Bouncing, part 4

ITEM: Vanna's 4th Hornet flight
DATE: Thursday, 26-Jan-2006
TIME: 1345-1600 Eastern Standard Time
LOCATION: Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland (KNHK)
EVENT: Field Carrier Landing Practice (FCLP)
CREW: LT Reid Wiseman (Tonto) / Mr. Pat Svatek (Vanna)
AIRCRAFT: F/A-18B (Salty Dog 323)

What is a FCLP? Well, basically it's carrier landing practice for the pilots but landing on land instead of the boat. Pilots fly FLCPs prior to going out to the carrier so they can hone those skills in a more forgiving environment (i.e. 8,000-ft of runway versus 800-ft). I was lucky enough to get on the flight schedule in the back seat of a 2-seat jet for the FCLPS.

The day started well enough. LT Wiseman called me about 0800. "Pat, I guess you are in my back seat today. Be over here for the brief about 1345. By the way, I'm Tonto."
"Ok Tonto, I'll be there. Oh, and by the way, since we are staying local, do I need a drysuit?"
"Well yeah, the weather is damn cold out there, and since the wind is really kicking, if we eject, there is a high likelihood we'd drift out to the water before we landed. Not a real good day to be in the water."
"Ok then, I'll see you at 1345."

After wrapping up my cubicle packing session (hey, I'm moving out of this cube and headed to TPS), I stopped and got a salad at Mickey D's. They hosed up my salad by giving me the wrong dressing, but I didn't have time to mess with that. Down the hatch!

I arrived at Tonto's office about 1335. As soon as I walked in, I had a feeling of I KNOW THIS GUY! He seemed very familiar. We waited for the rest of the flight crews to arrive. Although we were a single ship today, there would be three other hornets performing FCLPSs with us. My TPS soon-to-be classmate, Deb Gillispie, was in the back seat of another hornet today. We'd both be flying with Lieutenants (LTs) about our age.

It didn't take long for the rest of the pilots to show up. One of the LTs would not be flying today. He was designated as "paddles" for today's flight. Paddles is the nickname for the Landing Signal Officer (LSO). His primary role is to talk with the pilots on final and walk them through roll, pitch, and power corrections. Not so much of a big deal on land, but a very big deal when trying to land on a moving ship, at night, with large seas....you get the idea. His ACTUAL duty today was to grade each FCLP attempt for each pilot. If you look at this picture, you can see a white truck and the landing lights (lens) system. The LSO is in the truck on a radio with the pilots.

The briefing went something like this...
Off the deck by 1515, primary freq 342.7, tower control until passed to paddles, blah blah blah, calls to paddles are Salty Dog 323, ball, fuel state....more blah blah blah...
I didn't understand MOST of what they were talking about. It was being briefed very quickly, and the questions that came up seemed in some sort of code, with a "coded" answer. I call it Hornet Lingo. I just don't speak it. But it was fun listening to the whole thing. After the pilots briefed, Tonto briefed me on the back seat procedures.

"Pat, I like to talk, so you will hear me talking about pretty much everything going on today."
"Great," I said, "I like to know what's the heck is going on."
His back seat brief was standard squadron cookie-cutter items. Don't touch this...in case of this...go ahead and tell me if you see this...ask questions...that kind of stuff.

After we finished our brief, we walked out to my truck to drive over to the PR shop. The whole time during the pilot briefing, I was scratching my head on why Tonto seemed familiar. I guess it took a cold wind to hit me in my face as we walked out the building.

"Hey, Tonto, did you start out in Tomcats?"
"Yeah, sure did."
"How did you get into Hornets?"
"I went to TPS class 125, and when I got out, I went to Hornet school and here I am."
"Did you do primary flight training in Kingsville?"
"Yeah, in the T-45."
"Really, what year did you get your wings?"
"Back in 1999, why?"
"Was it April 1999?"
Now Tonto has this sort of paused looked on his face..."Yeeeaaahhhhh, why?"
I'm all smiles as this point.
"DUDE, I've met you before! Down in Kingsville! At your winging!"
"Really, Pat? I don't remember you."
"Did you have a Daren Jewell in you class?"
"YEAH!"
"Do you remember James Lynch, and Andrew..I can't remember his last name, but he wore a goofy German motorcycle helmet?"
"Yeah, I do remember them."
"We shit man, it's a small world! Daren was my best friend, and I was down there for his winging taking pictures!"
"No shit! I'm sorry I don't remember you man..."
"That's alright. We did a lot of drinking at the luau down there."
"OH yeah...those days...wow.... it's a shame what happened to Daren."
"Yeah, that wasn't good at all," I said. We were just about to my truck.
"It was real hard on everyone. I am still great friends with his mom and ex-girlfriend."

