Through Another Hoop

What a week that was. As you'll read, it started out with some stress, eased up a bit, then finished off with some academic blitzkrieg to my brain and some weekend fun. I realize some people read this regularly and try too keep up with what I'm doing, so to try and provide some normalcy to my postings, I'll go ahead and commit to at least making a post every Sunday, at the least.

Monday I flew my checkride, which was definitely an "experience." The whole time you're flying, the Instructor Pilot (IP) sitting next to you is only there to judge your every move. No pressure, or anything. The whole time I was flying, I thought I was failing it. Just from his comments. I didn't do anything unsafe, but it just felt like it wasn't good enough. Three hours of evaluation later, he tells me I did a good job. Above average, actually. So that was a relief, and something I definitely do not look forward to doing again, even though I know I will.

After the checkride, I flew my first solo flight on Tuesday. With an IP next to me, we flew to an auxiliary field we use to practice at. We landed and he hopped out of the plane, then I was on my own. I had 30 minutes to fly patterns and practice landings (basically flying in a circle, landing over and over). It was fun, but it was windy and bumpy. No pictures, though, because they're not allowed while flying (you could get kicked out if they found out).
Once the solo was done, I thought things would ease up a bit. In fact, I was doing good enough that they didn't have me fly on Thursday so that my other classmates could catch up and we could all do our next set of academics together. Well, once we started said academics, my brain felt like it was going to explode. Basically, we had six hours of powerpoint presentations on cross country flying, navigation methods, and other stuff we're going to use in our next block of training. Six hours crammed with information at the end of the day, and I was supposed to know it all and have some of it memorized by Friday morning for my next flight. I was panicking. So I studied as much as I could that night, hoping just to not entirely fail the flight, which involved navigating from point to point, and keeping track of the time it took for each leg of the trip. Luckily, the Instructors sort of realized how much our brains were trying to process and took it easy on us for that first flight.

Over the weekend, we all went up to Colorado Springs for a quick hockey game between Colorado College and the University of North Dakota. After the game, we went downtown and went bar hopping for a little bit. Sunday we went to Pike's Peak, which was open all the way to the summit due to the decent weather.
We all needed a little stress reliever after this week, and definitely needed to get away from this building and everything in it. Half of us went through our checkrides at some point and the other half are struggling through their flights leading up to their checkrides. In fact, three of the guys have their last-chance flight on Monday. If they all fail, there's only going to be four of us left. That'll be a 50% wash-out rate...and we're only halfway through! We started out with 8, and we're currently at 7. It's rough, because we all came here from Randolph AFB already knowing each other, and seeing some struggle without really being able to help is no fun.
But, I think this last bit of academics was the last big bump in the road for our time in Pueblo. We have one last checkride at the end, but I'll worry about that when the time comes. For now, I just have to get through this next week. Starting off, I have another double turn day tomorrow where I get to do an entire flight solo, followed by another navigation flight with an IP. However, we're supposed to get hit with that big snowstorm everybody's talking about, so we may not be flying for the next couple of days. We'll see...13 flights down, 13 to go! Picture time:

 At the top of Pike's Peak...in the middle of winter

 Pike's Peak, on the drive up (left side, obscured by clouds)

 Garden of the Gods

Hockey Game

Also, here's an article from Air Force Times about the training pipeline I'm currently going through:

RPA Training Article
I'm currently in the second class, going through the RPA flight screening course (emphasis on the word screening!)

Note Taken

So...apparently the reward for doing well and flying above average here means twice as much work...awesome...I'll keep that in mind for the future.

Flew one flight today. Did pretty well. Got an excellent overall and met all my objectives to move on to the next block of training, two flights ahead of schedule. Then I checked the schedule for Monday, and saw that I'm flying twice. If you don't remember from an earlier post of mine, I flew twice last Friday. It didn't really go very well. I didn't crash, or anything, and my first flight went pretty well, but my second flight of the day was horrible. My brain just quit on me and I was forgetting all kinds of stuff. Hopefully that won't happen again Monday. Basically, I just have those two flights on Monday to get through before I do my first checkride. So, I'll be nice and tired the night before my checkride, and nervous the day of. Awesome! Who doesn't like a challenge?

I'm not the only one double-turning on Monday, though. The other guy in our flight who's doing well is also doing two flights on Monday. At least I'm not alone, I guess. He's one flight behind me though, since one of his flights got canceled for weather earlier this week.

Welp, I guess I'm going to go enjoy my Friday night, because I'll be studying for the rest of the weekend. I'll let you know how it goes later next week, when I regain consciousness and functionality of my brain cells.

Time Doesn't Exist Here

I've lost track of the days. The only things I pay attention to now are when the weekends are, and how many flights I have left until I get to leave. Everything in between is spent in this one building, or in a plane flying. It's kind of like purgatory, but with prison food.

