Week Forty-Two: Cross Country

You guessed it, this week's post is all about our T-38 cross country, which we did this past weekend (hence the late post). This was a pretty cool experience, and a helpful one. Because this cross country sees us a little wiser when it comes to instrument flying, the weekend went much smoother than the T-6 cross country. The locations, however, were a bit subpar, but not horrible.

We spent almost the entire week planning and preparing, finishing up our last couple of instrument rides that would opt us for the cross country. This involved dividing up the labor so that each of the eight of us would complete different tasks and help everyone out. We also started thinking about ideas of where to go. Originally we had planned to go west, staying the nights in Phoenix and Denver. This would have been a pretty awesome time. I would have been able to see family once again, and overall those locations are just better then where we ended up.

Due to budget and maintenance issues, we were told we'd be doing the "Texas Tour." Essentially this meant we would be limited to flying around Texas and staying overnight both nights there. Because the T-38, especially recently, has shown a tendency to break down, the distance we could travel was reduced significantly. So Fort Worth would be one of our full-stops, and Houston the other. Only THAT was changed as well, so we would be staying in Oklahoma City the second night. Yeah. Super far on this cross country.

I'm not complaining, the flying was still good and the lessons learned were good as well. We saw a wide variety of instrument approaches and conditions, and there were two night flights as well, which were awesome as always. I got to shoot two radar approaches, where the controller tells you where to turn and when to descend for the entire approach, maintaining contact with you every five seconds or so. We also saw Class B airspace, which for anyone who doesn't know, is the busiest type of airport airspace there is. Think Denver, Chicago O'Hare, or JFK. The margin for error in airspace like this is much smaller, due to the huge amount of traffic and the amount of professionalism expected.

Overall the weekend was pretty awesome. My IP was great and I did a pretty good job, so that makes it a successful weekend regardless of our destination. Yeah, I would have liked to get out of the Midwest for a bit, but we still managed to have fun.

I got back Sunday afternoon to find that I was scheduled for my first formation ride on Monday. As of this writing, I have flown in formation in the 38! But I'll get into that in the next post.

Take care and have a good week.

~ Dakota

Week Forty-One: Transition Check Ride

Pretty busy week, a lot of flights and a lot happened. I was only three rides away from my Transition check ride, so I finished them up by Tuesday to be ready to check on Wednesday. The weather has actually been pretty amazing, with some slightly gusty winds. Anyway, my last three flights went well, so I was ready to go for the check ride. We briefed up and headed out to fly.

The check ride profile calls for a heavyweight simulated single-engine straight-in touch and go. So we went around the pattern for the landing, and as we were taking off to head out to the MOA, the gear wouldn't retract normally and I had to quickly reduce power and pitch up to keep from overspeeding. As I did so, my IP took the aircraft and from that point on, I didn't fly at all. It was an Incomplete overall, given that I hadn't messed anything up so far.

We couldn't fly later that day, so we ended up postponing until Thursday. Took off at about the same time and the conditions were about the same, so nothing major had changed. I didn't have to do the heavyweight pattern delay again, so we headed straight to the MOA. Overall I flew okay, but not my best. My patterns and landings weren't the greatest either. Overall I wasn't feeling the greatest with how I did; it was one of those flights where despite your best efforts, things just kind of turned out bad.

We resumed the ground evaluation, having started it the day prior, mostly doing a couple of Emergency Procedures. You have to talk through an EP, saying what you would do in the case of it happening for real. There is a very specific way you do this, and there's always a couple "gotchas" that can screw you over. My first one was a fire warning on takeoff, and I talked my way through that one just fine.

The second EP was my last thing I had to do on the check ride. It was a specific type of engine malfunction where you have to shut down the engine, but before doing so, the emergency checklist tells you to check the AC generator crossover (which allows one generator to power the entire electrical system). If the test goes bad, you can simply turn the generator back on to perform a couple of important actions before you lose electrical power to those items. So it's vital to do this step.

What ended up happening was I read through every step in the checklist (like you're supposed to) and thought to myself, "OK, I will definitely check crossover like the checklist says and then shut down the engine." But right after I thought that, I immediately read off the engine shutdown steps and said out loud that I would do those. So basically I completely ignored the checking crossover step. Immediately after saying I'd shut the engine down, I realized what I'd done, but from that point there's really nothing you can do. I felt sick to my stomach that I'd literally just thought, "Hey I'm going to do this," and then completely lose that thought for some god-awful reason. I still can explain to myself or anyone else how that happened. I just spaced it. And it cost me big time.

