New Class

After a couple of days of this new class, I still haven't decided how I feel about it. On the positive side, it's not Pueblo and the overall attitude is one of a training environment and not one of a screening environment. Our first couple weeks are purely academics, covering how to fly the T-6 as well as going into more depth on topics we covered at IFS. However, here's a picture of all the materials we were given for the duration of this class (known as publications, or pubs):

Use my laptop as a scale.

Basically, they've taken the traditional pilot training course (which takes about a year to complete), took out all the stuff that doesn't apply to flying RPAs, and this 10 week course is what they came up with. So far, it's a little overwhelming with the amount of detailed information that we're going to have to know, but the way we're going about it makes it feel do-able. These first two weeks of academics mostly involve us sitting in front of computers clicking through lessons covering everything in the pubs above. After we go through the computer lessons on our own, we have a review session with an instructor to go over everything and make sure we get any questions answered and that we're pointed in the right direction. After every section covered (such as systems, instruments, or navigation) we have a test. Our first test is this coming Monday. Overall, it's kind of like IFS, but different. A lot more reading and detail involved in this course...along with not having a cafeteria or housekeeping, which was kind of nice to have...

In other news, the class behind us has now been reduced to 1 person, out of an original 8. The next class is scheduled to start here shortly, but they have a lot more flight experience among them so they should do a lot better as far as getting people through. Still, as of now, there's a 31% pass rate for the first two classes. It has a lot of attention from some top Air Force brass...the Chief of Staff of the Air Force came to visit the squadron here last week...

Also, I misspoke in my previous post. Apparently there were 400 ROTC cadets that applied for an RPA spot and only 40 were selected (10% selection rate, for all you math wizards), compared to the ~60% selection rate for traditional pilot spots.

Anyways, that's it for now. I have a lot of reading to do before Monday...