Adventures of a Naval Aviator

Catching up

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 05:50:00 +0000

Well, It has been a while. I last left you off after my first flight. I have kept rather busy.

The first 8 flights are basic familiarization flights. They are designed around just getting used to flying and executing emergency procedures. For example, I practiced flying with only one engine working, with the stability system off, or with part of the hydraulics failed. I flew one of the flights at night so I could begin to get used to it in the H-60. The last flight was a checkride to review all of the procedures. I completed these flights without any major difficulties.

Overwater

Next up was the overwater stage. This is the bread and butter of what I will do when I get to the fleet. It started off with a few classes and sims to learn the procedures.

The main part of the overwater stage consists of three day flights, 2 night flight, plus a checkride. I practiced both day and night, Search and Rescue and Dip-to-Dip navigation procedures. On these flights, we also carry student aircrew who have to learn how to direct the helicopter over the survivor. Since the pilots can’t see directly down, we essentially turn into voice activated autopilots as the aircrew directs us. “Swimmer/Survivor are at 2 o’clock for 30 yards. Pilot Come Right 20…10…5,4,3,2,1…Stop Right…Come Forward 10…5,4,3,2,1, On top, Steady, Steady, Steady.” The aircrew also has to keep us informed of what is going on in case we have an emergency that we have to deal with immediately. “Swimmer/Survivor hooking up…I have a hoist signal…Swimmer/Survivor clear of water…Swimmer/Survivor halfway up…Swimmer/Survivor approaching cabin door…etc.” We use specific, standard verbology to keep everyone on the same page even when working with people who we have never flown with before. We also practice this while doing Emergency Procedures such as a runaway hoist or lost ICS (think intercom.)

The other major thing that we practice overwater is Dip-to-Dip navigation. The purpose is to get the sonar dome from one place to another as fast as possible. This may seem easy, but since we have to fly each approach and departure into the wind, it can involve lots of turning if the sub is moving downwind. Since there are no reference points on the water to follow where you are supposed to dip, you must continually look inside to see where the point is. However, with the aggressive maneuvering that we do to get there quickly, we must look outside. The balance between the two is surprisingly difficult and I had some trouble with it on a few of my flights.

When my parents were here two months ago, we when out on a whale watch. While it was nice to see the whales, I had already been spoiled. You see, the perfect whale watching platform is a helicopter flying over the water at 150 ft. On some of my flights I had seen schools of a hundred dolphins and pods of whales swimming just under the water. It was pretty cool.

Flying at night in this helicopter presents unique challenges. Since it was designed in the days before Night Vision Goggles, most of the lights aren’t NVG compatible (NVGs do not respond to green and blue and thus lights that just emit those colors are NVG compatible.) Instead, we have a just single green floodlight shining on our main flight instruments and we velcro blue Plexiglas over the LED displays. Everything else is blacked out so we have to know what every switch and button in the cockpit does without the label. We take a green chemlight and open one end of the wrapper to act as a small flashlight if we need to use it. I am slowly getting used to flying with goggles on, but it still feels like flying with a TV screen in front of my face. I will continue to get more proficient and comfortable with it over the next few years. After all, most of my flying will be done at night.

By convention in helicopters, the pilot on the right is primarily in charge of flying while the left seat runs whatever tactical situation is needed. Only the left seat pilot has access to the controls for the tactical display while the right seat pilot has better visibility of where we would position a survivor to pick them up. Both pilots are capable of flying during most situations however, there are a few situations that require one or the other to fly (lead changes during formation flying or approaching a ship from the side.)

The second night flight is the first flight that we sit in the left seat. The only flights that I have sat in the left seat so far have been observing solos back in flight school. Since it is at night not only could I not see any of the switches, but everything moved. The end of this flight actually ended with some more excitement than is normal. I was flying with the Commanding Officer and we heard some weird engine noises so we decided to come home a little early. As we were shutting down, we ran into a bit of a problem.

Normally, we have some springs on the rotor head pull in devices called droop stops during shutdown to prevent the rotor blades from coming down and cutting off the tail. We don’t shut down the second engine and stop the rotor until the lineman outside tells us that all four have seated (one for each blade). The first time we tried to shutdown, one of the droop stops failed to seat so we accelerated the rotors back up and tried again. We had no luck after trying two more times. We were going to have to do this the bad way.

We taxied to the end of the line, away from all of the other aircraft and the lineman parked a big, heavy cart under the front of the rotors. The theory was that if the rotor blade came too low, it would hit the start cart and splinter before cutting the tail off. It also gave the lineman something to hide behind. I was happy that the CO was over in the right seat controlling the shutdown instead of me. The plan was for me to shut off the second engine. The lineman would signal when the offending rotor blade was directly over the tail. The CO would then slam on the rotor brake and hope that the rotor would stop before the offending blade got back to the tail. After we briefed the plan, I shut down the second engine. The lineman immediately signaled that the last droop shot had seated. Oh well for our plan. We finished up with a normal shutdown. It turns out that one of the springs on the droop stop was adjusted improperly and it was not in anyway related to the engine noises that we heard earlier.

NATOPS

The culmination of this part of training was getting NATOPS qualified in the aircraft. It is a statement that I know how to safely operate the helicopter and handle emergencies. It requires a checkride every year to keep the qual. The initial certification is obviously the most intense though. It consisted of a three hour preflight exam, an open-book test, a closed-book test, an hour-long oral exam, a pre-NATOPS sim, a pre-NATOPS flight, a NATOPS sim, and finally, a NATOPS flight.

The preflight exam consisted of walking around an aircraft with an instructor while he quizzed me. What is that? What does it do? What are the limits associated with its operation? What happens if it breaks? How will we know? Etc. The open consisted of fill in the blank sentences taken from the NATOPS book. It forces us to look at some of the more random sections of the book. There is also a problem that involves calculating performance numbers using the charts. The closed book exam mostly involved Emergency Procedures and limits. The oral exam is right before the NATOPS sim and consists mostly of drawing systems (electrical, hydraulics, fuel, etc.) from memory and talking about how they work. The sims revolve around doing EPs that we can’t simulate in the helo (tail rotor failures, hydraulic failures, etc.) The flights obviously involve all of the normal maneuvers and as many of the Emergencies as we can do in the aircraft.

They say a good checkride is like a nice skirt. Long enough to cover everything, but short enough to keep it interesting.

Well, anyway, I got through the whole process without any major scars. I am now a NATOPS qualified pilot in the SH-60F and HH-60H helicopter. In the grand scheme of things, this really means that I am no longer concentrating on flying the aircraft. Up to now, with a few minor exemptions, I have been concentrating on the basics of flying. I am now starting to learn to do missions. After all, the taxpayers don’t pay us money to fly. They pay us money to do missions. Flying is just a means to an end.

CSAR

The first thing that I did after my NATOPS check was Combat Search and Rescue ground school. The aircraft carrier is designed to be an expeditionary asset meaning the the battle groups bring along everything that it needs and can take care of itself before the Air Force can get bases and show up. Part of the capability requirement is that we can go in and pick up a pilot downed behind enemy lines. As the carrier-born helo asset, that mission falls to us. I went through a three-day class on the basics of how we plan and execute these missions.

The two flights (called TERF for terrain following) in this block are well, fun! In flight school we do some low-level navigation flights and even one in formation, but there is not much terrain in Western Florida/Southern Alabama. I have only done one of the two flights so far. In a formation of two aircraft, we flew from here, over the mountains to the desert. There, we practiced different types of single-ship landings such as pinnacle landings and confined area landings. During these type of landings, we rely on the crewmen who are looking out the cabin door and window to ensure that everything is clear of obstacles as we descend. During pinnacle landings, we may only put one wheel on the ground due to the sloping terrain.

It is easy to get jaded doing my job. After all, it has taken a significant amount of of studying and work to get where I am. Some days can be long and tiring. Every once in a while, I am reminded how cool my job is though. It happened as I was flying back over the mountains at the end of the flight. I was flying as wing in the formation as we were diving over ridges and hiding behind hills. I looked down to see some people in a field waving at me. Wow!

Rocks and Blocks

Before getting to the fleet, they want to give us a brief introduction to VERTREP (Vertical Replenishment.) The helicopter is capable of lifting up to 6000 lbs. When I get to the fleet, I will use this to left everything from eggs to bombs from one ship to another. For this flight there were 6 students and we rotated out of the pilot’s seat. Each person gets 6 picks and 6 drops of a 1200 lb steel block. I went first and we had a little time to screw around while waiting for the guys on the ground to show up.

That is me right behind the sun glare. The instructor is flying.

I am flying this time.

ASW

Two weeks ago, I started Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) ground school. The first week was filled with classes consisting of topics such as oceanography and how sonobuoys work. We also got an introduction by one of the aircrew instructors to what the aircrew do in the back and how they interpret the displays. This past week, I have been doing a sim a day. The first three were centered around a single tool, for example sonobuoys or or sonar dome.

The last one that I did this week was much more scenario based. The instructor sat back and controlled the sub and acted as all of the people that we had to talk to while my partner and I tracked and then attacked the sub. I have about 7 more sims where we will do the same thing.

The ASW block will finish with me tracking and shooting a dummy torpedo at an underwater drone.

Fire fighting

Last week I had to take a basic firefighting class. After the Forrestal fire, the Navy mandated that everybody serving on an aircraft carrier flight deck. Has to take a specific firefighting class. It was a quick class that just consisted of a short lecture on types of fire and a practical exercise. I was surprised to see two people in the class who I hadn’t see in years. One was one of my instructors from back in primary. The other was one of the pilots who I flew with when I was out here during Summer Cruise before my senior year of college. It was nice to see and talk to them after a few years.

