Training the Best

Well after not having anything to say or do, I have had one hell of a week. Four days and five flights later, I have soloed!

The weather cleared up this week and we have had clear skies and 90 degree temperatures all week. This meant a busy week for us. Almost every day the working areas were filled and the landing patterns were crowded. It would be a lot better if the areas were empty and you could just concentrate on what you need to do, but that's not feasible and not really realistic anyway. The airspace was crowded as hell on my solo too, so it was good training.

After flying three days in a row I was really flying well. My emergency landing pattern was good and my landings were getting pretty good. This is a good thing because before they let you solo you have to do a check ride with another instructor. It's also called a safe for solo flight because their job is to test you and see if you are indeed safe to go solo.

I flew my check ride with Lt. Mauldin, a pretty laid back Navy instructor. I have flown with him twice before, once in basic instruments and once in contact phase. The first part of the flight is the brief, where they grill you about the aircraft's systems, emergency procedures, limitations, course rules, etc. Mauldin had me draw out the entire fuel system with tanks, pumps, lines, drains, sensors, check valves, yada yada yada. This is not unusual and we study for it. We have to be prepared to draw the entire fuel, oil, and propeller systems and explain them.

So I drew the fuel system up on the board and we talked about it ad nauseum. An excerpt:

Lt. Mauldin: So how many fuel nozzles are there in the system?
Me: 10 primary and 4 secondary sir.
Lt. Mauldin: So why is that?
Me: Well on start-up, fuel is only flowing from 10 nozzles; the last four come on line around 40% N1
Lt. Mauldin: And why is the system designed that way?
Me: In order to facilitate easier light off and prevent hot starts.
Lt. Mauldin: Ok, so what is the indication of a hot start?
Me: ITT rapidly rising above 925 degrees sir.
Lt Mauldin: Ok, you've got a hot start. Emergency procedure, Go!

You get the picture. We're expected to know the T-34C inside and out. I remember being overwhelmed when I got here and they issued me my mountain of books. I thought there was no way in hell I would ever learn all this stuff. But now I can talk your ear off about that stupid airplane. Anything you want to know, I can tell you. Stuff you don't even care about, I can tell you. Stuff you didn't know existed, I can tell you about.

So for the most part the brief went well. He stumped me with a question about the inverter system that I knew I didn't know. I gambled that he wouldn't ask it and he caught me. Not a huge deal, I knew the emergency procedure, I just couldn't explain why we do what we do. Other than that one little snag I knew what I was doing so we headed out to the plane.

On the aircraft we have several weight-on-wheels switches. Their purpose is to disable or enable systems on the ground when there is weight on the wheels. An instructor once joked that his student had a weight-on-ass switch that disabled his brain when he sat in the cockpit. Another person said that your IQ will drop fifty points as soon as the engine starts and they are both right. Flying a plane is not like driving a car; once things are in motion they don't stop. You can't pull over to the side of the road in the air.

So when you take the usual stress of flying and add the additional stress of a check ride you start making mistakes. Failure means a bad mark on your training record and one more chance before you go before the board to possibly be attrited. Also, this second chance will be with the squadron CO or XO. And everybody talks; the entire squadron will likely know you failed your check ride in the time it takes you to walk from the plane back to the hangar.

I made a bunch of small mental errors, things that I have done right every other flight and screwed up this time. For the most part, they were small errors and I corrected them before Lt. Mauldin corrected me, but it was a little frustrating. I know what to do, I know how to do it right, but for some reason I screw things up.

Case in point; a high altitude power loss (HAPL). You are flying along, fat, dumb and happy and your engine craps out. What do you do now? Speed, clean, check, feather, look, lock. Airstart, bailout, emergency engine shutdown, maday/7700 call, intercept the ELP, gear and flaps, canopy emergency open, battery off. I know what all those steps mean; I can talk your ear off about all the things that could go wrong in those procedures and what to do if they do. But for some reason, when I had to do the procedure yesterday I started my emergency landing pattern in the wrong direction and dropped my gear for an emergency landing onto the mud flats (gear should be up, flaps should come down.)

