Late late

First I’m sorry I have neglected updating my blog. Considering how dry it’s been the last few months I’m almost certainly writing to myself ha ha, oh well. API (phase II) was quite the experience. I’ve never studied so hard or consistently scored as high on exams. However I still scored just slightly above average which by the end was more comical than frustrating. Now I’m in Primary (phase III), we rotate between being in the classroom, practicing in the simulators and flying the aircraft. So far it’s less work than API but I still don’t have time for much else which is murder on my beach time =).

My non-military life is good too. I keep putting effort towards my civilian friends both because they are amazing people and because I need to balance my life. What do I mean by balance? As much as I love my job and my military friends, too much of something I enjoy is still too much. I can’t get used to speaking aviation. What do I mean? “I was feet wet with joker fuel near pickens gate and my oil PX light came on. But I just knocked it off, hit base key for final and was fine. My IP was impressed.” Looks like English but might as well be French. Radio calls are worse.

Also my special lady friend Kim has visited me twice since my last post. Thankfully I was in-between phases both visits and was able to spend a lot of good time with her. She took a job in Jacksonville (about a 5 ½ hour drive) and we’re both pretty excited for her to be so close. And the last interesting news is my church band/choir director asked me to cantor for mass last Sunday, so I did. I had a great time; hopefully everyone didn’t get tortured too much at my expense. Poor Kim had to sit through it ha ha, she’s a good sport.

There are new things to tell everyday and too much now for me to go back and explain them all. So I’ll try to keep my updating more frequent.

Phase I complete

I have now completed the first phase of flight school (light golf clap). It is considered not a big deal to complete this but I'm sure happy about it. Mostly because I'm tired of driving two hours one direction for a one and a half hour flight that is almost never on schedule. Either way I now have 24.4 hours of flight time in a Cessna 172/U.

The final for the phase was a 1.7 hour cross country flight from Bay Minette AL to Waynesboro MS to Wilcox AL then back to Bay Minette. It took me two hours ha ha. Curious why?

I flew to my third airport (Wilcox) and was departing to my final destination (Bay Minette) when I realized the big river that runs to the bay was not on my left like it was supposed to be. Rather, I was right over it! I pulled out my map, triangulated my position and sure enough I was about 20 miles North East of my intended position, but I had just taken off and was a mile from what I thought was Wilcox. Which obviously led me to my next thought. "Where in the name of God did I just land and take off from?" Turns out I landed at Jackson AL. Basically what happened was I misunderstood some tips I got from the instructors. There are big smoke stacks very visible at Jackson AL. They said "find the stacks if you get lost." Because I had flown to the stacks before and knew there was a runway there, I thought they meant "fly to the stacks if you get lost." So once I saw the stacks I stopped navigating and flew to them.

That's about it, there's a little military gouge for ya'll below.


It just dawned on me some of you might not be military inclined. In fact I'm guessing even if you are you don't what how flight school is organized so I'll put it real down and dirty. If I refer to it in later posts you can refer back to this one.

Ok down and dirty, there are 5 "phases." Pilots and NFOs (Naval Flight Officers) are trained exactly the same for the first 3 phases (IFS, API, Primary). Each phase is a different command which means I get a new set of superiors and possibly a new base.

1.)IFS (Introductory Flight Screening) - approx one month
2.)API (Aviation Pre-flight Indoctrination) - approx 1.5 months
3.)Primary - approx 4 months
4.)Advanced - approx 6 months
5.)FRS (Fleet Replacement Squadron) - approx 2 months

1.)Civilian contracted flight school. Class room work, then flying. Only phase off base with civilian instructors.
2.)All class work.
3.)Class work and flying alternating until all basic aspects taught. After this phase narrowing of selecting begins. You go to advanced for either information/communications support, maritime (patrol aircraft), jets (air combat and strike).
4.)Class work and flying alternating until all advanced aspects taught. Get your wings after this phase. Go to SERE school(Survival Evasion Resistance Escape) after this phase.
5.)Flying until you are ready to replace an aviator in the fleet. Are assigned duty station after this phase.

My Navy family

It's Christmas, I missed my family a lot today. Mom sent me presents and a stalking of goodies, thank you mom. Dad put together a compilation of digital pictures and put them on a digital picture frame. All I had to do was plug it in a poof, pictures; thank you dad. I also saw the pictures and videos of sledding today, I wish I was where for that. But the part that is worth blogging about today is that I met my Navy family.

Today I went to church for the morning mass. As we were filing out a 40s year old woman and her 20s year old son approached me. They noticed I was sitting alone and asked if I had anywhere to go for Christmas. I said no, so she invited me to join her family for Christmas dinner. I went over to their house and had a great dinner. It taste as good as my mom's food and is much better than spaghetti with prego sauce out of a jar.

We talked about the military, apparently most of their family has retired from the military or had military experience. We talked about culture differences. I told them they had an accent. They told me I needed to go to a waffle house and have some grits ha ha. Their family was so pleasant, it felt casual and had a great time.

The most humbling moment was when the mom (Tracey) asked me where my family was, I said "Washington state. I'm really bummed I couldn't be with them." She smiled and said "Well you're with your Navy family. I can be your mom today." I felt so warm and blessed, I was smiling and didn't even notice until my cheeks hurt. I had to stop myself from smiling because I'm sure I looked like an idiot ha ha. Tonight I got some true southern hospitality. The Navy does take care of it's own.

Time for sleep, I have the watch in seven hours. Merry Christmas everyone =D

Pensacola

So here I am in Pensacola. After 11 years of anticipation and brushes with losing my sanity during the 53 hour car drive from Pullman; I'm here at flight school. The military life is what I thought it would be and at the same time not. I meet all kinds of people: up tight, cocky, friendly, awkward, patient, laid back, funny, vulgar (it's the Navy, what do you expect ha ha). There are even people here who don't know how to SWIM! I met another SNFO (Student Naval Flight Officer) who said "I don't like flying, and I don't like being on the ocean." I was so dumb founded I just laughed and reminded her that our job frequently includes flying over oceans.


So far the training is not bad. The work load is manageable if you don’t mind having three hours of free time a day. The material is trivial, the only issue I’ve had so far is no one seems to understand the science behind what we do. So if I ask a question most of the time it’s a,”what’s your major? Look, don’t worry about it; you don’t need to know that to fly it.” Aka, “I don’t know the answer.” The real kicker with training is the level or proficiency we are expected to have and how fast we have to acquire it.


When I got here, one of the first briefs I had went something like “We’re the best in the world, we expect no less from you. Our military is entirely voluntary. If don’t think you can keep up, you can DOR (Drop on Request) and you’ll be dismissed from the program. If we think you are not good enough for this program, you’ll be dismissed.” I feel like they’re telling me to not only be the best, but also to hurry up about it ha ha.


One more interesting thing I’ve found. I saw a lot of weird insignia on flight suits and uniforms. At first I thought it was some weird coast guard uniform but then I walked past two gentlemen who were not speaking English, as I was pondering that I walked past a sign over a door that said “Saudi Arabian liaison.” I asked a couple of people what’s going on. Apparently we train some pilots from other countries. So far I’ve ran into student military pilots my age from Germany, Saudi Arabia and Italy. Pretty obvious what they’re trying to do, especially if you consider the countries the pilots are from. I like it, they’re all pretty nice and as Kim would put it “their accents are fun.”


That’s all for now, I miss everyone back home. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it home for Christmas. They got me good ha ha.