The Road Ahead

After finishing up ASW, I have three more flights, my second TERF flight, a Deck Landing Qual (DLQ) flight and a fleet introduction flight. For the DLQ flight, I will go out and practice landing on the back of ship during both the day and night.

I should finish up the RAG in the next month. I will then head to Jacksonville, FL for my fleet squadron. I am excited to finish up my initial training and start doing actual missions.

I started this blog with the intent of keeping it somewhat regular through flight school and then see where it goes from there. Obviously recently, it hasn't worked out that well. It has been hard to come up with things to say other than I had another flight. Hopefully I can get back into the habit. We shall see.

Life in San Diego

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 06:59:00 +0000

Well, I know that it has been forever. I have actually had this update in draft form for two months. I just never got around to finishing it. Well, here it finally is.

Ground School

Before flying a new aircraft, we obviously have to learn all about it. This ranges from seemingly simple things such as how to turn it on to how to diagnose and what to do when things go wrong. In flight school, we learned this stuff in a week-long systems class. We then practiced this stuff in a simulator a few times before our first flight.

Since the helo I fly now is so much more complicated, learning everything at once is impractical. Here at the FRS (Fleet Replacement Squadron), we started off by learning the checklists. For example, we learned how to unfold the blades and how to start the engines without torching them. Also, each time we start the aircraft up, we have to check multiple systems. For each of these checks, we had to learn what to do, but more importantly, what failing criteria is. Here is an example for how we verify that all of the hydraulic servos are working properly. We practiced these checklists twice in the sim before moving on.

After learning, the checklists, we moved on to each of the systems. Our general schedule was one day, we would learn a group of systems via the computer courseware and our publications. Normally, this would include one major system(e.g. Hydraulics) and one minor system (e.g. Electrical) along with how these systems could fail and the associated Emergency Procedures. The next day, we would have a review class followed by a test. The following day, we would have a sim, where we would practice the emergencies. We would go into these sims in pairs and switch seats halfway through so we could the emergencies as both the flying pilot and non-flying pilot. The sims could get rather realistic at times. During one of the sims, I was practicing landing following a complete tail rotor failure. One of the times, I landed a little crooked and caught one of the wheels. As we were starting to roll over, I looked over see my partner desperately trying to dive away from the windshield.

After finishing up all 8 sims, the last event I had to do before flying was a preflight of an aircraft with an instructor. We climbed all over the aircraft on what everything does and what we have to check in each compartment.

Finally Flying

After being out of the cockpit for over 3 months, I had my first flight Wednesday, two weeks ago. This flight was mostly just an introduction flight. My instructor first showed me the routes that we use to get around. We then went down to Imperial Beach OLF where I practiced pattern work. By the way, when I say pattern work, I mean practicing approaching the landing spot, landing, taking off and then departing. We fly around in an loop practicing different types of approaches (normal, steep, tactical, no-hover, running) and takeoffs (normal, running, obstacle clearance, maximum gross weight, tactical). At the end of the flight, my instructor demo'ed two autorotations and then I did two. They are much more aggressive than in the TH-57 because the H-60 is so much heavier.

Another thing that took a lot of getting used to was the different sight picture. Because we are sitting so much farther forward, it can be very easy to forget how much helicopter there is behind you. When doing a 360 hovering turn, I had to consciously think about swinging around the center of the helo instead of the helo spinning around me. For the same reason, it is very easy to hit the tail when trying to slow down at low altitude.

I had my second flight the next day spent about half the time doing pattern work and the other half practicing autos. For some reason, I was having a lot of trouble with both maintaining lineup and judging when to recover. I am not even supposed to start doing autos until the third flight though so it shouldn't be that big of a deal. I just have to keep working at it. After a 2-and-a -half hour flight, I was tired and sore. To make matters worse, we had to wait in line at the fuel pits before we were able to turn the helo over to the next crew.

Unfortunately, helicopters have never been designed with much ergonomics in mind. Most of the flying is done hunched over in order to see and control everything and it gets very uncomfortable after a while. Also, after twenty years of service, the seats aren't exactly soft anymore.

Regardless of the comfort, it is sure nice to be flying again.

If any of you are curious, this is an hourly updated picture of NAS North Island. You can see our hanger on the far side of the flight line. It is black, double arched hangar with gray supports. You can also see downtown San Diego in the background.

A Naval Aviator

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 06:04:00 +0000

I know it has been over a month, but I have been incredibly busy recently.

When I last left you off, I had my last three NVG flights. I finished those up on Friday, Monday and Tuesday nights. For these three flights I had to come up with and fly a navigation route. When planning these routes, I had to take into account things like the moon location and angle, the ability to identify checkpoints on NVGs, and the ability for the "enemy" to follow the routes on the ground (i.e. roads). It was challenging, but a lot of fun.

Stepping out the aircraft after the last flight was nice. It felt great to be done.

Selection

The following Monday, I got called in early to find out what aircraft I am going to fly in the fleet. Unfortunately, with small classes (we only had 5 navy guys not a normal 15), the needs of the Navy often override personal preference. I was selected to fly the SH-60F and the HH-60H out of San Diego, CA. It was not my first choice but I am still happy to do it.

The two aircraft are very similar and I will learn to fly both and switch back and forth as needed. I will deploy in a whole squadron to an aircraft carrier and we will have a few of each type of helo. The -60F is designed around anti-submarine warfare. It has a dipping sonar in addition to a sonobouy launcher. It can carry up to three torpedoes.

The -60H is equipped primarily for the CSAR (Combat Search and Rescue) mission. (Think picking up a pilot downed behind enemy lines.) It carries things such as a FLIR (Forward Looking InfraRed), Hellfire Missiles, and IR jammers. Both helicopters are obviously quite capable of performing "normal" helo duties such as VertRep (lifting pallets weighing up to 6000 lb.), Search and Rescue, and VIP transport.

Winging

After my parents arrived in town on Wednesday, our first official function was the soft patch ceremony Thursday evening. After one of my instructors told a story about me, he replaced my name tag on my flight suit with one with wings on it.

The next morning, I got a chance to take my parents into the simulator and show them how we fly. We only died once while my dad tried to land.

That afternoon, I was designated as a Naval Aviator and received my Wings of Gold. I became Naval Helicopter Pilot #29553.

Move

My report date in San Diego, was the 28th of August and I needed time to find a place to live so I decided to leave the next Saturday. I only found out how early I should leave the Monday after my winging so I only had 4 days to get everything done including a day spent with the movers. I was in a bit of a rush. I finally checked out on Friday and left early Saturday morning.

I put in about 12 hours on the road on Saturday to make it to my sister's place in Austin, TX. She was even kind enough to throw a party for me coming to town. She will claim that it was for her birthday, but she just conveniently threw it the day that I came into town, not her birthday. It was nice to meet many of her friends. I decided to stay another night and ended up leaving on Monday.

Monday, I put about 10 hours to make it to Las Cruces, NM. I never remembered how barren west Texas is. There was literally a 3 hour period where I drove without having to adjust my cruise control. I finally had to pull over to get some gas. As an interesting note, Sen. McCain was coming to the hotel I was staying at in Las Cruces the day after I left. I saw his campaign buss and some of his staffers.

Tuesday, I decided to take an easy day and just go to Phoenix, AZ instead of pushing to San Diego. Wednesday, I completed my journey and arrived in San Diego in mid afternoon.

Since I have gotten here, I have spent my time both starting the check-in process and finding a place to live. I finally found a place and I expect to move into it this Saturday.

I should start ground school early next week. I will have ten sims mixed in with ground school for three to four weeks. I will then get back to flying. I am so excited.

I will try to fill in some more info when I have time.

Syllabus Complete

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 03:38:00 +0000

I finished up my last flight last night. It feels great to be done.

Three More Flights

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:49:00 +0000

Wow, flight school is almost over.

I finished up my last two Low-Level Nav. flights right after writing my last blog. The last two are flown at 200 ft. so they are a lot of fun.

Forms

I next had four formation flights. Unlike Marines, us Navy guys will not fly forms much in the fleet. Form flying, though, is a good way to sum up a lot of what they taught us in flight school such as radius-of-turn and closure rates. I don't really know what it was, but I had a much easier time picking up form flying in helicopters than back in T-34s. Maybe it was because I had already been introduced to it, or I had become proficient at hovering (they use many of the same concepts), or I had just become a better pilot. Many of the other students I talked to felt the same way.

The first form flight was a very long flight where we were shown all of the maneuvers and then practiced them many times. After finishing up in the working area, we went to Harold OLF and practiced taking off, flying the pattern and landing while in formation. The second and third form. flights were very similar except each time, we spent less time practicing the maneuvers.

The last Form flight was another Low-Level Nav. For this flight, one aircraft flew as lead for one of the routes that we had already flown going forward. After finishing the route, we switched positions and the other aircraft lead the route backwards. We also learned how to fly combat cruise which gives us much more flexibility. Instead of being locked into a specific formation position, we just have a large area that we have to stay in. This allows us to do things like get on the inside of a turn when we are behind and on the outside when we are too close. Flying in formation at 200 ft. at over 100 mph is exciting.

Ships and SARs

Halfway through the four form flights, I had to do some other things though. Thursday, two weeks ago, I was scheduled to observe another student's navigation solo. We flew out to Tallahassee and got stuck there for a few hours before we were able to fly back home. There was another solo from our squadron so we were able to get some food together while we waited for the weather. As I said before, solo flights are nice chill flights.

