Training the Best

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.

// posted by Josh @ 7/16/2006 02:32:00 PM