Training the Best

Some people have mentioned that my blog entries tend to be a little long so I'll have to break my cross country up into two or maybe three entries. Here goes.

I have been looking forward to my cross country since I found out we get to choose where we go. A lot of students choose to take their cross countries to Las Vegas or Colorado or something of that sort, but I didn't want to waste my trip on Vegas or something lame like that. Better to see the family and spend some time with the friends on the government's dollar. And with the almost 600 gallons of jet fuel I burned going for about $4.68 a gallon, I spent about $2,700 of those government dollars.

My day started at 0530 on Friday morning. Keep that time in mind; it will come into play later. I hadn't gotten much sleep because I was anxious about flying into Charlotte Douglas airport on a Friday night. Charlotte is the 19th busiest airport in the nation; ahead of Boston's Logan airport, New York's LaGuardia, and both DC area airports. I have never dealt with that much traffic and I am just learning how to do this stuff. I had visions of Charlotte Approach becoming fed up with me and sending me out to the outer marker to hold for thirty minutes until I get my shit together.

So we took off at about 0830 on Friday morning and climbed up into the high altitude airways. Above 10,000 feet in the T-34 we have to wear oxygen masks and we were flying at 19,000 feet. It was really kinda cool to be up that high, literally and figuratively. It was cool to see the curve of the Gulf of Mexico and see how far we could see, plus it was cold. We turned the air conditioner off and I actually started to get a little cold up there.

The first leg was uneventful; we flew for a little less than two hours and landed at Baton Rouge Regional. My landing was a little flat, but it had been over six weeks since I had landed the plane! During radio instruments we fly from the back cockpit and the instructor does the takeoffs and landings. The back cockpit has a hood that can be pulled over the cockpit to simulate instrument conditions for IFR practice, but it is also the roomier of the two cockpits so the instructor takes the back cockpit on cross countries.

In Baton Rouge we headed out into town for lunch. We're not allowed to go out in town in our flight suits around here, but on the road there really isn't any other option so it's ok. You get some funny looks strolling into a restaurant in your green fire retardant pajamas in a non military town. I'd like to hear what some of the locals are thinking.

The restaurant we went to was called Lagniappe and it was actually pretty nice. We had a nice waitress named Summer who laughed a little when I asked how to pronounce the name of the restaurant. "You're not from 'round here, are you?" she asked in her Louisiana drawl. It wasn't condescending; she was just amused by the question. I had the Crawfish supreme, a crawfish cake with a spicy white sauce and mini shrimp on top. My instructor had crawfish tails and crawfish etouffe. It was really good, I'm glad the people at the airport recommended it. I like to try new things everywhere I go so we specifically asked for a local restaurant.

The flight from Baton Rouge was relatively uneventful but once again we were forced into the high altitudes for weather and traffic avoidance. The oxygen masks aren't very comfortable and my rather romanesque nose makes them even more uncomfortable so we try to stay below 10k to avoid having to put them on. To make matters worse we were only assigned 11,000 feet; a mere 1,000' above the oxygen threshold. Oh well, mask up.

Then there was Birmingham. The FBO was nice, they had cookies and nice couches and the place was generally well kept up. But behind the nice exterior was lurking trouble. We sat down for a few minutes, ate some cookies, and talked about our next route, which was supposed to be a low level visual navigation flight to Charlotte.

But when we asked the lady behind the counter for our fuel bill she posed a disconcerting question. She asked if we had given her a fuel card yet. I knew that we had because I had seen Lieutenant Atherton hand it to her. It took us a few minutes to convince her that we weren't full of shit and then she presented a card to us that said US Air Force on it. She was completely confused and called the damn credit card company trying to figure out who the cards in front of her belonged to despite the fact that the cards have side numbers printed on them. She asked the credit card company about our aircraft and even went so far as to tell us that the credit card company didn't have a card for our side number. Like we imagined this fucking fuel card?

Finally we realized that we had to jump in there and take charge of the situation. It was clear that she had given our fuel card to the wrong aircraft and we had to figure out which one that was before it took off. There were three cards on her desk and four fuel request sheets. I reached over the counter to sort out the cards for her myself and my worst fear was realized. The fuel card for the Air Force T-6 was still there on the counter and those two pilots had taken off fifteen minutes ago.

Even after figuring this out she still didn't know what to do. She got the contact information for the person whose name was on the card, which was useless because it was some Lieutenant Colonel and neither one of the pilots were Lieutenant Colonels. Obviously the card was in the name of the squadron CO.