The next Monday, since my form partner was taking the NVG class, I was scheduled for my Search and Rescue and ship sims. The SAR sim was pretty easy. I just flew some simple patterns while looking for people in the water. The second sim was a little more challenging. It dealt with how to fly approaches to ships in the weather or at night. I just finished up spending 4 months learning how to shoot approaches to airports so it sounded like it would be the same thing. Well the problem is that the ship can be headed in any one of 360 directions. To account for this, we have to do the math to convert from true bearings to relative bearings in our head as we are flying. It can get a little confusing.

NVGs

Back during Low-Levels, I had to take a one day class on the use of Night Vision Goggles. We spent all morning learning about how they work and the use and limitations of them. In the afternoon, we first learned how to adjust and focus them (there are 4 separate focus knobs). We were then shown how different color lights affect the goggles. For example, green and blue lights do not get amplified by the goggles. Consequently, we can use those lights inside the cockpit without washing out the NVG image. Finally, we were shown a terrain board to demonstrate how changing moon angles and intensities affect the image.

The day after finishing up forms, I had my NVG sim. It was pretty simple and I didn't find it that useful. I just flew some laps around the pattern and practiced hovering.

Tuesday, I had my first goggle flight and it was a strange experience. We started by going out to one of the working areas for a bit to just get a feel for how they work and to be sure that they were properly adjusted for use in the aircraft. We then went to Santa Rosa OLF for around an hour for some pattern work and some light demonstrations. The last thing that we did was my instructor demonstrating a practice autorotation. This was mostly just to show us that, yes, the same procedures still work.

Last night I flew my second flight just practicing normal and steep approaches to hover and no-hover landings. Because fog doesn't affect Near IR energy as much, we can actually get into a real bad situation without realizing it. We came home before it got much worse.

After flying just two flights on them, I can tell you that they are an incredible piece of technology. It is amazing how much they give you. When you look through them you can identify trees, fields, power line slashes, etc., but when you look around them, it is just black.

What Comes Next

I should fly my last flight this coming up Saturday. It will be nice to be done. Early the following week, I will find out what I will fly in the fleet. That Friday (8/8/08), I should wing. From there, I will move onto a follow on school to learn to fly and fight a fleet helicopter. I am so excited.

The End is in Sight

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 05:05:00 +0000

After well over a year in Flight School, the end is finally in sight!

It took me a while to finish up my last few Radio Instrument flights. I got canceled five times in a row, but finally made it to my last Radio Instrument flight. The last flight was my Instrument Checkride and is considered the hardest flight in flight school. I was scheduled to fly with a reservist who, in addition to having thousands of hours of military helicopter experience, flies commercially for Northwest Airlines. When I showed up to the squadron 45 minutes before the scheduled brief time, the instructor was already there and briefing the other student we was flying with. The brief (basically an oral examination) lasted three hours and covered multiple different publication and all of the rules that we fly under. I got stumped a few times, but it didn't go to that bad.

We then went on to the flight. I had heard horror stories from other students where every single system not absolutely essential to keeping to helo in the air (hydraulics, stability, instruments, GPS, etc.) failed. My flight was surprisingly uneventful though. I went up did a holding pattern and then three approaches and landed. Most of the flight, my instructor and I just chatted. The entire time though, I was thinking that my instructor was just trying to distract me. He even told me that I shouldn't have done more than one turn in holding (normally we do at least three). For what its worth, the point of this flight is not to do anything fancy and try to show off. We just have to go up, do the required items, and land. Less time in the air means less time to screw something up and fail. After landing, my instructor congratulated me on a good flight and told me that I passed. I now had an instrument rating and was ready for my navigation solo.

One of the good deals of flight school is the navigation solo flight. We fly to another airport without an instructor, grab some food and gas, and come back. It is nice to just go up and fly without having to worry about constantly being evaluated. One leg is an instrument navigation flight where we climb up and just navigate off of instruments. The other flight is a visual navigation flight . My initial plan was to fly out to Tallahassee, FL on instruments and the fly back along the beach. Unfortunately, there was some weather out there so the squadron wasn't comfortable sending me out there. Instead I quickly planned up a flight out to the west to Mobile, AL. My observer for the flight was a recently completed student and a guy I had known for a while. On the way out, we actually flew though a cloud so we were able to log some actual instrument time. This may seem rather trivial to most of you, but it has taken me many hundreds of hours of work to get my instrument rating to fly through clouds. It was nice to show that I could do it legally, if only for about a minute. For the flight back, we flew down to the beach and then along it. It was another nice, uneventful flight.

When we were out at Mobile, I had the other student take a picture of me. We had to wear the extra bulky "wet-vest" (it includes flotation, a lifting harness and a small SCUBA bottle) because we were going to be flying out over Mobile Bay. Normally, we just have to wear a small survival vest with a few pockets.

My navigation solo marked the last flights of the Radio Instrument phase. It is nice to be done. The next block of flights is Low-Level Navigation. I have finished 3 of the five flights so far. These flights are flown at about 100 mph and at an altitude of either 200 or 500 ft depending on the route. It takes us around 20 minutes to navigate the 10 or so checkpoints on the route We then head over to one of the fields to practice tactical landings. Tactical landings are a way to land in a zone while minimizing our exposure to enemy small arms fire and are a blast. We set up by flying over the intended point of landing at 90 mph at 200 feet. We then to a tight, descending 360 degree turn and land where we started the maneuver. This is the route that I flew on Friday. Looking, at the satellite imagery, it may seem easy to identify the checkpoints, but it is much harder when flying low and fast.

Well, the end is finally in sight, I only have 12 more flights left. After finishing up Low-Levels, I just have formations, Night Vision Goggles, and a Search and Rescue flight left. Tomorrow, I am taking an all-day class on the use of Night Vision Goggles. I am expecting to wing on the 8th of August. I will soon find out what helo I will fly and where I will be living for the next few years.

Continuing

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 05:34:00 +0000

Well, things have really been picking up around here. I am in probably the most rigorous part of flight school right now, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

When I last left you off a few weeks ago, I was in the middle of Radio Instrument sims. I finished up the last five and they went well. The one nice thing about sims is that they are very predictable days. We know what time that we will come in, what time we will do the sim, and what time we will be home. There is no sort of consistency like that when we are in the aircraft.

My first flight after getting out of the sims was what we call a Contact flight. Its point is just to keep me used to flying and landing the aircraft and dealing with emergencies when not in the clouds. It had been over two months since I had flown one of these flights so it was a little weird at first but I quickly picked up my habits. I practiced sliding landings, no-hover landings, steep approaches, engine failures, etc.

Then it was on to the instrument flights. The point of most of the flights and sims in the instrument stage is to teach us how to follow published Instrument Approach Procedures to safety descend to an airport. Our helo have five different types of navigational aids that we can receive (VOR, TACAN, NBD, GPS, and ILS). Each of these approach types requires slightly different procedures. There are also some subcategories and combinations that require still different procedures. In addition, we can also fly an approach called a PAR where a person sitting at a radar scope on the ground can continuously update our position and guide us down to the ground. This is most precise of the approaches that we can fly brings us down to 100 ft off of the ground. If we don't have the runway in sight at that point, we have to fly away and land somewhere else.

The first block contains four flights and during these flights we stayed mostly in the local area.This gave us more time to devote to flying approaches as opposed to flying somewhere else. I got out of this block without too much pain. I then got to do some more fun stuff.

DC

In addition to just how to descend to an airport, the Navy has to teach us how to actually navigate from one airport to another. While these procedures are much simpler than coming into land, we still need to practice them by flying four AirNav (Airways Navigation) flights. There are also four flights in the syllabus to teach us basic visual navigation. These eight flights can be flown in the local area, but is is much more common to plan for a weekend cross-country to another city.

Three weeks ago, me and another student, JT, planned to fly up to Washington DC with an instructor. Me and JT would alternate flying each leg with each of us flying two AirNavs and two VNavs. As you may know, there is a large restricted area around DC, but is turns out that one of the exceptions to it is that DoD can fly through it. There is also a small heliport in downtown DC that is about 15 blocks away from the capitol. Our plan was to fly up the Potomic River at less than 200 ft, past Reagan International and land at this heliport. My parents were going to come down and see me land. All three of us showed up to work that Friday morning with our bags packed and ready to go. Unfortunately, there were thunderstorms all along the Florida panhandle and we couldn't get out. By the time the thunderstorms dissipated, it was too late for us to be able to make it us there before our 12 hour crew day expired. We decided to cancel instead of going somewhere else.

Charleston

The other student and I kept talking to other instructors to find one who was able to fly with us the next weekend, Memorial Day weekend. We managed to find one and after talking with him, we planned to go up to Charleston, SC. The instructor went to school there and I heard that it was a great city. JT and I developed another plan for which airports we were going to stop at and how we were going to get there. In the meantime, JT and I continued on with instrument flights. Unfortunately, when we showed up to work the next Friday, there were more weather problems. There were thunderstorms East of Pensacola and they were headed up the coast towards Charleston. The West was clear though so we decided to head to Austin. I knew that it was a fun city and our instructor had mentioned that he wanted to go there. I told my sister that I was coming into town while the other student quickly planned his first leg. We launched not that long after that and for each of the four flights to get out there, the other student was in the back of the helo planning the next leg out. During our last leg, we even got to fly by downtown Houston before heading up towards Austin. I had a blast that weekend in Austin. We visited the Texas state capital, visited with my sister and my friend from college, and hit up the bars both nights.

