Copilot

Today I got to be copilot for the guy I went through the contact stage with. We came up with a plan to fly to Houston, stop for some food, and come back. We didn't even need gas. We had a couple issues with the pilot-side CDI in the runup while we were running through the checklists, but it ended up passing all the checks, so we took off without much trouble. The CDI is the course deviation indicator, which allows you to follow a course from a NAVAID. The enroute portion of the flight was uneventful except for the several times ATC cleared us to an intersection, and we had to fly fix-to-fix due to the lack of GPS in our aircraft. Fix-to-fix is not a big deal, it's just a little more work than plugging a point in the GPS. As we approached the airport of intended landing, I switched from the Center frequency to the approach frequency and checked in. Normal stuff. The first thing I heard back was a traffic advisory, "...traffic, 12 o'clock, Northeast-bound, you're overtaking them, altitude indicates 2,700." We were at 3,000. So we both immediately start looking for this traffic. I finally spot him, so we continue. I soon realized, however, that he wasn't really moving in the windscreen, so I just told the pilot to turn left immediately. As we made the turn, we rolled out and passed the Cessna well within a comfortable distance. A little bit of a scare, but a timely traffic call and spotting the traffic early prevented any sort of dangerous situation. It was pretty busy, but we landed safely, ate a late lunch, and took off again without issue. The flight back was uneventful, but our TACAN needles went haywire right at the beginning of the flight, and we realized our only options for straight-in instrument approaches were radar approaches. All this was fine, because the weather was clear and a million, but it may have been a little uncomfortable in the weather. We landed back at the homefield without further issue, and I had a few more good flying stories.

One week down

I passed my instrument review exam this morning. In addition to a ton of questions from FAR/AIM, it had lots of RMI problems asking how to enter holding in different scenarios and questions about ATC clearances and instrument approach procedures. After the test we reviewed Navy specific flight rules and operating restrictions found in OPNAV 3710.7, and the instructor released us early. Not a bad first week.

AVIATION TRIVIA: The only difference between a straight IFR flight plan and VFR-on-Top is flying the VFR hemispheric altitudes on a VFR-on-Top and maintaining VFR cloud clearances.

PIREP - It's cloudy and I want to fly

We opened up this morning with a review of weather and a practice test. The weather instructor tells lots of stories about flying in and around the Pacific, especially the Philippines and Indonesia. They're good ole war stories and usually pretty amusing. We reviewed clearances, standard radio comm, initial calls to ATC, and lost comm procedures in the afternoon and I finished up the instrument review CBT. This GPS is really different from the one in the T-6 - no map display, just a readout of the next waypoints! We're kickin' it old school. I really think they should have made the keyboard standard qwerty as well, but they decided to make it completely non-standard. At least the letters are in alphabetical order. I'm really learning to appreciate how Gucci the T-6 was.

Four of us sat around afterward to work on the CBTs and reminisced about the T-6 and told our best stories.

Wx test tomorrow, then more instrument review.

PIREPs are pilot weather reports.

Fair

I "faired" my ride today, which even though that is passing, is bad. It's better than unsat, but below average. The good news is it's only for one thing - landings. Tomorrow I have a pattern only sortie to fix that.

I had an EP sim this morning that also wasn't the best sim I've ever had. Luckily it's pretty much impossible to fail a sim.

Today I asked the controller coming back from Hacker to give me vectors to Orchard, one of the entry points for the opposite runway. Added that to my list of ridiculous things I've done so far. Probably won't solo until Monday or Tuesday because of scheduling and weather rolling in later in the week. The time will come soon enough. It always does.