Finally we stepped in and Lt. Atherton called the tower, got the callsign of the T-6, and talked to approach control in order to figure out where they were. Unfortunately, in the time that the lady behind the counter wasted the aircraft had already left the local area and was somewhere over Tennessee. We asked them to relay a message to the next controller and have the aircraft call us when they landed. Finally, after another hour of waiting, the aircraft landed and they called us with the credit card number so we could pay the lady for our fuel. We decided to have them ship the card back to the squadron and pay for all our gas with the number. I had my doubts, but it worked.

Even before the fuel card fiasco there was a thunderstorm threatening on the horizon. After that fiasco we really had to hustle so we didn't get stuck in Birmingham that night. We took off VFR and as Lt. Atherton flew the plane I broke out the charts, figured out a route, and filed it over the radio. We got a clearance direct to Charlotte and climbed up to altitude. At first we were only at 9,000' but we were quickly dodging thunderstorms. We had to request heading deviations twice to go around thunderstorms and finally had to bite the bullet and climb over them. First up to 11k. Then to 14k. Then finally to 17k. At one point we flew between two towering thunderstorms that had tops somewhere in the 30,000' range. It was pretty cool, but I was well aware of the danger involved.

To the non pilot clouds look fluffy and nice. To someone who has flown through clouds they are to be respected. Your garden variety fluffy cumulus clouds are no big deal, but when they start to get vertical development and build into cumulonimbus, you know to stay away. Even in cumulus clouds there are air currents that will toss your aircraft around and make your day a lot less pleasant. When they start to build they can get really dangerous. The air currents inside can be strong enough to tear an aircraft's wings off in extreme cases. As our weather instructor in API put it "that tends to negatively affect the flight characteristics of an aircraft."

Finally we broke out of the clouds and Charlotte Approach started to let us down from altitude. We were vectored well north of the city before being turned around to intercept the ILS approach to runway 23. Because we were up there dancing with the big boys, we had to fly the approach at 190kts instead of the 150 I am used to. Then we were reduced to 160kts before finally being cleared to slow and drop the gear. I was so busy in the cockpit that I don't think I had enough brain left to chew gum.

Then, about two miles from touchdown, about sixty seconds at 120kts, they asked us if we would take 18L instead of 23. This involves a turn out to the right for some spacing and then a turn back to the left of probably 90 degrees or so at low altitude. It really isn't much different from the landing pattern we fly at home, but I heard it was pretty spectacular from the ground. Everybody was watching 23 (Kris, Mom, Dad, and Taylor) because they had a scanner and were listening to the radios, but Kris was keeping an eye on 18L just in case they redirected me. He said that out of the corner of his eye he saw this really small plane doing a "crazy ass turn." My dad managed to get the camera turned around just as I was rolling out of the turn, so there isn't video of the turn, but I know what it looked like from inside.

It was really cool to land at Douglas; I have been going out to the airport ever since I was a little kid. At first it was to see the planes land. Then it was to make out with my girlfriend and watch the planes land. Finally landing there was extremely stressful but worth every bit of it.

We finally landed at about 2020 Eastern Time, which means I was up and flying for almost fourteen hours that day. I thought I would have an uneventful trip back on Sunday. More to come.

It's been a busy few weeks since they took me out of aerobatics and sent me to the Radio Instrument phase of flight school. I was initially highly pissed about the move, but RIs have actually been fun at times and it seems that I may be in a good place as far as grades go.

Instrument Ground School was tough; every day was a fight to keep your brain afloat. I even did the reading before class, something I never did in college, and it was still a fight to take onboard everything they were trying to teach us. Our instructor told us at the beginning of the six day class that if we were to take this class at a college, it would take a full twelve week semester. Well the Navy doesn't have that kind of time, so we've got to do the best we can.

I finished IGS without any trouble and passed the exam with a ninety something. I was a little pissed about the few questions I missed because I applied the knowledge I had and the texts that we were allowed to use and still came away with a different answer than they wanted. Trick questions are ok when they teach you something, but try as I might, I could not come up with a reason why the answer they had was correct. It doesn't really matter, the test is recorded in your training jacket as pass/fail; the score doesn't count.

After you finish ground school you go to the first of four blocks of simulator events. The first block is five sims long and the events are pretty easy. For the most part, we do two sims a day except for the first one and if any special circumstances come up. I did the first two one a day because of a schedule conflict and then continued two a day for the rest of that block and the four sim block following.