Sunday, the day before Memorial Day, we began our journey home and it turned out to be more of the same. We flew the first three legs without any major problems. I was supposed to fly the last leg, a rather long one home. Unfortunately, when we checked the weather, a thunderstorm had developed over Mobile, AL and wasn't moving. We made the decision to take off and fly East in the hope that the weather got better by the time that we got there. At the worst case, at least that we wouldn't be stuck in the little town that we were in.

As we flew towards Mobile, we updated our weather with a few people over the radios. It didn't sound good though so we landed in Gulfport, MS. We spent a few hours at the airport hoping that the weather would get better, but our 12 hour crew day finally expired and we had to spend the night there. Even with it being Memorial Day Weekend and all of the hotels booked solid, we were able to talk our way into getting us rooms at the Casino in town. To compound our problems, with the helo's 72 hour inspection expiring and our civilian maintainers not working on Memorial Day, we would have to spend two nights there. Gulfport was not so much fun. The only thing to do there was gamble and watch TV. There wasn't even a pool. Finally, late Tuesday morning, one of the maintenance pilots flew out with a maintainer to complete the 20 minute inspection. We quickly left and flew home. It was good to be home after a long weekend.

Over the next few days, I flew the rest of my AirNavs and VNavs. The first one was a night VNav coming back from Tallahassee, FL. As we flew up the beach on the way home, we got to see a really cool thing. There was a AC-130 Gunship (think a cargo plane with an artillery piece sticking out the side) shooting at the ground about ten miles away. We could see both the muzzle flash of the round round leaving the gun and then the explosion on the ground. Then next day, I flew both legs out and back to Panama City, FL. I got to fly along the same beach as before, but his time it was during the day. Yesterday, I flew the leg coming back from Mobile, AL.

The Boat

The biggest thing that sets naval helicopter pilots apart from any other pilots is landing on a boat. About twenty years ago, the Navy retrofitted an old WWII landing craft into a landing trainer. The Navy uses it to give us an initial introduction to landing on a boat before we do it again in our fleet aircraft. I was scheduled to go land on it today. Before going to land on it, we have to practice flying to pattern at one on of our airfields. I was able to give another student my camera to get some pictures. In all of these pictures, I am sitting in the right seat.

We then flew out to the bay and made five landings on the Baylander before coming home. It was a short flight, but a lot of fun. It was nice getting a better understanding of what I am going to do in the fleet.

Looking forward, I have about two more weeks of instruments before I get to do some more fun stuff.

Basic Instruments

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:22:00 +0000

After two months of not doing much, I have finally been able to make some steady progress.

I was able to finish up all seven of my Basic Instruments (BI) flights. I had good flights and bad flights, but I was getting better. These flights got progressively harder as I went on. Towards the end, I was flying almost the entire flight with the stability system off. My instructors would also fail my primary attitude and direction indicators and I had to fly and recover from unusual attitudes using just the secondary instruments. For example, I had to determine my if I was pitched up or down by seeing if my altimeter was going up or down. The only way that I could determine if I was banked left or right was look to see if my turn needle was indicating a left or right turn. My last BI flight was a checkride and I flew it at night. You would think that if I can't see outside during these flights, who cares what time of that day it is. In actuality though, we can see a little bit past our feet and I wasn't used to seeing the lights move. It screwed me up a little bit during the unusual attitude recoveries. It wasn't pretty, but I got through it.

You may wonder why we devote so much time to Basic Instruments here. After all, seven flight is not that much less than it took me to solo the helo. The reason is because BIs is what saves lives in the helo community. Flying off the back of the boat turning and accelerating into a black hole at an altitude of only 100 ft. Flying a low level nav route and flying into a patch of fog. Flying in the middle of the night with no moon and a cloud layer blocking the stars. There are numerous examples of when a good BI scan can be incredible useful and save lives.

The Monday after I finished BIs I had to stand duty at Pace OLF, on of the local Navy fields. It was rather boring. In the 8 hours that I was there, only six aircraft. My job there was to watch over the airfield and keep track of the helos as they came and went. There was also a crash crew there with me in case anything happened. My fun meter was pegged off of the charts.

Can you tell I was bored?

One of the aircraft following and practice autorotation.

Radio Instruments

Then next day, I was back into sims. For the 11 Radio Instrument (RI) sims, I have a partner who I go through with. Each day, we actually have two sims, one with each person being pilot and then copilot. The first sim was an emergency procedure sim and gave us a good understanding of how to deal with some of of the emergencies that we are really not able to simulate in the aircraft. For example, at one point, my instructor failed my tail rotor and I had to enter an autorotation. Well, the nearest field was not within gliding distance so he showed us how to manipulate the controls to get some power out of the engine without spinning out of control.

Following that, we actually got into the heart of RIs. Each day, our sim was about a different topic. We started off with simple things like intercepting radials and have moved on to more advanced things such as GPS approaches. The past two days, our sims have been about failing our directional gyro and having to fly approaches on the backup instruments. It requires a significant amount of mental gymnastics to determine the correct headings to fly and such.

The simulators that we use are huge. We have six of them total, but one is undergoing an upgrade right now so we only use five. Three of the five working sims have visuals to allow the pilot to get a feel for breaking out of the clouds and getting setup to land. They all have hydraulic actuators to simulate the feel of flying. They instructor sits behind us and has a panel to control everything. To give you an understanding of scale, the door on the sim is about seven feet tall.

I have five more sims before getting back into the aircraft and practicing the same things in the air. I am looking forward to getting out of instruments. They are a lot more work than fun.

There is a great miniseries airing this week on PBS on an Aircraft Carrier. I encourage you to check it out. You can also watch past episodes online.

Wow it has been a long time

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:47:00 +0000

Ok, well life has been slow around here, but it is slowly getting back on track. After those engines failures, the Navy was able to sit down with the manufacturer of the part and develop a solution. The manufacturer stopped producing the faulty governor and was able to fix the faulty ones at a rate of three pre day. As time when on, we were able to slowly get back up to speed and I was scheduled a few times but was canceled each time because I was low on the priority list. "They" decided it was a better idea to keep a few people moving and get them back to sims then try to fly everybody slowly. Unfortunately, I was not chose as one of those to keep moving. We seemed to be just getting back on track when we had a tragedy two weeks ago.

T-34 Crash

Two and a half weeks ago, a T-34 from Whiting NAS crashed in Alabama. Unfortunately, both pilots died. I have a really good friend from college who was flying up that way that afternoon and was in that squadron. It was not him, but he and a few of my other friends knew both pilots. For those that are keeping track, that is the same type of plane that I flew in Primary in Corpus Christi. They fly the same plane to teach Primary here at Whiting NAS North Field. North Field flies T-34 planes for Primary instruction while South Field flies TH-57 Helos for Advanced instruction.

After this crash CNATRA (Chief of Naval Air Training, our boss) dictated that all training commands slow down to 50% production for two weeks to regroup and analyze what we are doing and the 75% for another two weeks. We have had a few mishaps recently and he wanted us to see if anything should be changed regarding our training.

There is also some back story to this. Everyone in the military is very mission oriented. No one likes to say no. I can't do that. We are given a certain amount of resources and goal and told to get it done. Well, over the past few years, the Navy has decided that output of pilots needs to increase. At the same time, the Navy has grabbed some instructors for a few months to do other things for the Navy. As time goes on, this just gets worse. Saturdays and to some extent Sundays just became another work day. We needed those days to keep up. It was common for instructors to need waivers to go over the maximum flight time for each month and year. After this mishap, CNATRA told us that keeping up this pace was unsafe and to stop. If the Navy/Marine Corps/Coast Guard wants more pilots, they need to supply more instructors. To me, this means that I can now expect to be able to do things on Saturdays instead of checking the schedule at 5 PM on Friday to see if I am flying that weekend. On the other hand, it means that it is going to push my winging date back a little bit.

Two weeks ago, I attended the memorial service for the two pilots who were killed. Around 1200 people from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard, and allied militaries attended. I managed to get a place to stand up in the choir loft at the back of the church. During the memorial, the student pilot was promoted and designated as a Naval Aviator conferring his Wings of Gold. It was a chilling ceremony and it ended with a fly over of four T-34s in a missing-man formation.

Back to Flying

The Wednesday after the memorial, I managed to get back up in the air on another syllabus familiarization flight. I practiced steep approaches and autorotations and such. My rust showed. It had been over a month since I had flow. I got better on my autorotations towards the end of the flight, but there still is much room for improvement.

That Friday, I was scheduled for a Basic Instrument warm-up sim. The point of this sim was just to keep me familiar with all of the maneuvers and to keep my instrument scan proficient while I was not flying. I flew all of the maneuvers that I am responsible for during BIs and reflew the ones that I had trouble with. Again, my rust showed, but fortunately, this sim was not graded because it was a warm-up.

The next Monday, I had my first night flight in a helicopter. We went out to a local civilian field about 20 minute flight away. The flight there allowed me to get used to flying at night and also to get my instrument scan back. Flying was not that much different than day flying except identifying the ground checkpoints was much harder. Many times I had to just trust my instructor that that yellowish light was the water tower that I normally flew over. When we got out to the airport, I practiced some normal and steep approaches. (For those pilots that are reading this {Tom, Chuck, ...}, when I am talking about approaches, I am not talked about an instrument approaches. Approaches are what we call transitioning from forward flight to a hover. The opposite is called "Transition to Forward Flight" which is a separate maneuver than a takeoff which is simply lifting up from the ground to a hover) Besides the fact that the amount that we can see is much less, I didn't find these maneuvers much harder. Once I had gotten these down, we flew back to home field and practiced autorotations. These were weird at night. The normal sight pictures of the ground rushing is lost. All I had to judge my height was some runway lights and a radar altimeter. Also, I had a lot of trouble judging how far I was from the runway and when to start the auto. I felt ok about them but not great.