Time was getting closer to launch. We strolled into the paraloft and started getting geared up. I won't bore you with the details, since I've spoke about it so much in my previous blogs. I was having an issue with one of the zippers, and that caused us to be a little late. We started walking to the jet, and Tonto told me to go ahead and get strapped in. Yeah, strapped in. My least favorite part. What a pain in the ass (and arms, and legs). I'm a big-framed guy and a hornet is just a little too small for me. With all that gear on (especially the drysuit), I can't really reach my calves to fasten the lower leg restraints. Tonto and the plane captain had to help me out.
After a few suck-it-up motivational thoughts, Tonto said, "This ride's not free...you gotta work for it, so suck it up and get strapped in." Damn, exactly what I was mentally telling myself.

After a little fiddling with the harness, I was good to go. Tonto lowered the canopy first. It was too cold and windy to sit there for a few minutes and wait for the engines to start up. Weather was showing about 40F with 30-40 MPH winds gusting to 45 MPH so the wind chill was well below freezing.

Deedle-Deedle... that sound in my helmet told me the aircraft electrical power is now online. Tonto began walking me through the start procedures. Way too complicated for me to remember much less try to write it down here. You'd probably have better luck finding those procedures on the internet somewhere.

Shortly after starting the engines, we were taxiing out to Runway 32. Wind was pretty much straight down the runway. "Salty Dog 323, Runway 32, cleared for takeoff." I got a sweet video of the takeoff. Because we were a little too heavy to start the FLCPs right away (too much fuel), we had to burn some off. The restriced areas (airspace) were crowded so we couldn't go out there and just fly around for awhile. Ask youself this question....what's the quickest way to burn off fuel???

AFTERBURNER baby! Tonto lit the burners to full (MAX) power. As soon as we were airborne, he raised the gear, and slightly climbed to about 300-ft above the ground. Before I knew it, we were 360 knots over the end of the runway, burners still going, and he pulls a 90-deg right bank and pulls back on the stick.....SHIT MAN! 6.5Gs! That's my new max G. I could feel it too. I wasn't properly ready for that many Gs that quickly, and I got my first ever hint of a gray-out. Very weird feeling. Anyhow, like I said, I got it ALL ON VIDEO (43MB)! Definitely my best takeoff ride in a hornet yet! I could not believe how fast it accelerated! It was still throwing me back in my seat even during the turn!

Once we got back around to the airfield, Tonto entered for the overhead break. That's where you come screaming over the field and just about mid-field, yank the aircraft into either a left (which we did) or right bank to bleed off airspeed and enter the pattern. It's pretty cool if done right, and it's easy to hose it up.

A few minutes later and we were configured for the FCLPs. Flaps set to FULL, gear is DOWN and LOCKED. The first pass was an intentional waveoff. The next few passes were all pilot skill. During later passes, Tonto set up various things...one of the passes he simulated a partial HUD failure. This forces the pilot to use old-school techinques of sinkrate, airspeed, and watching the ball. A few other passes he used the autothrottle to control speed as he controlled everything else. I think we did about 8 passes total, all of them A+ in my book! Our last pass was a full-stop landing. Plenty of videos (11MB) and pictures on this flight. Even some good pictures of Pax River.

Even though I only logged 0.6-hr of flight time, it was probably the best 0.6-hr of flying I've ever had! What a small world this is.....I just thought about how random it really was to have Tonto as my pilot. Here I am, an aerospace engineer, who could be working just about any aerospace job in the world.... Here is Tonto, an F/A-18 pilot, who could be anywhere else in the world...BUT, I'm at Pax River and Tonto is here...and VX-23 operations paired us up for the flight. Wow.... Daren, thanks for letting me fly with your bud!