Water Survival

I spent Monday traveling. After two layovers at Dallas and Atlanta, I arrived in Pensacola around dinner time. There was no room at the Inn, and since there are no nearby stables, they sent me off base to an extended stay hotel.

Tuesday morning, I took a taxi onto Pensacola NAS and got dropped at the water survival building with another guy about 30 minutes early. Most of the day was academic lessons taught in typical Air Force fashion with Powerpoint slides. That said, this course is one of the best I've taken. The instructors are experts, they're funny, they teach well, and even the Powerpoint presentations have loads of video clips, some of them pointless. They've been heeding their critiques. After lunch we got issued some gear, changed, and jumped in the water outside. They sent us down a zip line doing the post-egress checklist (check canopy, remove visor/mask, etc.), had us swim under a parachute canopy, taught us all about 20-man and 1-man rafts, and hoisted us up using two different devices. Pretty fun stuff really. It may sound all tough and stuff, but all 50 or so of us look like total dorks with our oversized flightsuits, red helmets, and two-piece life preservers. These particular life preservers look too much like water wings to be taken seriously, though I must admit they might save my life someday.

Today we had two academic lessons before we changed and got on the boats for another application of 20-man rafts. The boats picked us up after a brief lesson and we got on a bigger boat for a drop and drag, where we learned how to unhook from out parachutes if it's dragging you through the water. It's nothing cosmic, but fun stuff to get paid to do. Following that everyone got to parasail off the big boat detach and do the checklist before landing in the water and getting picked up. While we were waiting to parasail, the instructors showed this awesome shark documentary. (I appreciated that.)
The weather was perfect, clear skies, low wind, and moderate temps. Can't ask for better! On the ride back we saw dolphins jumping in the wake. Nice.

Walmart for my fishing kit tonight!

Sittin, Waitin, Appreciatin'

For the past few weeks I've had no official duties. It's been nice to relax. I'm looking into apartments in Corpus, reading a lot, and spending time with my Loved One. I'm trying to volunteer/shadow at the base hospital. We'll see how that goes. I plan on leaving for Corpus Christi on 15 Oct in order to get settled, go to water survival in Pensacola on 19 Oct, and get back to Corpus with time to prep for starting T-44s on 26 Oct. In the meantime, I get to watch TV, work out, and catch up on my book list.

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.