Week 32 (10 - 16 Sep 06)

Post-YBS party blues... it was an awesome party. Good job Crack on the video, which I can't post here for y'all to see... sorry.

Flew 3 times this week.
9/11 - Kinda expected something bad to happen this day, and it did for Kirby but not for SLAB and I in Tester 12. We just cloud surfed for 1 hour, which Kirby battled an engine failure (solo no mind you) to bring his T-38 back to Pax with one engine. Kudos bro... sorry I wasn't there to back ya up with the PCL.

9/12 - Tester 10 again, but this time doing a Dynamics exercise flight for Ellers. Total time: 1.1


9/13 - T-2C flight, probably my last one before they are retired, in none other than Tester 25. I have a love-hate relationship with that jet, as you may have already figured out from previous posts. Anyhow, I flew with Dumpy from Pax down to Chambers (Norfolk, VA) to shoot a couple approaches, then back to Pax River for a few more approaches. It was a good, solid IFR flight, but also somber. Dumpy's dad had been killed less than 2 week prior in a freak motorcycle accident, so he spent a good part of the flight quiet and reminscing. I just let him do that, while I flew the flight and took the comms.

Week 31 (3 - 9 Sep 06)

Monday was Labor Day... Federal Holiday.
Nice break from school.... NOT! Spent all day working on my FLIR RTR.
Didn't fly on Tuesday, and spent until nearly midnight finishing the FLIR RTR.

Only flew twice this week...
9/7 - Tester 10 for my Dynamics Eval with Tripper, for a 1.1 hour.
9/8 - Tester 10 for my Dynamics Eval with OD, for a 1.2 hour.

Those weren't actually MY Dynamics flights, I was just the "data recorder" for those pilots. I should get my own dedicated flight later.

The Class 131 YBS party was on Friday night. Great party, with some funny things, but again, best told over a beer... here are a few pics to tide you over...




On Saturday, 9-Sep, Cindy and I went to Tony and Lasandra's wedding. GREAT wedding you two!

Week 30 (27 Aug - 2 Sep 06)

Less than 15 weeks from graduation... man, time is getting short. We are 1 week from the Class 131 You'll Be Sorry party.

Started the week off distributing our patches and zaps (stickers for the civilians out there).
Weather was shitty thanks to Tropical Storm Ernesto. Due to that and the fact I had a FLIR RTR and my Lat-Dir RTR due, I was very busy with academics and not so much flying. I DID get one flight out...

8/28 - Tester 08 (T-38C) with Forrest, repeating a few PA100 Lat-Dir test points, flying some air-to-air maneuvers, and a little cloud surfing.

-Vanna

Week 29 (20 - 26 Aug 06)

First of all, I forgot to mention I had our final class patch design completed a few weeks ago. What you see is our final design. The "Toaster Testers" comes from our favorite professor, JJ, talking about toaster programmers, who just blindly write code without understanding the ramifications, and leading to airplane crashes. Anyhow, we've become known as the Toaster Testers... more details on this over a beer when we see each other.

8/22 - My first flight with Rusty. Up to this point, I'd flown with every fixed-wing pilot in Class 130 but Rusty. Now, I've got them all. We flew our Spin Exercise Flight in Tester 25 (can I never get away from this ONE particular T-2???). Great hop with lots of spins! It was a telemetered flight, with some of our buds watching the data roll in to the ground station. I think one of our spins resulted in a high speed spiral, which felt wierd. We were both thrown forward into our straps, and I could feel the g's building rapidly... not to much fun for that, and I'd not want to repeat it anytime soon.

8/23 - Lat-Dir exercise flight #2 with SLAB in Tester 10 for 0.9 hour flight.
8/24 - First H-60 flight! Flew my VTOL 2 Demo flight with Pupalakis and PinkF. That helo is so augmented, anyone can fly it. Amazing how little it really took to control it. The auto hover feature was way cool at 100 ft off the Patuxent River. The total flight was 2.1 hours long, but I only logged a 1.0.

8/25 - Flight test practice with OD doing air-to-ground and air-to-air work in Tester 10 for 1 hour.

-Vanna

Week 28 (13 - 19 Aug 06)

Almost had a 5-day fly week... missed Thursday crew rest issues.

8/14 - FAVORITE FLIGHT TO-DATE! Spun the T-2C (Tester 25) with the Spin-Meister himself, Jerry Gallagher. What a ride! Upright spins, inverted spins, coupled departures, all fun and disorienting! I've got some video of it, but it's too large to put here.

8/15 - My first Lat-Dir exercise flight with SLAB, for a total of 1.3 hours. He nearly made me sick, so I took the controls to fly a few more test points, and I nearly made him sick... called it a day and headed home.

8/16 - FLIR evaluation with the new MX-15 FLIR on the NP-3D (Tester 889). Flew it with Thommo (our fearless leader), Tripper, Jethro, and Pedro. Dave Hunt and Chachi were our pilots. The eval was fun, but it sucked knowing we were getting this data to write a FULL RTR. In the end, the FLIR was awesome! I was amazed at how much infrared can allow you to see, especially serious detail, like counting rivets on the wing skin on the airplane... 4 hours of flying, not so bad... it was a 1830 launch for a 2230 landing tho, which is why I was not on the flight schedule for Thursday.

