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.

// posted by Josh @ 7/31/2006 06:07:00 PM