MLS

Wednesday was just another CPT trainer where we looked at more malfunctions, this time in the hydraulic system and went through the reject procedures again. Not too bad. We had a really good student engineer, so things were teetering on the edge of boring. Good to have sims like that sometimes.

Yesterday's WST sim was a little frustrating. I flew a terrible ILS, and then the sim broke. It just lost all power and my instructor called it quits. We were technically done, but I just felt I'd ended on a bad note.

Today made up for it, in that I flew a good MLS, which is almost indistinguishable from an ILS when you're flying it. MLS stands for microwave landing system. It's a precision approach that the military used to think was going to be the next big thing. Eventually GPS took off and MLS was left mostly obsolete. It's conceivable that the Air Force may still use them someday, so we practice shooting MLS approaches every once in awhile.

The Herc can do some pretty cool stuff. We did a windmill taxi start, where you get three engines up and taxi at high speed down the runway to get the fourth engine started. You could do that if the starter in one of your engines was broken. We also practiced a three-engine takeoff, which is another nice trick to have available.

When we were all done, we just practiced landing after landing. I probably got six or seven reps, and it was nice to get the practice and the confidence.

First RI

RI's are Radio Instrument flights. They're just instrument flights, but that's what they're called down here. I had my first one today. There were two other students on the flight with me, so it was a long day. We started in the local area to knock out my approaches, an ILS, a VOR/DME at CRP, and two radar approaches at Kingsville NAS. One of the other guys got in the seat and flew down to McAllen on the Mexican border where we ate lunch. We then flew back and landed. We were done by about 3pm. I got up at 3:30am for the 5am brief. Very early day. My earliest in a very long time!

My flight went ok for the first instrument ride. The weather was actually IMC, so it was cool to get some actual instrument time. My first transition to land was kind of questionable. I made a really steep descent when I probably should have just gone missed approach. I flew the PAR really well. I intend to continue that trend. Tomorrow will be more instrument approaches.

Fam 1

I flew today for the first time in 5 months. It was great to get back in the air. My wingman took off, and did the highwork first (speed change, level turns, and slow flight). We swapped about and hour into it, I did my highwork, then transitioned to the aux field Navy Cabaniss. We broke over the numbers and flew about 10 touch-and-go's. We switched seats again in the landing pattern and my wingman finished up his pattern work and flew back to land at Navy Corpus where we got a downwind entry for the full stop landing. This aircraft seems to be very forgiving in the landing transition. I'm sure the wheel struts are taking a beating, since it's a Navy plane, but hopefully it won't be such a fight to land it well. Good feedback and plenty to work on tomorrow when it'll be my turn to start up and do the takeoff.

Removing the Rust

I flew plain ol' contact today, complete with area work, emergency landing patterns, and aerobatics. I felt a bit rusty, but other than that the flight went pretty well. I would have liked to move through each maneuver in a more timely manner, but I got most of it done anyway. Flying more formation tomorrow.

Exhaust Stacks and Position Lights

I double turned formation sorties again today. Lots of practice, lots of work, lots of brain cells fried. I just hope I'm learning fast enough. I flew my first formation landing today. That was cool. I was concentrating so hard, it hardly felt like I actually landed...kind of like when you're driving somewhere and you arrive surprised that you don't really remember the last 15 minutes of your driving because you were thinking about something else. More practice tomorrow.

The stuff we're doing in formation is getting really difficult to describe. I hope that just means it's very specific to military flying and not that I just don't get it.

No more hand-drawn maps!

I flew my 4th low-level today, which means I can make the rest of my maps using the computer software we have instead of prepping them by hand. Excellent! For the past couple of rides I've had to draw out the route, mark the towers, emergency airfields and information, intersecting routes, abort altitude, headings, airspeeds, and altitudes for each leg, and timing. It's much easier on the computer, and you can actually read it, which is the best part.

Yesterday my pattern work was decent, but today it was a little sloppy. The crosswinds didn't help either. However comma I rocked my area work with almost no prep. I like that.