BI Flights

This past Friday, I finally flew my first BI flight. It had been almost a month since I had finished my sims. During these flights, we wear a hood over on our helmets so that we cannot see outside. The flight started out by practicing Instrument Takeoffs. During these maneuvers, the instructor gives me the controls while we are sitting on the deck. I pull in power and fly off of the ground without being able to see outside at all. I managed to get then hang of these quick and after the third, I flew an instrument departure and flew out to the working area. After we got out there, I flew all of the maneuvers that I had flown in the sims except they were much harder this time. Unlike the sims, I had to deal with turbulence and changing winds. At first I tried to fly it like the sims but that did not work. I had to use much more effort to just fly the aircraft. At the end of the flight, my instructor demo'ed an instrument approach. I will be expected to fly one of these at the end of each of my BI flights. Overall, I guess that it was not a bad flight, but I walked away not feeling that great about my skills.

Today, I flew my second BI flight and I felt so much better about it. My instructor told me the three instruments that I should be concentrating on(airspeed, ball, and VSI) and it helped so much. I was able to hit my numbers within a few feet or few degree each time. It was amazing how much a simple comment can help. We managed to get back in just before some weather. In fact, the approach that I flew at the end was through some pretty serious rain.

Perspective

Since the instructor can only see the the left part of the aircraft from his (I don't meant to be sexist, but my squadron only has one female instructor) seat while the student is wearing the hood, another student sits in the back right seat to watch for aircraft from that side. While the student can help out with some other things (calculating fuel flows or timing) his (ok, we have more female students, but it is still a good generalization) primary job is to look outside. Irrespective of the fact that people pay hundreds of dollars to just sit in a helicopter and look out, I just consider this another part of my job and look forward to going home while doing it. I try to be as up beat as possible, but by this time, I am normally tired, hungry, my butt hurts. It is amazing how much my perspective can change.

It is so easy to make fun of jet pilots

Mishap

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 00:38:00 +0000

Some shitty news.

What Now?

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 04:52:00 +0000

A little back story first

This whole weekend I was nursing a cold and when I showed up Monday morning to go fly, I was still not feeling great. Every time before we go fly, both students and instructors state I'M SAFE. It stands for Illness, Medication, Stress, Alcohol,, Fatigue, and Eating. It is a good way to summarize that hey, I am feeling good to go fly. Well, I was not feeling great so I "I'M SAFE'ed" myself out of the flight.

I went over to talk to the doc. By the time I got in to see him I was feeling a lot better and had begun to regret my decision. Oh well. The doc decided not to put me Med Down. I was on the up swing and I should be ready the next morning. It is not like I have to be able to clear my ears in the helo. I was told to go home, get some rest, hydrate and be ready to fly the next day.

Engine Failures

I was not one the schedule to fly on Tuesday, so I went in to try and see if I could get picked up. This was not going to happen though. Monday night, one of the other squadrons had an engine failure on a night flight. Fortunately, they were in a good location and were able to land safety without injury or damage to the aircraft. That was the third engine failure that we have had since July. We have been lucky with no injuries and only minor damage to the aircraft, but it could have been a lot worse. The Army, which flies the same type of aircraft in their training command, has had three engine failures in the past two weeks. Late Tuesday morning, our squadron commanders were told that these were all connected and recalled all aircraft.

Investigators identified all of these failures being cause by what is called the Nf Governor. Its job is to keep the rotors turning at the right speed (394 RPM). It seems that its bearings have shredded and the Nf Governor decided that the rotors were turning too fast and cut fuel off to the engine. The manufacturer of governor recently changed and we were the first people to recognize the problem because we fly so many more hours than civilians. Of the 119 aircraft that we have here to fly, just 11 of them still have the old governor. They are still considered safe to fly, but only 2 of those 11 are Charlies. Needless to say, training here has ground to a near standstill.

The Navy is right now talking with the manufacturer of the engine and governors to try to figure out what is happening and how to set up any sort of inspection schedule to prevent this. This problem could take from days to months to solve. There will be a meeting Monday to decide what is going to happen. In the meantime, there is a lot of sitting around going on.

A great helicopter engineer died earlier this week. He developed the ability to fly twin rotor helicopters. I credit him with keeping me alive after I flew an helo of his design this past October.

The End of the Bravo

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 02:57:00 +0000

I know that it has been a while. I am sorry.

Tactics

I had two tactics flights before finishing up flying the Bravo. The first one started with practicing the maneuvers that I learned on the first tactics flight. We then went on to do some more advanced things. We started with CALs (Confined Area Landings). I learned to land in a field that is 120ft by 150 and is surrounded by 70 ft trees. If you look in that link, there actually is one of our helicopters in it. My instructor demo'ed the first one to me and then I flew in and out 4 or 5 more times. Each time, we had the crewman in the back with his head out the door giving us calls to ensure that our tail was clear of the trees. We then went over and practiced pinnacle landings. I practiced landing on a 40 ft by 40ft that was elevated 20ft above the surrounding ground. Again, my instructor demo'ed the first one and then I flew the others. Pinnacle landings are a little different then normal because you don't have the ground effect to give you a little extra power down low. I didn't find them that hard though.

My last tactics flight started off with practicing more high-speed approaches and such. After picking our crewman up, we taxied over and got ready to do external loads. Our goal was was to pick up a 150 lb concrete block, fly around, put it back down, and repeat. Again, my instructor demo'ed the first one and then I tried my hand at it. The pilot's job for this can best be describe as a voice activated autopilot. The crewman in the back has much more visibility down and around and tells us what to do. I shot a normal approach and ended in a slightly high hover. Someone on the ground then ran under the helo and hooked up the load. The crewman in the back kept us informed as this is happening. After the man cleared the rotor arc, the crewman cleared us to ascend to 25 ft to pick the load up. After making sure that everything looked good, we began forward flight and flew around the pattern. As I flew the approach to drop of the load, I had to make sure that I didn't descend to low. I have to terminate in a 25 ft hover to prevent dragging the load on the ground. After getting in the hover and being cleared by the crewman, I began the descent to put the load back on the ground. I then hit the pickle button (a button on the stick that opens up the hook) and slowly climbed back up to pull the load out of the hook. After it pulled out, I flew back around the pattern and tried it again. It was a lot of fun and I got the hang of it quickly.

My last flight in the Bravo was actually a good deal. I was asked to observe the solo for a friend of mine. We hot-seated the aircraft from two instructors. We then flew out to Pace OLF. I had never been there before so the other student pointed out all of the checkpoints on the way out there. After 45 minutes there, our fun was up and we had to fly back home.

Trans-fams

My next two flights were called Trans-fams. During these transition flights, we learn to fly the Charlie. I practiced most of the maneuvers that I had flown before. The maneuvers are flown just a bit differently than before because the Charlie is heavier, the instrument panel is bigger, and all of the instruments are in different locations. Both of these flights went well.

BIs

I then moved onto Basic Instrument sims. During these, I flew simple patterns with no outside reference to get a better understanding of how the aircraft reacts to control inputs and to develop my instrument scan. For example, I would do things like fly a 500 ft/min climbing left turn for 1000 ft of altitude change and 360 degrees of turn. I would then fly straight and level for one minute and then fly a descending turn to the right back to original altitude and heading. During all of this, I would be maintaining airspeed and constantly checking the clock to see if I was ahead or behind on the climb or the turn. I flew all five of these sims over a week.

This past Thursday, I was supposed to fly a third Trans-fam before my BI flights. Unfortunately, it was raining all day and I got weather canceled.

Tomorrow, I am scheduled to fly that third Trans-fam. I will then probably fly a night-fam and then move on to my BI flights.

Too Close for Missiles, Switching to Guns

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 04:40:00 +0000

I left you off two weeks ago after flying my first Super-Fam flight on Wednesday. The next day, I was scheduled to fly with the same instructor. Unfortunately, there was some fog that morning again and I was scheduled to be third go. Our instructor had to teach a class at 1 PM and with the weather delay, there was no way that I could go.

PFPS

The only good news about getting canceled was that I had a class to go to at 1:30 and I was able to make it. The class was about how to use the Portable Flight Planning Software. To give you some background, in Primary, I had to fly four visual navigation flights. For each of these flights, I would be given or pick 8-10 landmarks that we would fly over. For each of the legs, I would have to calculate heading, distance flight time factoring in winds, fuel burn and a few other things. I would take me almost two hours to calculate all of this information for just one flight. Using this software though, all I have to do is select the points, enter the airspeed and winds. I will spit out all of that info and allow me to print it to a small little card that I can put on my kneeboard. This is the same software that they use in the fleet to plan combat missions. It is neat to be able to use software that is so powerful and useful.

Charlie Systems

I haven't really mentioned this before, but here in helo advanced, I will actually fly two different aircraft. Both aircraft are built around the same airframe and have the same engine and drivetrain. The primary difference has to do with the avionics and electrical system. The first one is the one that I have been flying and is called the TH-57B (we call it the Bravo). It is lighter and is designed mostly around learning to develop the stick-and-rudder skills needed to fly helicopters. It is quite capable of flying around at day and night, but it does not have the type of backups that are required to make flying around in the clouds safe. In fact, every time before we go fly (in the NATOPS brief), we brief that we will avoid the clouds "to the extent of landing in a field."

The other helo is called the TH-57C (the Charlie). It has a much more sophisticated electrical system to ensure to we will be able to maintain critical instruments if there is ever a single point failure. Additionally, the avionics allows us to receive a much broader spectrum of navigation information including GPS. The last difference is that the Charlie includes a stability augmentation system. This system works a lot like a cruise control and maintains the attitude of the helo in all three axis. This frees us up to allow more thought into navigating and communicating instead of just aviating.

