Whether there's weather

We started academic lectures this morning at 0800. Not bad for an Air Force job. The morning was devoted to meteorology with special emphasis on thunderstorms, icing, and meteorological threats to aircraft and how to use the available resources like pressure charts, wind charts, weather radar, and text-based forecasts to flight plan effectively. We got into the requirements for alternates, the requirements for filing VFR (1000' AGL and 3 SM vis), the definition of MVFR, and I learned a lot more about weather this time around. Hopefully I can keep soaking it up, because we only have tomorrow morning and then the test on Wednesday. The afternoon was devoted to IFR review. We went over the IFR environment, airspace, special use airspace, cloud clearances, and all the different kinds of NAVAIDs. It will be interesting to finally use a TACAN and maybe an NDB for approaches in this aircraft, since the T-6 didn't have that equipment. I dove into the CBTs after the instructor left, and I gave myself a good review of instruments, along with a confusing introduction to instrument procedures in the T-44. It's difficult with no cockpit context to precisely understand the way I would fly a procedure turn in the T-44, especially since the Navy has different rules and a new mnemonic for remembering the procedure. Worked out afterward, so I'm feeling good. Hopefully the rest of the week goes this well, and I stay this productive.

My job is awesome

I flew to Lubbock this morning. We departed IFR, then canceled our clearance once we found some good weather, and descended between the lines of clouds as we approached Lubbock. It was pretty cool flying 1000' up between the clouds. We just did a visual approach to Lubbock, then the ILS and localizer approaches. We made the last one a full stop, refueled, ate some Mexican, and took off again. Cool. Days like this make it definitely worth getting up at 5am.