Dollar ride

We got our dollar rides today! It was sweet! Flyin' through the clouds, pullin' a few G's, pretty surreal. I was slow on ground ops, had a bunch of IRTs, and taxi like a drunk, but it was fun. The real deal is tomorrow. Ride #2 I need to be 100% better. 0545 show time...good thing it's Friday.

This is gettin a little ridiculous

So this has been our 3rd day of no flying. I'm confident we will fly tomorrow though. The weather looks much better.

Today we briefed our flights, but didn't step, just like the last two days. I didn't get a walkaround today because I was FDO("fido"). Answered the phone a couple times, wrote up some accountability forms and gradebook checklists for the IPs. The little office job stuff (AKA arts and crafts) never goes away. As FDO I also had to give the formal brief this morning, which turned out to be a disaster. The Computer folks decided to do something that made all the computers restart 2 minutes after login, so I had to give a hacked together brief with no A/V support reading from random slide printouts that the printer managed to spit out before the computers shutdown. There will be many chances for redemption as the year progresses. I'll have to brief at least once every 2 wks, since we only have 12 guys.

That said, I was really impressed by the help offered to me by my fellow classmates as we struggled to get the day started with seriously broke resources. Everyone asked what I needed and helped me out getting the weather, NOTAMS, the coffee, and figuring out wind corrections for the pattern.

Sim in the morning and flying after lunch. Get up for it.

Long day

Maybe tomorrow will be our dollar rides. We got cancelled for crosswinds out of limits today. Can't go fly if the winds will blow your plane all over the sky.

We briefed the rides and did a walk around so it wasn't a total loss. We started instrument academics too. Boring.

One of the IPs was talking about chairflying today and mentioned how practice DOES NOT make perfect. PERFECT PRACTICE makes perfect. I will forever testify that basketball was the best preparation I've ever had for my profession. I had a couple coaches who used to always say that.

I'm FDO tomorrow. Have to give the morning brief. Should be interesting.

Got some practice time in the sims today and a little chairflying back in the dorms about an hour ago too. Off to bed.

It Starts

Well, no dollar ride today due to weather, but quite the experience nonetheless.

The morning started of with a demonstration of the formal brief and some shotgun questions sitting at attention.

With the empty schedule, I got a lot of practice in the sims and chairflying today.

We realized just how much we don't know today. Sitting around the flight room listening to the IPs teach and ask us GK really emphasized just how much we need to study more.

Opted for the $ Ride

Today we all had to go to a short brief in blues. A couple of us had sims right afterwards, so we had to change in the parking lot. Funny stuff. My sim went alright, still need to work on trim, power control, and rudder coordination.

The OFT sims are pretty slick. You get a 270-degree view around you, so you can actually use ground references and fly traffic patterns. We went through a complete profile - area work followed by pattern work at Hacker.

With that sim completed, we are now opted for our dollar rides. Should be Monday, Tuesday at the latest. Very cool.

Bull riding tonight...just watching.