Friday, the only thing that I had was to attend the Charlie systems class in the morning. We learned about how all of these systems work.

Monday and Tuesday, I had my last two Super-Fams. They were very similar to my last flight. On a interesting note, on Tuesday, I flew the last full autorotation that I will do here. I will soon be done flying the Bravo and the Charlie is too heavy to do practice full autorotations with guaranteed no damage to the airframe. Instead, all of our autos will end in a power recovery. In fact, for the rest of my Navy career there are only two scenarios that I will fly full autos again: I have an actual engine failure or I come back here to teach.

Wednesday and Friday I got canceled from my first Tactics flight for different reasons.

Thursday evening I had the Charlie sim. The Charlie requires a few more steps to start up and shut down. Additionally, testing and tuning the avionics requires a significant amount more work. They want to give us a chance to practice these procedures before trying it in the aircraft. The sim started off with a blindfold cockpit check. Most of the switches and gauges have moved from the Bravo so this required a fair amount of practice. We then just started up, shut the aircraft down and went over some other checklists. Overall, it went well.

Tactics

Today, I finally flew my first of three Tactics flights. These three flights have progressively more advanced maneuvers. Today, I had two new maneuvers, the quickstop and the high-speed approach. The high-speed approach is basically a quickstop with a landing on the end so I will just describe that. We accelerate to 100 kts. (~115 mph) when flying around the pattern. Maintaining 100 kts., we set up and fly over the field boundary about 20 feet over the tree tops. We then descend the final 50 ft or so and get stabilized at 100 kts., 50 ft above ground. We drop the power to the floor and maintain altitude with aft stick until we bleed off enough airspeed. We finish by entering a steep approach profile and go straight into a no-hover landing. I know that I have said this a few times, but they are a blast.

Tomorrow and Wednesday , I should fly the next two tactics and my last flights in the Bravo. I will do confined area landings tomorrow and external loads on Wednesday. On both of these flights, we will have a crewman in the back. The doors will be off and his head will be stuck out of the window ensuring the tail is clear of the trees before I descend and similar calls. I will then move on and learn to fly the Charlie before moving onto instruments.

A Day in the Life of a SNA

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 01:47:00 +0000

While I have tried to keep everyone updated with what things I am doing, I have realized that it is hard to describe how I do it. I hope to solve this by explaining a "typical" day. This is actually what I did yesterday but it is not that far off from normal.

0800: Wake up, get ready, do some things around the house.

0840: Drive to work

0905: Arrive at work. Compute Weight and Balance. Every time we go fly, we have to make sure that we are not overweight and that the center of gravity of the aircraft is in a specific range to ensure that we can control the aircraft. In the helicopter that I currently fly, it is rarely a problem, but as I move on to heavier aircraft that carry more cargo, this can be a problem. Numerous aircraft mishaps have been attributed solely to incorrect loading and poor oversight by the pilot. Before flying, we drop it off and if there is a mishap they will pull it to try to figure out what happened.

0920: Finish Weight and Balance. Go grab a briefing space and get ready/finish studying. Today, I am briefing with another student who is two flights ahead of me. We will both fly with the same instructor. We decide that he will fly first.

1000: Instructor comes in and we start the brief. We start off with some Operational Risk Management to ensure what we all got enough sleep and feel safe to fly. Then we get on to the main portion of the brief. Today it is fairly easy. I just have two things to talk about: Performance Charts from NATOPS, (the "aircraft owners manual") and Power Required exceeds Power Available. For the Performance Charts, we flip through all 20 or so and my instructors asks me about what each is used for. We also talk about the conditions that cause and how to get out of Pr > Pa. My instructor also asks me some Emergency Procedures (EPs) and limitations to keep me sharp.

He then moves on to the other student. His brief is a little harder than mine. I help him out a few times when he stumbles. We finish up with the NATOPS brief. This is required every time we fly a naval aircraft not just for training. We talk about specific things such as what we will do if we go into the clouds and how simulated emergencies will be announced. Everyone knows what we are going to say, but we still recite it from memory to ensure that everyone is on the same page.

1115: We finish up the brief and walk outside. The weather is looking pretty bad. It doesn't sound any better from aircraft that are out there. We have to wait. I go over to the student ready room and watch TV. It is rather crowded due to the bad weather. Everyone is watching The Price is Right and cheering for the contestants (it just isn't the same without Bob Barker). I sit down and watch. I also grab my books and review my procedures for the flight. I only have two new maneuvers. Not too bad. I am also flying to a new airfield today, NOLF Santa Rosa. I have been there once, but it was a while ago and I didn't fly around the pattern when I was there so, I review the procedures to get to and from there and how the traffic pattern works.

1230: The weather is looking better. The first student and our instructor walk to the helo. They take off around half an hour later for a 2.0 hour flight. I continue to watch TV/study.

1450: The first student calls back to the squadron that they are ten minutes inbound. The squadron announces this over the loudspeaker. I grab my helmet and walk down to aircraft issue. I take a look at the Aircraft Discrepancy Book. It contains all maintenance performed and gripes for the last ten flights and any outstanding gripes. Everything looks good to me so I manifest myself in the front of the book. If there is a mishap. They will know I was in the helo. I walk over to the paraloft and get issued a survival vest and radio. Everything works well. Time to get suited up. I put my helmet on with additional earplugs underneath. I put my gloves on and velcro my cuffs closed . I check all pockets are zipped closed (don't want things falling out and jamming flight controls), pull down visor on my helmet and walk out to the crew shack. I see that my aircraft is down in the fuel pits refueling. We can hold up to 91 gallons, but normally fly with only 65 to keep us lighter and give us a little more margin for error. I wait here. There is also another student here waiting to fly.

1505: They are done refueling and land in one of the spots by me. I walk over to the aircraft and get permission to enter the rotor arc with a big thumbs up. The rotor is 7 feet off the ground, but we don't want anybody bumping the controls while we are entering or leaving the arc and changing that. It is quicker and easier to keep the aircraft running all day and just hot refuel and switch out students and instructors. As the other student unstraps, I give the aircraft a once over and make sure that all panels are secure. The refuelers open them to check and sometimes forget to completely secure them. I put my helmet bag in the back seat and use a carabiner to attach it to a seatbelt to make sure that it won't move around.

I get in the front seat. The other student helps me connect my communications cord to my helmet and get the harness on. I check comms with the instructor. I am only hearing him out of one ear. Try some quick trouble shooting. Nothing works. Oh well. Not a big deal. I will handle it when I get back. He has to use the bathroom, so I take controls while he gets out. While he is out, I tune up the radio and get current weather and call outbound with the squadron. My instructor gets back in. We do the takeoff checklist, lift off the ground, hover taxi over to Spot 2, transition to forward flight and depart the airport.

1525: Flying by Tower 438 Field (it has a tower that is 438 ft above sea level), my instructor gives me a fire light. I do the Emergency Procedures and set up to land there. A few seconds later, my instructor rolls the engine to idle and announces "Simulated". Less than 15 seconds later, we wave off 300 feet above ground and go around for another try. Not bad. This time, my instructor gives me a Fuel Pump light. Per the EP, I ask him to pull breakers to identify the failed pump. As he does that, the engine "flames out". I set up for another engine-out landing. After waving off, my instructor tells me that I probably should have had the breakers put back in and tried a restart. I jumped straight into the engine failure procedures instead of identifying the cause. Oh well. Lesson learned.

1535: We fly over the airfield and pick our landing spot. The field is rather full and only one spot is available. That is ours. We go around the pattern a few times doing normal approaches to vertical landings so I can get a feel of what ground checkpoints I need to fly over. I fly each of the procedures that I have already learned (sliding landing, no hover landing, simulated max load takeoff) once to get them out of the way. Now we can concentrate on the new maneuvers, no hover takeoffs and steep approaches. No hover takeoffs are used when there is snow or sand that could obscure our vision if we stay around the ground too long. From the ground, we pull up to 85% power and start flying forward immediately. Steep approaches are used when trees or other obstructions prevent us from flying a normal approach. They allow up to a 45 degree glide slope. Each time I go around, my instructor gives me comments about how to do it better. Sometimes he takes controls to show me something I am doing wrong. I have two more flights to perfect these maneuvers, but I am coming along.

1630: Time for some other things. We hover taxi over to the other half of the air field to practice autorotations, but my instructor has something else in mind first. Right after transitioning to forward flight, as I was thinking about setting up for an autorotation, he secures the hydraulic system without me noticing. It takes me a few seconds to feel the change in controls. I glance over and confirm that I have a hydraulic pressure light. I call out the EP steps and ask him to simulate checking the switch on and pulling the circuit breaker. The aircraft is fully controllable without hydraulics, but it takes considerable control forces and the forces aren't smooth. I fly an approach and terminate in a 5 ft/5 KT hover taxi (students aren't allowed to land with simulated hydraulics off). The instructor takes controls and I turn the hydraulics back on when he is ready.

We get set back up for a power recovery autorotation. The instructor has to do the first auto of the day so he take controls and flies it. 600 ft off the ground, he put the engine in idle. As we descend, he rolls us to 60 degrees angle of bank to turn us 180 degrees to align us with the landing path. At 100 feet, he pitches the helo back to build up energy in the rotors and brings the engine back online. At 10-15 ft, he pulls in power to arrest our descent and we terminate in a 5ft/5KT hover taxi. Everything is working fine, I can do them now. I do a few a few. I have done these many times before, but there is always something to learn. They are impossible to perfect. After a while, we switch to full autos. In these, we don't bring the engine back online. As we pull power at 10-15 ft, the rotor speed bleeds off. We slide to a stop on the grass as the rotor just starts to loose lift. 180 degree full autos are fun.