I ended up hooking the check ride for Emergency Procedures. He said my checklist discipline was unsatisfactory, and for that reason I would receive a U for the individual EP grade and for the overall flight grade. The silver lining is that I wouldn't have to fly, but I'd need to redo the ground eval the next day. He also debriefed me on various other things that went wrong, but none of them were complete deal-breakers. Meaning that had I just said five words: "I will check the crossover," I wouldn't have gotten into this mess.

Anyway, the next day I had the repeat ground eval, and it went fine. So yeah, that was my first hooked flight of T-38s, my Transition check ride. Not happy with it, especially since now I have burned my 88 ride (which is a progress check ride and there's only one). Anyway, it's over now and I'm done with Transition. We'll be doing our cross country next weekend, so this week will be full of prep for that. Formation is also not too far away, which will be awesome.

That's about it, a longer post for a busy week. Hope yours was better than mine.

Take it easy,

~ Dakota

Week Forty: Maintenance and Weather Cancels

Hey everyone,

This weeks has been a pretty bad one as far as actually flying time goes. The number of cancelled flights due to weather and maintenance issues was insanely high, and barely anyone flew. It wasn't a total bust week, though; still managed to get up for two flights and a sim, and got back into the swing of things after a long break.

Monday was my first day back on the flying schedule and I was scheduled to double-turn so I could get to my Transition check ride this week. Due to the extremely cold temperatures and the fact that the jets hadn't been operated in two weeks, it was a real maintainer's nightmare. The first plane I stepped to had a fuel leak, so we had barely walked up to the crew chief before he told us to head to a spare. Then, as we started the right engine in that spare, the RPM wouldn't even reach normal limits, nor would engine temperature. Add that to the nozzles not opening at all, and you get a no-go, so we shut down and went inside. Out of the 14 lines scheduled first go, 10 jets broke. It was ridiculous, even for our 50+ year-old T-38s. The rest of that day was affected too, as only four planes were good to fly. So we all got MX cancelled.

I was scheduled for two more flights on Wednesday and actually flew both of them. The weather was perfect for my first Transition ride in about two and a half weeks. I did pretty well for having a break in training, and was looking forward to flying the second sortie. The weather was rolling in pretty quickly though, so we quickly started up, taxied out, and took off. As I went around the container for my simulated single-engine straight-in landing, ready for departure to the MOA, the supervisor called over the radio to everyone that we were in a weather recall and that all jets were stop-launched. So what this meant for anyone flying was that you either had to return to base or stay in the pattern. So, yeah, surprise pattern-only flight. Basically this gave me a good chance to work on my pattern ops and landings. I ended up getting 10 landings, so by the end I was feeling good about them again.

Thursday and Friday were all weather cancels, all the time. We barely flew, and I briefed three times for flights that would never happen. But I did get my last instrument sim (at least until we're opted for more of them), which went really well despite my not flying instruments for over a month.

We also had the "you're going on cross country in two weeks" bomb dropped on us, so we had to start thinking about that in addition to studying for the Trans check ride. We will most likely be flying west, so that would be pretty awesome. Initial plans are Vance to Albuquerque to Phoenix, then the next day from there ending up in Colorado, then home the next day.

That was about it, interesting week for sure. Good football today too!

Go 'Niners.

~ Dakota

Weeks 37, 38, & 39: Two Solos and Winter Break

Well it's been quite a while, but I figured I'd finally get back to this blog. We had about a week and a half off for winter break, so there wasn't much to cover, with the exception of the last week of flying we had before going home.

The last week of work in the year 2013 was a pretty good one. I had two more solo flights which went extremely well. Both of them fell on perfect days with great visibility, good winds, and nice temperatures. It was a great way to finish up this year of flying. I actually was able to burn my HUD tapes to a DVD which I then brought home to show to family. The area work was pretty sweet, I did each aerobatic maneuver once which left me with the perfect amount of fuel to return home and work on the pattern. Reviewing my HUD tapes, I stayed pretty quiet the whole time, mumbling to myself only when I was doing a quick ops check or confirming the gear. They were both great experiences, and I look forward to the many formation solos we have in the future.

