Week 14 (8-12 May 06)

Wow, I am now more than 30% complete with TPS! Doesn't seem like it tho...
Well, this past week I nearly made the 5 for 5 again. On Monday, I flew a T-38C with Doc. The weather wasn't that great, so we filed for an instrument flight over to Dover AFB. Flew there, shot an approach, then came back to Pax to shoot 4 more approaches before landing.

Tuesday, I flew with SLAB in a T-38C for our climbs, descents, and stalls testing. Pretty exciting stuff, we climbed from 5000 ft to 40,000 ft in MIL power, which took a LONG TIME! The descent was uneventful, along with the stalls. We DID get some good data, which will be used before the end of June to develop an overall picture of how the T-38 performs.

Wednesday, I flew in a P-3C for my Radar Eval flight. Flew nearly 3 hours, in which we exercised the radar in air-to-air mode against another TPS aircraft, and air-to-ground mode with ground targets of opportunity. This flight was the follow on flight from last week where we learned about the radar, FLIR, and other P-3C systems. It was pretty fun tracking the other TPS aircraft, and even more impressive picking out vehicles on the ground with the air-to-ground radar. DON'T SPEED! We could easily tell how fast a vehicle was going based on its Doppler frequency shift (within a few MPH).

Thursday, I flew with Doc again to get a MAX power (aka afterburner) climb from 5000 ft to 40,000 ft. THIS WAS AN IMPRESSIVE CLIMB! It only took us 2 minutes and 59 seconds to get to 40,000 ft! WOW! Unfortunately the weather was rapidly deteriorating at Pax, so we didn't get a test descent or stalls. Headed back to Pax River to shoot the GCA (ground controlled approach) to Runway 14. We didn't break out of the clouds until 900-ft above the water. It was a great flight, and when I get a chance, I'll convert the HUD video to digital so y'all can see some fun things.

Friday was the day that hosed me on my 5 for 5. I was not on the schedule to fly. Oh well, 4 for 5 is not bad! Actually, since my last class of the day from 11 to 12 was cancelled, I decided to go home and work from home. That was a nice change of pace. Next week, we start our longitudinal stability test flights. Already had the briefings this past week, so it shoud be a lot of fun!
-Vanna