Had a bit of a winter storm come through the area yesterday and last night. Yesterday's flying was all canceled due to the clouds being so low and the wind gusts being too high. Last night, around dinner, it started raining. Then the rain turned into snow:

Out past the fence in the above picture is where our planes are usually parked during the day (they always put them in the hangars at night). So, with the rain turned into ice and snow on top, this morning was slow going and over half of today's flights were canceled again. I was 90% certain my flight was going to get canceled, as well. All up until about a half hour before my flight time, that is. My flight wasn't schedule to take off until about 3 in the afternoon, so it gave the snow and ice a chance to melt. So last minute scrambling to get ready to fly ensued and I was off. Physically, I was prepared. I had all my paperwork filled out and pre-planning stuff done, but mentally, I was already convinced I wasn't going to fly. So, it wasn't my best flight. Did good on some things, botched up some other things. Overall, it was still a "good" overall and I'm still tracking above average. So now I'm 7 flights in, one more than anybody else in my flight. On track to do my first (of two) checkride next week (think of it as a mid-term exam), followed by my first solo on (hopefully) Friday. (A solo is where I go up and fly by myself, with nobody else in the plane)

To top things off, I get to fly pretty much the same route tomorrow that I did today. That just means I have a heck of a lot less stuff to study and memorize tonight, since I just did it all today. I haven't gotten that since I started. It's always been something completely new and requires about 2-3 hours of studying and memorizing routes, altitude requirements, radio calls, runway info, etc.

Half of my flight is still on that Commander's Awareness Program, though. Pretty much all of them but one is showing improvements and I'm not really worried about if they'll make it through. One is still struggling hardcore. Everyone else is trying their best to help that person out, but it's just not sinking in. We'll see if they make it, I guess. We may be down to a flight of 7 people by this weekend, though.

That's about it, as far as news goes. Nothing much is going to change until next week when we all start our checkrides and solos. After those, we start learning how to navigate longer distances and specific routes by visual identification of landmarks and time/distance calculations. Can't wait! (<---sarcasm)

Taking a Breather

Sorry for the delay in posting, but when you get the freedom of taking it easy after a week that leaves you blindsided, you tend to enjoy as much of it as you can. Sort of like the eye of a hurricane. A torrential storm of confusion , followed by the calm of the eye, then back to so more torrential storm of confusion.
It's a little hard to put into simple words what I'm going through here at IFS. It's not like boot camp, or field training, but the sheer amount of information that your brain has to process and memorize, on top of preparing and flying flights, just leaves your brain feeling scrambled at the end of the week. Is the flying hard? No, not really. If you want to get technical, there's a few differences between flying a Cessna 172 (which is what I got my private license in) and a Diamond DA-20 (which is what we fly here), but it's more about learning the procedures they use here and what they expect you to have memorized. Like checklists, radio calls, and emergency procedures. Oh, and most of it has to be verbatim. It's a challenge, but having the three day weekend to catch up certainly helped. And only having a four day work week after should help even more.
Anyways, I'm 5 flights in out of about 27. Still above average, according to my instructor pilot's comments, which is pretty good because half of my flight is on the Commander's Awareness Program, which means they're below average and need some help. So I spent some time helping out as much as I could this weekend. Hopefully everyone can make it through these next 5.5 weeks.
For this week, it's just more regular flights for me to practice what they've taught us last week. All of which is preparation for our first check ride, which is basically a midterm exam, but with flying. Fun stuff...but not really.

 Above: Practicing our pre-flight checklists, so we don't suck at doing them

Friday after we were done flying, they held a little get-together in the student lounge.

Swamped

Quick post: This week has been insanely busy. I would try to describe it, but that would cut into the time I've allotted for sleep. I've gotten two flights in so far (out of approx. 28 that I have to do before I'm done), and I've got three more left before the weekend. If you do the math, that means one day I'm flying two flights. If I'm not flying, I'm either sleeping, eating, or studying. That's all I have time for. Thankfully this weekend is a three day weekend, so hopefully I can get ahead somewhat by studying that extra day and not having to worry about planning a flight.

It's not terrible, though. I'm doing fine on my flights, and they even want to advance me a flight because I already know some stuff. I'm fine with taking my time, though. Once I get the basics memorized, things should lighten up. Until then, just two more days until the weekend!

Sort of Like College...Except Not

Uneventful weekend full of studying. I haven't done this much studying since I was in college, and even then, I probably didn't spend this much time on any one subject. It took me 3.5 hours to go over 466 multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank questions that comprise the question bank for our test on Tuesday. Only 50 will be used. On top of that, Tuesday will be (hopefully, depending on the weather) our first flights, known as "Dollar Rides," where we basically show what we know and it establishes a baseline for the Instructors to go from. With respect to the actual flying portion, there's still a ton of stuff that we're expected to know/memorize for our flights that I haven't even gotten to. Things like radio frequencies, runway lengths, specific radio calls, challenge/response phrases we're supposed to do with the instructors, and a bunch of other stuff. There's still a couple of checklists I have to work on memorizing between now and then, mainly the pre-flight because it's so long. Tuesday starts at 5:20am with a formal brief covering the days flying info. It's not going to be a fun day, but at least we'll be done with the academic portion...for now.