After two solos in a row, winter break was upon me, so I drove down to OKC to try and catch a flight. I was lucky and got on, despite my streak of not being able to get on using standby passes. After that I spent an awesome week and a half at home in Colorado and New Mexico, seeing family and friends and enjoying the break. It was a much-needed rest and a good Christmas and New Year's.

Back to the grind now and excited to get back up in the air. Hope your holidays were great as well!

~ Dakota

Weeks 35 & 36: Bad Weather and Solo

It's been a bit since I wrote a post, so I'll get to it now. The past two weeks have been interesting, if a bit boring. The highlight was definitely being able to solo the T-38, though the experience was somewhat dampened by bad weather and shortened flight times.

I'll start with two weeks ago. Really things have been going pretty smoothly, I flew pretty regularly and they went well. I was just trying to get opted for my initial solo, but with the weather being crappy the conditions weren't right for transition rides. We ended up doing quite a few instrument rides, trying to get T-rides when we could. On Friday I ended up flying a pretty good sortie to get opted to solo. It was actually a bit eerie; the clouds formed a perfect deck at about 7,000 feet, so from the MOA you were looking down at a floor of white clouds. I don't know what it is about the 38, but when you're nose-down on the last part of a loop or something like that, the ground appears pretty dang close to you. Probably because you're going so fast towards it, but even so, you're at least 10,000 feet away from it assuming you stay in the MOA. So yeah, staring down at the clouds while finishing those over-the-top maneuvers was odd. But pretty sweet as well.

Anyway, the weekend went by and I was ready to go for my solo on Monday. Driving into work, the sky appeared like it would be clear, at least to the west, so I was feeling good about my chances to go up. For whatever reason (Oklahoma's weather sucks) a ceiling of clouds rolled in and the weather turned miserable. They still were going to open the pattern, so I would be flying a pattern-only sortie. While slightly bummed, I prepped up, got all bundled up for the impending cold and stepped out to the jet. It's true what they say: when you're going solo, every strange noise or feel of the plane pops out at you, and you get freaked out by things you probably wouldn't notice while dual. The cold while doing ground ops was terrible; another incentive to get them done quickly. As I drove out of the chocks to head over to the runway, I felt bad for the crew chiefs.

Everything went fine on the taxi out, no runway incursions or anything like that. I had to leave my engines running slightly high to get my oil pressure within limits, but everything else went pretty normally. Due to the cold, we've had a lot of compressor stalls recently. This basically means that the normal smooth airflow through an engine gets interrupted for whatever reason. Anyway, you lose half your available thrust if one of these happens, so to preclude them, you have to run-up to MIL power while jamming on the brakes to let the engines stabilize, then bump the throttles up into minimum afterburner (AB). Once you get the indications that your burners lit, you can then smoothly apply max AB and release the brakes.

Another bad thing the cold gets you is a real potential to overspeed the gear or flaps. The plane performs a lot better in the cold, but better performance leads to a faster speed-up, so you've got to be quick with the gear. Everything went fine on my takeoffs and landings though, unlike my T-6 initial solo.

As a solo student, you're not allowed to land with more than 2,500 pounds of fuel onboard. So we immediately go up to the high pattern, which mimics the normal pattern ground track except that it's 1,200 feet higher. So you're not a conflict for anyone while you drive NASCAR-style around the pattern. I did five laps before I could call my gas and descend to do normal patterns and landings.

All the while, more and more weather was rolling in, so by the time I was actually doing landings and such, the visibility was pretty bad. The T-38 ops supervisor ended up calling the runway supervisory unit and me, talking about the weather and me doing a full-stop. They let me have another touch-and-go, and then I full-stopped. Everything went well though, I was just bummed I could only fly a 0.7-hour flight.

The rest of the week I barely flew, despite the weather being clear and a million. Hopefully in this upcoming week I can get some more flights and possibly two more solos before we leave for winter break. We have our transition check rides coming up soon, so we are going to be left with a good amount of flights after break to relocate our good flying form after spending a week and half at home.

That's about it! Pretty uneventful two weeks, though the solo was a big accomplishment. It was really cool to look around at what I was doing and realize that even though I was only flying around the pattern, I was doing so in a fighter-type aircraft and not messing anything up. Pretty cool.

Hope your weeks were good ones, thanks for reading!