1650: Time to go home, the sun is about to set. On the way home, my instructor trips me up a little bit by having us go a short way home (i.e. not the normal way that I studied). It isn't a big deal. He talks me through it.

1710: We have come back to the airport and taxi over to a parking spot. As we shut down, my instructor debriefs me on the flight. It had gone well. I had shown improvement through the flight. Sounds like I will get descent grades. After the rotors stop, we get out and give the aircraft a once over to check for anything wrong. I walk over to the paraloft and drop off my survival vest and radio. I forget to have them look at my helmet. Oh well, I will take care of it later. It was late and I just wanted to go home anyway. I walk up the hill to the squadron building. I check the schedule for the next day. It just came out. Damn, I am on for a 0500 brief tomorrow morning. I go talk to the duty officer about it. I need my 12 hours of crew rest. I am scheduled to fly with the same instructor as today so he will need the same crew rest as me. He pushes it back to 0600 and will call the other students briefing with our instructor. Sweet, I will take an extra hour of sleep and I don't think the other students will complain either.

1725: I leave the squadron and drive home.

1750: I get home, grab the baked beans that I put in the oven this morning, sit down and have dinner with my roommates. A beer would taste so good right now and I am already within 12 hours of my brief and can't have it.

Later that night: As I look over my briefing items for the flight tomorrow, I find out that they are all aerodynamics. I am pretty strong with that so I won't have to study long. Good, because I need to get to bed early. I have to wake up by 0450 to make it in on time.

Rinse, Repeat.

The best way that I can describe flight school to someone is it is like finals week in college except it lasts for two years. Most days, you have a test. Some days you don't have any, but other days you have two. No matter what though, you have to study.

For those docs among us, I have met one person who is a doctor and went through full Navy flight school (not just the Flight Surgeon course). He told me that he found flight school to be harder. Just putting that out there. :<)

Keep on Flying / Solo

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 03:11:00 +0000

It has been a while so I will catch everybody up.

The week after my first flight, I flew Tuesday and Wednesday. We practiced some more hovering and started doing some pattern work where go from a hover to forward flight at altitude and back to a hover. Our on-wing was busy the rest of the week and was unable to fly us.

That Friday, we got to do something cool. Every year, our squadron flies Santa to a local elementary school. I was one of ten students who went to the school before hand to make sure none of the kids ran towards the helicopter with it running. After Santa got out, we showed a lot of the older kids the helicopter, while Santa hosted a sing-a-long for the younger kids. We waited around to watch the helicopter leave. A good time was had by all.

Going Home

I was planning on going home for leave that same day. Unfortunately, after I got to the airport, they told me that my flight was canceled. I ended up flying out the next day. It was nice to be home.

For New Years, I managed to make to it down to Virginia Tech. It was rather quiet, but I had enough friends in town to party with. Of course, I also walked over to the memorial and over to Norris Hall while I was there.

Back to Work

Thursday, the 3rd was the first day back to work. We started the day by having a back in the saddle safety standdown. We talked about some peculiarities with flying the TH-57 in cold weather and about how they moved the location where we refuel the helicopters and how that changes operations.

Since it had been over 14 days since I had last flown, I was eligible for a warm-up flight. We tried to fly out to the normal place that I practice, but they were having radio problems there and we had to go to Santa Rosa OLF instead. Unfortunately, since that was the only OLF that was open, everyone was flying there. At one time the OLF was actually full with 12 aircraft there. It can best be described as Vietnam. There were helicopters flying all over the place. With it being so busy, we weren't able to leave the low work area and spent the entire time practicing hovering.

The next week I only flew three times. The other two days, I was canceled for weather. I progressed to some of the more advanced things such as sliding landings, practice autorotations, and flying with the hydraulics secured.

This week, I flew everyday except Wednesday. Monday's flight had nothing that interesting about the flight itself. What was interesting was the helicopter itself. It was rolled over a little over a year ago following a practice autorotation. The helicopter had just recently gotten back from the company that repaired it. It had been flown just 8 times since it was rolled over. I got a kick out of reading the book on it before going flying and seeing all of the things that were replaced. One of the nice things was that the aircraft had a recent paint job and was nice and shiny.

The flight on Tuesday was another good flight. My instructor spent some time demoing all sorts of failures of the tail rotor and how we recover from them. The flight was cut a little short though. Just before we were about to fly home, we were sitting on the ground after a practice autorotation. Just as I tried to accelerate the rotor back up to speed, the engine popped a few times and spun down. It was what is called a compressor stall and it has to do with how the air flows into a jet engine. With a questionable engine, there is no reason to go flying so we shut down where we were. My instructor and I ended up getting a ride home in another helicopter.

Thursday, I had my last flight with my on-wing (the instructor who teaches me how to fly). We spent the first part of the flight simulating what my check would be like. In this case, the instructors act as competent copilots but won't do anything unless asked. The rest of my flight was spent refining the maneuvers that I would do.

Yesterday morning, I had my checkride. I was scheduled to fly with the Commanding Officer. He is a Marine who has been flying helicopters for over 20 years. The flight went really well, much better than my checkride in the T-34. It was actually a pretty short flight. We flew out to Spencer OLF and on the way out, simulated some emergencies. Once we were out there, we did all of the maneuvers and did two practice autorotations. Once we were done with that, we flew home. I was safe for solo.

Solo

Regulations require us to solo within one day of our checkride. Otherwise we have to recheck. Since we don't fly much on weekends, I had to solo that day. The TH-57 helicopter is designed to be flow by two pilots, so our solo flight is actually flown with another student. This student sits in the left seat and does things like tuning radios while other pilot concentrates on flying.

The plan was for me to go and be an observer for another student's solo. Unfortunately, he got into the squadron well before me and was going to run out of legal crew day (10 hours for solos) before we could switch seats and I do my solo. So we were going to fly back to homefield, he would get out, I would get in the right seat and another student would get in to be my observer and I would go out and fly with him.

So the first guy and I went out. He was the pilot while I was his observer. It was nice to be able to go fly with out the stress of having an instructor giving simulated emergencies when ever. It was also nice to be able to chat with another student as opposed to being by myself like in the T-34. We just did some laps around the pattern most of the time later we went over to the low work area and practiced flying square patterns. Before long, his hour was up and we flew home and it was going to be my turn.

Unfortunately, we had realized that were not going to have enough fuel when we got back for me to legally launch. This would normally be no problem, we would just fly over to the fuel pits and hot refuel, but solos aren't allowed to hot refuel. We were going to have to shut down and do it the old fashion way. By this time it was a little bit before 3:30. It was going to take 20-30 minutes for them to get a truck over and refuel us. I still had to fly my hour flight and be back on deck before sunset at 5. I was in a bit of a rush. After a while, I found my new observer and we had gotten the fuel. Just before we were about to strap in, I one of the linemen told me that I had to go back over to maintenance control and re-sign for the plane because they had cleared the book after we had landed. I took care of that and then went back and strapped in. We finally got our engine back up and our checklists completed.

We took off at 3:55. It was nice to leave all the stress behind and just go fly. All was right in the world after all. Well, We did the same basic thing that we did last time. We flew around the pattern with a vertical landing and vertical takeoff each time. All too quickly, my solo was over. The flight home was nice and relaxing. It was starting to get dark out. In fact, I had my clear visor on my helmet the whole flight. It was absolutely gorgeous flying into the airport just as the sun was setting with all of the airport lights on. I ended up landing at 4:55, just five minutes before I had to be back.

Starting next week, I will fly some flights called super-fams where we do basically the same things that we just did, just more precise. I will then go on to three tactics flights where I will learn to do confined area landing and external load operations in addition to other things. I am looking forward to both.

Last week, two students on their first solo got a caution light and had to make an emergency landing in an undeveloped cul-de-sac. One of the local news channels picked up on it.

Low Flight

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 02:36:00 +0000

In recognition of previously posting High Flight, here is Low Flight:

Oh, I've slipped the surly bonds of earth
And hovered out of ground effect on semi-rigid blades;
Earthward I've auto'ed and met the rising brush of non-paved terrain
And done a thousand things you would never care to
Skidded and dropped and flared
Low in the heat soaked roar.
Confined there, I've chased the earthbound traffic
And lost the race to insignificant headwinds;
Forward and up a little in ground effect
I've topped the General's hedge with drooping turns
Where never Skyhawk or even Phantom flew.
Shaking and pulling collective,
I've lumbered The low untresspassed halls of victor airways,
Put out my hand and touched a tree.

-Anonymous

First Flight

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 04:16:00 +0000

CPTs

I started CPTs (Cockpit Procedures Trainers) Monday, two weeks ago. Overall, they went well. The first one was mostly just starting up and shutting down the helo. The only Emergency Procedures were ones directly related such as a fire during startup. Each CPT adds other EPs such as Generator Failure.

During the CPTs, we will be flying along and our instructor will give us a scenario. We have to read the gauges and correctly diagnose the problem and do the right procedures. One of the interesting things about the sim instructors is that most of them are old Vietnam pilots. They all have some crazy stories.

Monday night, I had duty for the last time. Since I was at the squadron all night, I was not allowed to have a CPT Tuesday and had the day off. I went down to the National Museum of Naval Aviation and learned some history. I had the next two CPTs Wednesday and Thursday.

