procedures. The simulator building contains seven simulators which are fully functioning T-34 cockpits which are connected to computers so that your inputs cause the instruments to react as they would in the airplane. There are no screens to simulate the outside world so they are not used for visual flight training, but we will come back to these simulators to learn instrument flight.
The simulators are run by employees of Lockheed Martin who are 90% retired military pilots. Most of them are in their 60s and above and are really nice guys. They've all got good stories and if you are nice to them, they will be nice to you. All except the Four Horseman, but more on that later.
Actually, most of the employees here are civilians. There is no reason for the Navy to train enlisted men to maintain planes which are non deployable when it's much cheaper to hire a civilian contractor to do the job. There are no Navy enlisted personnel in my squadron, all the admin stuff and maintenance is taken care of by civilians. Corpus Christi Army Depot is here too, which is the depot level maintenance facility for Army and some Marine Corps and Navy helicopters. The most shot up and most damaged helos come here to be rebuilt. Combine that with the Customs Agency border patrol aircraft squadron and I'll bet that civilians outnumber military personnel on this base.
CPTs were reputed to be exercises in frustration, with the instructors constantly nitpicking your every word and aggressively correcting the smallest mistake. In reality, if you are prepared and know your shit they are not bad at all.
All events in Primary are graded on a five point scale. One means the maneuver was only demonstrated. Two means the student was unable to perform the event at all (completely forgot the procedure or lost control of the aircraft when attempting to do a maneuver in the plane.) Three means that the student was able to do the event with some minor mistakes. Four means the student performed the maneuver/procedure with confidence and proficiency. Five means that the student was just amazingly impressive; he or she couldn't have done it any better. Throughout my five CPTs I scored 85% 4s, a couple threes, and the rest fives. Not really a big deal.
I mentioned the Four Horsemen. I know the names of two of them: Jeter and Payne. I had Jeter for a CPT5 practice that the squadron scheduled for us because we didn't have anything else to do and they had already booked the time. Jeter was definitely critical, and if I had shaky confidence he might have broken me, but I know how to handle criticism.
The problem with Jeter is that he expects you to know your shit forwards and backwards without fault and when you don't, he really comes down on you. I understand that, Naval Aviation is not the place to be imprecise and unknowledgeable, but we are just learning and it's a bit unrealistic for him to expect me to know every nut and bolt of the plane when I just started learning about it. I got all fours from him, so I'm pretty proud of that.
So ground school is over, I'm now waiting for my first flight, and my blog is caught up, Whoo!