~ Dakota

Week Thirty-Four: Thanksgiving Break

Well, I can't truly call this much of a UPT week, since we got two days off and I spent the last four days back home in Colorado, but I'll go ahead with a quick post anyway.

Three days were all we had as far as flying goes this week, and they were all pretty good. The weather was great and we got a lot of flights done as a class. Our baby class, 14-09, also started flying Wednesday, so now we'll probably see a decrease in the number of lines we'll fly as our two classes start eating up the ones we have available.

But regardless, we are getting close to soloing the T-38, which will be a pretty awesome experience. The syllabus calls for only 11 flights before the initial solo, which is really crazy when you think about it. But I feel ready, so hopefully sometime next week I'll head out to the MOAs alone with this sweet jet.

After double-turning on Wednesday, I drove down to Oklahoma City for my flight out to Denver, and from then on spent a relaxing time at home eating turkey, seeing old friends and family, and just generally enjoying Colorado's great weather and some cool places I haven't seen in a while.

Back now in good old Enid. The booming metropolis of northern Oklahoma.

Woopie.

Focusing on getting to solo now, and having a good couple of weeks before I get on another plane to Colorado for Christmas break.

Hope your Thanksgiving was a good one!

~ Dakota

Weeks 32 & 33: Dollar Ride and Trans

Hey there,

Sorry, I was a bit lazy last weekend despite it being a three-day, so I'll just cover the past two weeks in one post.

Well, I finally flew the T-38. It was definitely something new, the amount of power you feel on initial takeoff is something else. It makes the T-6 look like a joke. Kicking into afterburner while stationary on the ground just gets you moving so quickly, before you know it you're screaming along, ready to rotate at 145 knots. Climbing away, you get the gear up and it goes even quicker, and you've got to bring the nose 15º high just to maintain 300 knots. It's pretty incredible.

Before all that though, you do the standard scheme of a flight in UPT: prepare and plan for the sortie, brief it up, grab your gear and step to life support, then run through ground ops. The brief is much the same, though we do a lot more prep and they expect a professional and quiet student. You speak when spoken to, and only ask a question if they ask if you have any. Below is a picture of our briefing board, which we prep for each flight.

It outlines the mission data, objectives, and the EP of the day. You also prep the normal stuff, to include weather, bird status, and NOTAMs (which are temporary changes to airfields).

This time, the big change is now that we strap on our parachute instead of the light harness the T-6 used. So you've got a big turtle-shell on you along with everything else. We have to ride a bus down to the 38s, and finally stepping out toward your jet is a pretty good feeling. I still was in a surreal state of mind when I climbed up the ladder to my cockpit and started running through ground ops. Starting up the engines in this plane is a much more involved process, especially for the crew chief. They have to connect compressed air that starts the engine blades rotating, and from there we hit the start button and advance the individual throttle. They also help with the flight control surface checks, since it's difficult to see them; you're pretty far forward and they're all a ways behind the cockpits.

Taxiing out is pretty cool too. The weather's been fairly nice, though a bit cold, but we almost always taxi with the canopies open, a definite change from the T-6. With the engines sitting behind the cockpit, you're not worried about them hurting you, so you can taxi convertible-style all the way until you're ready for takeoff. We also taxi much further, out to the outside runways which are much longer than the T-6 runway.

The takeoff is awesome, like a described. You just rocket down the runway, accelerating like crazy. However, there is a worry about engine failure and your ability to either stop in the remaining distance or continue the takeoff. Since we have to go so fast to takeoff, the stopping distance is pretty large. Likewise, with an engine failure, your output is greatly reduced, so you've got to accelerate much more in order to lift off. Basically it boils down to a go/no-go speed which we would abort prior to and takeoff after.

The rest of the flight goes extremely fast, since you're burning through gas so quickly. In the T-6, you could spend 30 minutes in the area doing maneuvers and then head to our practice landing airfield for some landings before heading home. Now we just hit up the area for 20 minutes or so, then drive straight back to Vance for a couple patterns and landings and then full stopping.

I've flown five sorties over the past two weeks and all of them have last one hour on the dot. So the average sortie duration is much shorter. You just have to be that much better, since you don't have the luxury of repeating maneuvers.

It's pretty awesome though. I'm definitely enjoying it, in spite of the long hours and studying. It's pretty amazing to be flying a jet like this, something I'd not get to do in any other aviation program.

Looking forward to the next couple months!

~ Dakota