Here's a pic of the cockpit trainers, where we can practice memorizing checklists and where all the buttons and things are

...and of our flight room, where we spend all our time studying, free from distractions

Let the fun begin! At least tomorrow is just more academic briefings and no tests.

Impossible? Nothing's Impossible!

So it's been a couple days since I last made a post, due to both internet issues and being incredibly busy, but let me catch everyone up to speed:

In-processing day was simple. I showed up (in blues uniform), checked into lodging to get my room, checked in with security to get my facility badge, checked into IT to get my issued laptop, and checked into medical. Whole process took maybe an hour, after which, the rest of the day was mine to unpack.

Day-One was a lot of your usual introductory info for the first half, like who everyone was that worked here, what the expectations are, where everything was at, etc...followed by a Fitness Test (minus the run due to ice on the track...why they didn't think to put in an indoor track, I don't know), lunch, then academics started with Flight Physiology. Last item of the day was our Bold Face and Ops Limits test, which is basically regurgitating on paper a handful of memorized emergency procedures and operating limits of the airplane...stuff you need to know at a moments notice when flying. The motivation to memorize and complete this test with 100% accuracy is that if everyone in the flight can do it, we can wear our flight suits instead of blues. Out of our eight folks in my RPA flight, we had one guy get one (out of 31) of the operating limits wrong. He put down 108 instead of 106, which killed the chance to get our flight suits...or so we thought. Our flight commander said that was the closest he's ever seen a flight get on the first try, so today he talked the squadron commander into letting us wear our flight suits...booyah!

Day-Two (today) was nothing but academics. 9 hours of sitting at a desk looking at powerpoints, with info that we'll have to know for a test on Tuesday morning. Lot's of info to process through the brain, and I'm extremely glad that I already have prior flying experience and at least have seen all of this stuff before. I feel bad for those that don't have any flying experience and this is the first time they're seeing this. Even my head hurt by the end of the day. There's a couple of them in my flight, so those of us who do have prior experience are helping them out.

Tomorrow is scheduled to be more of the same. Nothing but academics covering weather, airspace, navigation, and basics of flying. BUT, we at least get to be comfortable in our flight suits. I'm pretty sure none of the other 3 flights (30 people each, 90 total for you math experts) passed their test, so they'll all be in blues. I only say this, and revel in it, because all the other flights here are made up of traditional pilot and navigator students, who all turn their noses up at the mention of flying an RPA. So, the fact that we passed our test before all of them is kind of personal win for us in the RPA flight. Granted, we technically missed one AND we only have 8 people vs 30 AND we already knew each other and pushed each other to know this stuff before we got here...but it's still a win in my book.

Personal thoughts:
I'm having a good time, so far. It helps that I'm only in a flight of 8 instead of 30, and that we're all coming from the same squadron at Randolph and will be going through a couple other classes together after this. It's challenging, but I enjoy a challenge. It's also busy, and very regimented with the schedule. I didn't realize until late this afternoon that I haven't been outside of this building for over 48 hours. This one building housing everything. Your room, the gym, the auditorium and classrooms, the dining hall, the clinic...even a barbershop and a mini-mart. Theoretically, you could spend your entire time here without having to leave this building (with the exception of actually going out to fly).

Anyways, I still don't have my personal computer hooked up to the internet yet, so I'll have to wait to add any pictures. This weekend looks like a good opportunity to do that. Until then, I'm off to study/eat/sleep/repeat.

Quick Post

Tomorrow morning at 5am I head off to IFS in Colorado. Nothing like a 15 hour drive to get you ready for military training! However, I AM applying the lesson I learned before from driving down here to San Antonio from Omaha and not driving through the night. Still got a little packing to do.

On a side note, I was strolling through the local Border's bookstore the other day and came across the following book:

Of course I had to buy it, even if it was from the experiences of one guy from a couple years ago when the UAV program was first getting it's start. I could maybe learn something from it, or at least appreciate where the program has come from and what I was getting myself in to.
Turns out, me and the author have quite a lot in common:
1. We both went to Purdue University, and got our commission's from the AFROTC program there
2. We were both stationed at Offutt AFB for our first assignments, and had most of our experiences on the RC-135 RIVET JOINT aircraft
3. We both saw an opportunity to contribute more to our country/service by volunteering for the RPA career field
Needless to say, I'm a fan of the book already...and I'm only on chapter 2.

Other than that, I was lucky enough to have the girlfriend come down to visit and stay for the holidays. We were able to find a hotel for a decent price in downtown San Antonio, near the River Walk, for New Years. Here's some pics of that:

Hope everyone had a safe and happy New Years of their own. Next stop, freezing Pueblo, Colorado for the next seven weeks (hopefully shorter)!