Excellence

Whenever anyone would say that my training at requal for Undergraduate Pilot Training would be easy my answer was always the same--"well, it's not exactly like riding a bike."

Apparently, in a lot of respects, it is.

I'm doing well. Very well. I've been through eight official aircraft training formal schools and I've managed to keep my head above water in all of them. The hardest of them all was, surprisingly, the Cessna 172 training that I went through in Hondo, TX in 1993. But I survived them all. Key word in that sentence is "survive." For the first time in my career, I'm excelling at a flying program.

The T-6 Texan II is an absolutely amazing aircraft. Usually when that description accompanies a weapon system it implies a great deal of complexity. This plane is no exception. I am essentially going from a go-cart to a sports car. But there have been two concepts that have been pulling me through that apparently are working in my favor.

First--the single-seat mentality. In T-37's 90% of your flying was a notch higher on the difficulty scale than flying by yourself. You were actually flying with another person that literally had no idea what exactly he was doing--so your awareness had to be even higher than if you were alone. That ability, that I thought would have been lost after four years of sitting on the ground, has served me extremely well in the last month or so. The mentality that I am truly alone, rather than being safeguarded by an instructor in either the front or rear seat of the plane, has allowed me to make decisions and fly the plane better than I could have ever hoped to fly my last one. It seems to be paying off.

Second--the "training" mentality. I have been going through this course not only with the perspective of surviving to the next flight (which is definitely a concern) but looking at it through the eyes of a basic UPT student. How would what I am doing come across to a student learning to fly? That thought has allowed me to not only look at it from the 1st-person perspective, but also to expand the possibilities of what we are actually doing here. It has made me very comfortable with operating the plane.

So, as an update, things are going well. I have never "slam dunked" a course in my life, but thus far I seem to be doing just that. I just hope that it can carry me through to the end.

Run

I fell asleep last night on the floor next to Odie's toddler bed. At 0430 I awoke to a bang on the wall--he had dropped his sippy cup. It startled us both and my first sight this morning as I bolted upright was looking right into his eyes, since he bolted upright, as well. While a 2-year-old has the mystical ability to suddenly fall back asleep, I do not. I laid him down with SW and began the day in the dark.

It proved to be very productive. With everyone asleep I managed to catch up on a lot of stuff. By 0600 the sun was rising, and it was in the upper 50's. I decided to go for a run.

I'm not sure what happened. I've grown to enjoy running a lot more than I used to, since now I don't constantly feel like I'm going to have a heart attack, or my hip feels like it's going to explode. But I still would rather crash on the couch than go run. For some reason, this morning was different.

The sun rose while I ran--lost in "Panama" by Van Halen. I've heard the song a million times, but today I almost danced. I was completely elated. Then it hit me:

I'm going to fly again.

I've known for a short while that I was assigned to go back to fly. It's pretty uncommon for a graduate of ACSC to get that opportunity, so of course I was happy. We're going back to Del Rio, TX--the same place I flew with students last time, and in the same squadron. But being bogged down by thesis papers, language instruction, and tests, I hadn't given it much thought. All those (except two more tests) are behind me now. I guess it just really hadn't hit me yet until this morning.

I'm going to fly a T-6 Texan II at Laughlin AFB. For real. After sitting for four years and typing on computers, I am getting to go back to the one job I have loved more than anything else I have ever done.

What a way to start the day. By the time I got home I was far from exhuasted--I was on cloud nine.

Airdrop

What I remember the most about Guam was the heat.

Most people hated going to Guam, for some reason. I absolutely loved it with all of my heart. It was there, I think, that I figured out that the location I live matters little--as long as it's warm.

We dropped SEALs on the island all the time--from high altitudes, all the way down to 1000' over the surface of the water. They were awesome. Cliche'd word, I know--but I honestly can't think of a better way to describe them. Tougher than anyone I've ever worked with, and some of the coolest and easy-going men I've known. One of the guys in this photo had over 10,000 drops and had shattered his legs three times.

I haven't flown in almost four years. There's a good possibility that I'll be going back to flying soon--hopefully in the same training capacity that I loved so much before. My limited experience in the C-130 is kind of summed up in this photo, which I took on one of my last live training missions just prior to 9/11. I like the darkness sillhouetting the jumpers and the loadmaster, and the beautiful sky beyond them. It makes me feel like a part of my life and career that I left behind can still be seen, but grows darker with the passage of time.