I actually did pretty well in the sims and was feeling pretty good going into the first block of flights, which is five events long. I finished the sims on a Friday and I thought I'd have the weekend to relax and prepare for the flights. Wrong. I got the call on Friday to come in and grab my flight gear because I had to fly an out and in on Sunday. An out and in is usually a flight to somewhere away from the local area and a chance to see something new. This out and in was just two flights in the local area flown out of Corpus Christi International (yeah, international because of a couple flights to Mexico). We fly out of International on the weekends because NAS is closed on the weekends.

Actually flying out there with all the radio traffic and non standard radio calls and procedures is a lot harder than the simulators. The plane is easier to fly, it is more stable and more responsive, but in the simulator you only hear your instructor talking to you and you talking to him. In reality, the approach and tower frequencies are clouded with radio calls; some not entirely professional or even necessary. If I hear one more redneck half assed pilot comment on how "we need summa that thar rain in Refugio" I'm going to scream.

Beyond the non standard calls is the fact that you may not fly the approach as published, ATC may alter your altitudes or turns to de conflict you with traffic. Greatly appreciated, because hitting someone would definitely ruin my day, but it makes it hard on you when you are just learning.

So the first two flights on that Sunday were not very good. The third flight on the following Tuesday ended quickly when, on my first approach, I accidentally entered a diving left turn and oversped the flaps. Things were going well, but a moment's inattention to tune the radio caused me to allow the nose and left wing to drop and before I could recover we hit 130knots (10 more than the safe limit of 120) and we had to end the flight. It was not how I wanted to start the block to say the least.

However, there was hope in sight. My on-wing Lt. Gilkison had told me on Monday that he wanted to fly his last flight with me on Wednesday and we were going to head up north to College Station and get some burritos. He's getting out of the Navy and wanted to spend the taxpayer's dollars to get lunch one more time.

This was good for two reasons. One, because I am comfortable flying with Lt. Gilkison and tend to make fewer mental errors when we fly together because I am more relaxed. Second, and perhaps more importantly, he has always been generous with the grades and since he's done with the Navy he hinted that he would be even more generous on this flight.

The flight up there was really cool, we flew two approaches in the local area for training and then we headed up north for lunch. We cruised at about 8,000 feet, in and out of clouds the whole way. We flew the GPS the whole way; it was a very relaxed flight. It was really cool to use the plane to get somewhere for once.

The burrito place in question is called Freebirds. It's a small chain with places in San Antonio, Austin, and Houston as well. It is a lot like Cosmic in Chapel Hill, but a lot tastier. You pick the kind of tortilla, meat, rice, and beans, then choose from different fillings for your creation. The one interesting addition is barbecue sauce. I know, I know, it sounds crazy but this is Texas after all. It actually was pretty good.

The best part was after we finished our lunch. A family was seated behind us and apparently the five or six year old kid with them was eyeballing us the whole time we were sitting there. The father came over, son hiding behind him, and said that his son wanted to know what kind of plane we flew.

We talked to the dad for a few minutes; I don't think the son said a single word. He just clutched his father's leg and looked at us with these huge eyes. Lt. Gilkison gave the kid his squadron patch off his flight suit and we took a picture with him and his dad. Maybe a future naval aviator was born.

A snapshot of the local culture. Sigh.

Yes, I know he's a marine. Every service has its idiots. I'm not sure exactly how he was a marine sniper and special forces; I didn't stick around to trade war stories with the guy.

My personal favorite is the "Take your ex out tonight. One bullet oughta do it." The one below that with the tiny print is that line about trying to see from your point of view but not being able to fit his head that far up his ass.

Well the weather this 4th of July weekend has sucked. It's rained every day and doesn't show any signs of clearing today. And here's the forecast for the next nine days here in lovely Corpus Christi, TX.

Today Jul 4 Scattered T-Storms 89°/78° 40%			89°F Check Flight Delays
Wed Jul 5 Scattered T-Storms 88°/78° 60%			88°F
Thu Jul 6 Scattered T-Storms 89°/79° 50%			89°F
Fri Jul 7 Isolated T-Storms 86°/79° 30%			86°F Check Flight Delays
Sat Jul 8 Isolated T-Storms 88°/79° 30%			88°F
Sun Jul 9 Isolated T-Storms 88°/80° 30%			88°F
Mon Jul 10 Scattered T-Storms 89°/81° 30%			89°F Airport Conditions
Tue Jul 11 Scattered T-Storms 90°/80° 40%			90°F
Wed Jul 12 Isolated T-Storms 90°/80° 30%			90°F

Wow, good thing I'm in the simulators. Can't cancel a simulator for weather.