Another week in the books, another week closer to being done. The test last week went alright. I don't know what the class average was, but we had one guy fail (and subsequently pass). Just have one test left covering navigation. As far as the sims go, we're completely done with the contact phase (where you rely on visual references outside the cockpit) and are now focusing only on instrument flying. It's nice to put that behind us, but it's uncharted waters for me now. Up until now, my experience in having a private pilot license has helped me have a leg up on what we were learning, but now that well of information is dry. I did take an instrument ground school before I came here, which helps with the academic portion of the instrument flying, but there's a huge difference between reading about something and talking about it on the ground and actually applying it in a plane in real time. After doing some approaches (procedures for landing in weather), my brain was so spent that I couldn't barely even focus on having a simple conversation. Fun stuff!
We have just under 3 weeks left, if everything goes as planned. This is also our last full week of academics, which we're all looking forward to being done with. I was able to work it out with the scheduler to try and schedule me so that I can finish by the 18th (family vacation I posted about back in March), so I have about 13 training days left. That also means that I'm going to have to double turn three times between now and then. First double turn is on Tuesday, so that should be interesting.
In other news, we've gotten a synopsis of what happened that caused the sudden delay in the training pipeline. We didn't get the details, so I'll refrain from sharing what we were told in case its sensitive information. The class ahead of us was able to work it out with the assignment people to go ahead and move to their follow-on bases where they can at least be in an active flying squadron and contribute while they wait for their FTU assignment, rather than sit around here for months doing absolutely nothing. Hopefully we'll get the same sort of deal. Although that may not be so fun if I end up going to a middle-of-nowhere base. Vegas, on the other hand, would be nice. There's also some rumors floating around about opening the training pipeline to other airframes. Right now, everyone is assigned to the MQ-1 Predator right out of here. In the next year or so, it sounds like the RQ-4 Global Hawk will be opening up and possibly the MQ-9 Reaper. Only time will tell.