Flying low-levels has been really fun. I have 6 more until the check which should be next Friday at this point. Today I sat another recorder tour in the RSU. It was pretty uneventful except for one aircraft that had a suspected bird strike on landing roll.

Low-Level

So low-level is definitely fun. You stay very busy in the aircraft, assessing your fuel state at each turn point, making sure you stay at 500' AGL, maintaining course, looking at the map to verify your position, and spotting towers along the route. I can't wait to do this back home in the mountains someday. It would be so awesome! Flying low-level on the coast or over water would be really cool too. There are some lakes around here that we fly over, and it's way better than flying over plain old North TX. My landings were atrocious though, so I should probably devote more time to patterns next ride.

See Spotter Watch

Today we had individual report, as in no formal brief! I went in at 1020 this morning. Awesome! The weather was such that I didn't have to go out to the RSU for my spotter upgrade until about 1230. The spotter's job is to sit in the RSU with binoculars and make sure no one lands gear up, calling out normal configuration to the controller and keeping a count of all the patterns that have been flown.

Lazy day.

I had an EP sim later in the day, leaving only one sim remaining for all of the T-6 phase!

I have a low-level map to prep for tomorrow. Should be fun.

Wow

I thought today was going to be one of the worst yet. I even had a terrible attitude going to work, but it turned out to be a great day. I flew with the Ops Group Commander, and even though I hadn't flown contact in 2 weeks, I did pretty well and didn't make any huge mistakes. My landings weren't terrible either. On top of that, I had the greatest sim of my life, my very last instrument sim. Nice! Tomorrow we're all flying to Fort Worth for our cross country. Should be fun, though much planning needs to get done before tomorrow at noon.

Whether there will be Weather

It's getting hot down here. It's not quite April and it already reached the high 80s today. Hello, Texas! Good thing I'm in an air-conditioned building or airplane most of the day. I started off the day with an instrument sim again. This one went well I thought. It's good to start the day off with something successful.

My pattern-only flight today was ok. The crosswinds did nothing to help me out, but I improved enough that my IP was happy. I just get frustrated when I don't know how to fix a problem. Improving your landings is not something you can solve by reading more or chairflying more. You just have to do it.

Weather class was more about whether I was going to fall asleep or not. I stayed awake, but I should probably read the chapters the instructor covered, because I was not at my peak mental state to say the least. I got put on the schedule for tomorrow, so maybe soloing Friday if the weather holds.

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.

Pattern Only

Today I flew my last ride over again and made the standard for basic aircraft control and got a lot better at maneuvering appropriately in the pattern. I flew the outside pattern almost every time and still got 12 landings. Having a pattern only sortie really helped me out at IFS too, so hopefully this will be a good turning point. The two hours I spent in the sim this morning probably helped as well. Tomorrow I have another instrument sim and the start of a new block. We start real standups tomorrow too. That's never fun.

Pattern Trends is not redundant...no

So every morning in the formal brief, whoever's briefing goes through the prior day's "pattern trends," or what everyone did wrong in the traffic pattern. The traffic pattern is the oblong track you fly above the runway before landing. It has its protocols and procedures, which should be flown precisely. The pattern trends are acronyms that describe what a particular student messed up. For instance, IF means incomplete flare. I had an IRT and "PRD" yesterday. PRD, according to the chart that we have posted in the flight room, purportedly means "pilot requires discipline!" We got a good laugh out of that one. We're going to have to find out what all the codes actually mean, because there are some that are obviously jokes.

My flight today went pretty well. I finally had a decent landing that was on speed, on glideslope, and unassisted.

Fly, Eat, Study, Chairfly, Sleep, Repeat

Flew again today. So cool. One decent landing. Weather was just ok. Got props for my ground ops. Average on everything else. Really busy tonight. I didn't even get out of the building until 8pm. Chairflew with my neighbor a hour tonight. Instrument academics tomorrow at 0830.