Fam 0

So Fam 0 turned out to be pretty chill. We've evidently won the lottery with a great on-wing. She's supposed to be one of the better instructors. She explained everything clearly and succinctly. She showed us how to get and aircraft, check the book, compute the weight and balance, and how to get the dash-1 weather report of the Navy weather site. We went over briefing expectations and how thorough our systems knowledge is expected to be. After the tour of the hangar and a cursory explanation of the preflight inspection, we briefed the landing pattern and the course rules/local procedures for transitioning to Cabaniss, our auxiliary landing field. Not to bad, so hopefully a weekend of studying will pay off on Monday.

Best Christmas Break Yet

On New Year's Eve I asked my lovely girlfriend to marry me, and she said YES! I am now engaged. I know my blog doesn't usually cover my personal life, but this was much too important to exclude. I look forward to writing about our exploits around the world for years to come!

Back to flying...

After an excellent and much-needed Christmas break with my wonderful family and lovely fiancée, I got back to ground school today. We covered the weight-and-balance forms for the T-44 and most of the performance charts in the back of the NATOPS (flight manual).

In the afternoon, my wingman and I signed up for a prof sit in a sim, a time to get to know the switchology of the aircraft and run through checklists. We took the whole 1.5 hours and made some progress, but it still seems daunting. One of the guys who was getting in the sim after us told us it gets much better though, and that it's really not that bad. We'll keep practicing, but hopefully he's right.