Solo Prep

I really need to stop doing this every 2 weeks...it is so tough to remember what I did on Friday. The weeks seem to drag on but fly by at the same time.

The last couple weeks we covered a ton of material, both academic and flying. On the academic side of the house we had our first block of instrument flying instruction. The first day the instructor told us how difficult the block was and that if we didn't study regularly we would certainly fail the test. Only 2 people in our class have any instrument flying experience so it was pretty intimidating to start something we hardly knew about. All of our classroom sessions were at the end of the day. It is tough learning something new after a full day of flying and other learning. Our test was this past Friday. Apparently the instructor did a good job of scaring everyone because we all passed! We start "Advanced Instruments" tomorrow with a 3 hour lesson to cap off a 12 hour day...Happy Monday :/

I did hit a few bumps in the road the week before last. Before we can solo there are 3 emergency procedure simulators that we have to pass. The way these work is that we sit in the simulator and will be flying along and the instructor will input an emergency into the computer and we have to react accordingly. On my second one I was working too quickly which made me mess up a few important details. I retook it the next day and passed just fine. The next day I failed the third one too. This time for taking action a little too slowly. The following day I found the happy medium and did really well. It was frustrating to fail at these things, but since I got to do a few extra I figure I'm even better at it now.

Flying is getting more fun all the time. I had 2 instrument flights in as many weeks and did well on them. Also, I completed another block that involved all the maneuvers we have learned so far. The most exciting (and crazy) thing that I got to do was spin. The T-37 aircraft is the only Air Force jet allowed to perform this maneuver because it was designed specifically to be able to do it. Essentially you fly the aircraft, nose high, until it stalls and then force it to spin. The aircraft is literally falling straight out of the air and spinning at this point. Part of our training is to learn how to recover from this position. All I kept thinking is, "I can't believe we are doing this on purpose..." It turned out to be a lot of fun. On Thursday and Friday last week I did two entire missions that were just practice landings. Overall I think I did close to 30 landings in the two days. These missions were the last two required missions before solo. So with that said, I am scheduled to solo early tomorrow morning! I'll fill you in on the solo traditions next week.

On the homefront, Gavin turned 6 months old yesterday (15 Sept)...what an old man. He should be crawling any day now...amazing!

Hope you all are doing well!

Cheers