Almost all of my mistakes I realized before he had a chance to correct me, which I guess showed him that I really do know what I am doing and he passed me. He had a couple laughs at my expense in flight and in the debrief, but that was more reassuring than anything. So I was cleared to solo. I only had an hour break before I briefed with the Operations Duty Officer for my solo flight.

I was honestly a little nervous before taking off. This is not a twenty five year old, $50,000 Cessna 172. This is a $1,000,000 Navy asset. If you twist up a Cessna, no big deal, it's maybe a local news story. You bust up a Navy plane and you're going to have your picture in USA Today. I am never nervous flying the plane from takeoff all the way to the turn to touchdown. Touchdown is another story. There are so many things that can go wrong and you don't have much time to fix it. The reality is that I'm well trained, I know what to do, and I am well within the safe limits of the aircraft, but it just doesn't feel natural to fly this thing at the ground at 100 knots (115 miles per hour).

So I briefed with the ODO and headed out to the flight line. I ran into a buddy from TBS who is in VT-27 on my way out and we chatted briefly. Ironically, he had failed his check ride the day before. I felt kinda bad when he asked me what I was flying that day, but I'm sure he'll pass the next ride. It was weird walking out there all alone. The CO told us in our in brief that it would be a strange feeling when we walked out there for the first time alone and he was right. I had this feeling like I was sneaking a cookie out of the cookie jar. Not really doing something bad, just taking something on the sly. After being under the microscope for so long, it is strange when they finally just cut the cord and send you on your way.

Startup and run up went well but there was something strange. I didn't hear any radio traffic with the ground frequency dialed in on the UHF radio. There were planes taxiing down the taxiways, so I knew that there were people talking on the frequency but I still heard nothing. These planes are not new, most are twenty plus years old, things crap out all the time. But I was not ready to give up on this flight because if I gave up this plane I might not get another one and have to go solo the next day.

Fortunately for me, when I pressed the transmit switch on the throttle lever with my left thumb to make my call to ground control, the radio sprang to life. All of the sudden my helmet was filled with radio calls. I have no idea why this happened, but the radio worked fine the rest of the flight. If my radio had crapped out in flight there is still the VHF radio and there are emergency procedures for lost communication.

So I proceeded to the run up area, did my preflight checks, and checked in with the Runway Duty Officer. There was another solo departing at the same time and we only had one runway available to land and depart on so I was told to head out to the working areas then come back for my required five touch and go landings. Takeoff and departure was uneventful and I headed up to the north. It's a forty mile trip to the northern training areas, but at almost 200 miles per hour that only takes a little more than ten minutes.

So there I was, alone and unafraid at 8,000 feet over the Gulf of Mexico. What now? The list of maneuvers we are actually allowed to do is very short. Mostly I was just eating up time and waiting to head back for my touch and goes. I did a couple quick turns back and forth at 60 degrees angle of bank, did some high G climbs and some negative G pushovers (don't know if I was really supposed to do those, but oh well) but it got kinda old after a while. The one thing I did enjoy doing was flying really really sloppy. I didn't really give a crap if I gained or lost 150' on my turn, I've got 8000 more where those came from. If I wasn't so tired I might have taken the time to really do some nice level turns and maybe some level speed changes but I was so I didn't.

Eventually time was up and it was time to head back home. I headed inbound for the break and I could already tell that it was going to take a while to get in my necessary five touch and go landings. When the airfield is really busy you can't just fly your normal landing pattern which takes about two minutes. You might get extended off of the upwind, which extends your downwind leg, or you might get waved off because someone is still on the runway, which means that three minute pattern you just flew was for nothing. It seems silly to bitch about it, but I was in the last half hour of three and a half hours of flight time that day in a cramped, hot cockpit, loaded down with gear and under a lot of stress for the first two hour flight. By the time I finally landed I was just happy it was over with.

I walked back from the flight line feeling good. My ass hurt, I was exhausted, I was hungry, but it felt really good to have such a huge hurdle behind me. Next stage: Precision Aerobatics! Now I get to flip this plane over and pull some serious Gs. But for today I have the day off. Thank god, I am not ready to start another block of flight today.

// posted by Josh @ 6/09/2006 10:10:00 AM