8/18 - Another cool flight. My first C-12C flight (Tester 37). Flew it with Gozer (MAJ Morgan) for my asymmetric power demo flight. I flew nearly the whole flight, which was about 1.4 hours long. Great time!

-Vanna


8/18 -

Week 27 (6 - 12 Aug 06)

Sunday, 6-Aug... our return trip from Patrick AFB to Pax River. It was pretty much a get up and go kinda morning, in order to beat some forecast bad weather enroute. I think we launched around 11 am or so. The transient aircraft line guys were great. One of them snapped this pic of us just before we strapped in.

Our planned route was to land at Shaw AFB to get gas, but weather forced us to divert to, again, Charleston AFB. After a much longer than anticipated stay there, we launched and recovered back here at TPS around 3-ish. What a great weekend! Another T-38 flight for another 1.8 hours, AND Kirby let me fly most of it again!

Now, on to actual school...
The boring week. Weather turned shitty so we didn't fly a whole lot. I DID get to fly the U-6A (Beaver) on Monday with Craig Nixon and NoNo, for our Lat-Dir demo. A 2.4 hour flight in a fun airplane. This flight had been cancelled twice before due to engine issues, but today, the flight went smooth...

-Vanna

Week 26 (30 Jul - 5 Aug 06)

Here starts a busy week for me. Flew all 5 days!!! Summary as follows:

7/31 - Helo flight with Brian "Sandbag" Sandberg in a TH-6B (Tester 40) for 2 hours! All kinds of instruction on hovering, translation, flying qualities both low and high. Also knocked out a few test points he needed to get done. Thanks Sandbag! What a hoot! One of my favorite flights so far!

8/1 - Lat-Dir practice with OD in Tester 14 (T-38C) for 1 hour
8/2 - Lat-Dir practice with SLAB in Tester 16 (T-38C) for 1 hour
8/3 - Lat-Dir variable stability demonstration flight in a Lear 24 (Tester 77) with Pappy and Frenchy for 1.7 hour.

Now, the fun day. August 4, 2006..... Kirby and I took Tester 12 (T-38C) on a cross-country flight down to Patrick AFB in Florida. We launched in the late morning since we had no academics that day. Our fuel stop was in Charleston, SC (KCHS) where we were the very small jet next to a bunch of C-17s on the ramp. WOW! A little over an hour delay there for fuel, and we were on our way to Patrick AFB (KCOF). Kirby let me fly nearly the whole flight down. The total trip time down was only 1.8 hours, spending most of our time around 0.85 Mach at 26,000 ft. Amazing it didn't seem like 1.8 hours.... more like 1 hour.

We put the plane to bed there at Patrick, and went out for a night on the town, so to speak. The motor pool loaned us a government van, and we were lodged on-base at the AF Inn. Nice place actually. Very similar to a hotel.

Anyhow, saw Talladega Nights at a local theater, after spending over an hour driving around looking for one. We called it a night and spent nearly all day Saturday at the Kennedy Space Center, playing tourists. Shuttle Atlantis was already out on the launch pad, but we never did close enough to really see it. This picture is the best we could do.

My buddy Kevin was in Orlando for flight training, so he drove to Cocoa Beach to meet us for dinner.

Read the next blog for our departure back to Pax River...
-Vanna

Week 25 (23 - 29 July 06)

First thing Monday.... the dreaded Long Stab prog check.
Basically, I go fly a T-2C with an instuctor, who grades me on technique and test execution / test conduction, including time and fuel management. High stress situation, but still fun.

I had mine first thing on Monday the 24th. Flew with "Wichita" Bob Williams, for a total of 1.5 hours and a PASS grade! Woo-hoo! Tester 25 treated me right, but the back seat is for some reason less comfortable than the other T-2 aircraft.

Classes are same-ol-stuff.

Ended the week of flying on the 27th flying in Tester 12 (T-38C) with Ellers, practicing Lat-Dir flight test techniques...
-Vanna

Week 24 (16 - 22 July 06)

Week 2 after the break. Classes are fun. I'm back into flying now. Here's a summary:

7/17 - Flew in Tester 10 (T-38C) with SLAB for a refresher flight. Had 5 landings for a 1.1 hour flight. Not too bad, huh?

7/18 - Flew again in Tester 10, but this time with Rosey. We flew a TON of aerobatics, including loops, split-s, Immelman, aileron rolls, barrel rolls, and simulated dive deliveries on different ships on the Bay. Sweet stuff... for a total of 1 hour.

Feels good to be back in the "mighty" Talon.
-Vanna

Week 23 (9-15 July 06)

This was the "back-to-school" mentality week. The pilots had to get recurrent in the aircraft, so I had no flights... just safety meetings and academics. BUT, I DID build a deck on my house over the break!

Now, back to the grind...
-Vanna