Friday, our squadron had a Safety Standdown. We sat in an auditorium for a few hours and heard about staying safe over the holidays. We actually had a pretty interesting lecture about fatigue. The Flight Doc from the School of Aviation Safety came up and delivered it. He talked all about sleep debts and how we recover. It is amazing to see how many aviation mishaps have fatigue as a contributing factor.

Friday night, I found out that two of my friends who I went to school with also got helos. We all went out and had a good time downtown. I also saw a friend who I met in Corpus. One of his last training flights was to do a solo cross-country flight and he decided to come out to Pensacola for the weekend. Because of the weather, he even had to shoot a radar guided approach to land at the airport and only broke out of the clouds 600 feet above the ground. It sounded pretty cool to me.

Monday and Tuesday I had my last two CPTs. Wednesday, I had the day off to continue studying with my Fam partner, Whit. In helo training, we go through all of the initial training, called Fams (Familiarization) with another student. We fly with the same instructor everyday and will eventually solo together.

Thursday, we met our on-wing and had our Fam 0 brief. We first went down to one of the helos and did a preflight. As we walked around the helo, our instructor asked us questions about random parts of the engine and stuff. We had to be able to say what each thing is explain what it does. Afterwards, we went up to his office and talked about expectations and a few other things. He also used Google Earth to show us the course rules.

First Flight

Friday we had our first flight. We briefed at 9am, but it was rather foggy out so we were not able to launch immediately. By the time that the fog cleared and we got an aircraft, it was around noon. The aircraft that we got was just coming back from a solo flight. We hot seated into it meaning that they didn't shut down before we got in. Whit was going to go first so I got in the back seat.

We then flew out to Spencer OLF (Outlying Landing Field). On the way out, we spent some time up high (900 ft) to give Whit a chance to feel how the helo handles in forward flight. We then landed at Spencer and I got out so they could do some training without me. There was a small lounge there in a building for me to wait in.

Spencer is a square mile mostly grass field. There are a few landing sports on it and a building with the firefighters and a student lounge. There is also a fuel truck there to hot refuel the helos.

After about an hour, Whit and our on-wing came back, refueled, picked me up and Whit got out. We started by going back up high to get a feel for the helo. While the controls a little different than a plane, it flies much the same at speed.

We then went back down to Spencer to try hovering. I had heard all sorts of stories about people trying to hover and getting completely out of control and the instructor having to save them seconds before a crash. My try went very well by comparison. The instructor started by showing me what each control does. He then passed me each one of the controls (pedals, collective, and cyclic) individually to get a feel how each of them reacts.

He then threw me straight into the deep end and gave me all of the controls. Surprisingly, I actually managed to hover pretty well the first time. I slid around a little bit and got a little off altitude, but I managed to stay in control. There were a few times that I got tired, lost focus and moved around a bit, but I always managed to re-establish my scan and recover. My instructor told me that he had never seen someone be able to hover on Fam 1 before.

After I had gotten to the point where I could hold a decent hover, I tried some air taxing. This is basically a hover with some forward airspeed that we use to move around while on their ground. After trying some of that, my instructor demonstrated to me how to do an auto-rotation. This is how we land if our engine quits. They were a lot of fun and I am looking forward to learning to do them myself. We then went back and did some more low work.

After about an hour, we taxied over, picked up Whit and flew home. I am looking forward to flying more.

This coming up week, we are going flying Tuesday and Wednesday. Our on-wing is busy the other days. Next Friday, I am going home for Christmas. I am looking forward to it. It has been a year.

Hung Nose Gear

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 03:26:00 +0000

That is some damn good flying.

While these are Marines, the Navy flies the same type of helicopter. That could be me flying it in a year!

Helicopter Pilots Are Different

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 05:09:00 +0000

Time for another update

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 01:46:00 +0000

It has been a while. Time for an update.

I last left you off two weeks ago, just after I checked into the squadron. Monday was pretty easy with just one brief. Tuesday, I had the first of two days of systems class. Compared to most military helicopters, the TH-57 is very simple. It is different enough from the airplane that we just flew to require a class to teach us about it. Wednesday, I had some more briefs in the morning and then the second half of systems class in the afternoon.

Unfortunately, I was not able to go home for Thanksgiving. I ended up have Thanksgiving dinner over at one of my friends house. Friday, I had duty and that was the reason that I didn't go home. This involved sitting at the squadron for twelve hours in case anything happened. A few of the civilian workers came in but other than that, it was empty all day. I transfered the duty phone over to the cell phone and spent the day over in the student readyroom watching football.

Monday, morning I had to take the systems test. With the holiday, we weren't able to take it any earlier. I got a 94% on it. Not great, but it is recorded just as pass/fail so it doesn't matter. Here is basically a copy of the test that I took. You may be confused as to how I can show it to you. Well, previous students have posted the test. This is called gouge. Any sort of inside info is considered gouge, whether it be the questions on a test or what Emergency Procedures an instructor likes to ask you. It makes studying for the test much easier, but you still have to know all of the info in the end.

After the test, I had the first day of aerodynamics class. I had taken an aero class back in API, but that was focused on fixed wing aircraft. I never knew how complicated helo flight is. The book for this class is as big as many of my college textbooks. They say that helos fly by beating the air into submission. I now believe that. The only other explanation is PFM (pure magic, with an adjective thrown in there for good measure).

I had some other briefs during the week such as Course Rules. That is all about how we fly around in the local area. Whiting Field NAS is the busiest Naval Air Station in the world with all of the training traffic. Consequently, we need procedures about how to get around making sure that we do not get in others way. There is a whole book with procedures about how to do this.

Most of the week though was spent learning aero. We had the test Friday morning. I got a 98%. The only question that I got wrong dealt with the factors contributing to the rate of descent during auto-rotative (engine out) flight.

Tomorrow, I have my first of five CPTs (cockpit procedures trainers). I will practice starting up the helo and all of my emergency procedures. As soon as I am done with those, I will be ready to start flying. The earliest that can happen in next Wednesday. They may wait until after Christmas to start me though.

The Start of Advanced

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 23:33:00 +0000

Last Friday, I drove down to Pensacola NAS to help out with the Air Show. The four of us met at The National Museum of Naval Aviation. We found out that our job was to stand out on the tarmac in front of ten of the museum's planes and talk about them. Unfortunately, all of these planes were rather old and we didn't know much about them. I answered a lot of general aviation questions though. I also got to walk around and see the other planes and talk to the other pilots. A few times random people came up and wanted to have a picture taken with me because I was in a flight suit. It was really weird.

Here is a picture of me with one of my friends from school. She was working one of the concession stands.

This was also the Blue Angel's last air show of the year. I have a new appreciation for what they doing after flying in formation myself. The last formation that they flew was the missing man formation in honor of Kevin "Kojak" Davis who died in a crash in April. I last saw them fly in Corpus Christi the week before that crash.

Wednesday was my last day of "freedom." I checked into my squadron, HT-18, Thursday to start my training. The day was filled with lots of briefs. It dragged on for a long time. Friday was more of the same. I got my new helmet and had to turn it in to get assembled. Hopefully, I will get it back before I start flying. The instructor's wives came in and served the entire squadron a Thanksgiving lunch complete with eight fried turkeys. It was nice.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, unfortunately, I will not be able to leave. I have been stuck with duty all day on Friday. I am planning on having dinner with some of my friends down here on Thursday. I knew when I joined the Navy that this would happen, but it doesn't make it much better. At least I am not sitting in a foxhole or in the middle of an ocean this time. There are people who are.

Yesterday, I hosted a party for all of the Virginia Tech grads down here to watch the football game. We had a good turn out and the game went well.

Tomorrow, I still have a few more check-in briefs and then I start classes on Tuesday. I have systems class Tuesday and Wednesday. I then have Aerodynamics all next week. I start the sims the following week. After not doing much for so long, it is hard getting back in that studying mood, but I don't have much choice.

"Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been, and there you long to return." -Leonardo da Vinci

An update without much to say

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 20:44:00 +0000

Well, there is not that much to talk about right now. Last week, I had to show up for work for 30 minutes on Friday. Yeah, that was it.

This week is much the same. The only difference is that this week instead of going to muster on Friday, I am going to help out at the Pensacola Air Show. Every year, the Blue Angels give their final performance at this show. Last year, I was voluntold to help out at this show. I ended up working at one of the private tents being a bouncer. It was a good deal because I got to go inside the tent and watch the Blue Angels perform from right at the front and center of the flight line. I don't know what I will be doing this year, but I will get to sport my flight suit.

In absence of much else to talk about I decided to give y'all a brief overview of the three different helicopter communities and what they do.

HSL (Helicopter, Antisubmarine Light) flies the SH-60B. This is the same basic airframe as the Army Blackhawk helicopter. They deploy in detachments of two aircraft and six pilots to "small-boys" (destroyers and cruisers) and are used for whatever the ship needs. This can include dropping sonobouys to help look for subs, transferring supplies/personnel, or even just getting up higher to increase visual and radar range. They can even carry small torpedoes and some missiles. They have squadrons located in Jacksonville, FL, Sandy Eggo, CA, Hawaii, and Japan. Between my Junior and Senior year, I got to go to Sandy Eggo to one of their squadrons and fly for about four hours.

HSC (Helicopter, Sea Combat) flies the MH-60S. Again, this is the same basic airframe as before. In fact all branches of the military us the -60 series to help reduce logistics costs. Unlike the -60B which has racks of electronics in the back to run its antisubmarine sensors, the -60S is mostly empty. This makes it much more versatile. They mainly deploy as a whole squadron with twelve aircraft to the aircraft carrier. They can be used to deploy SEALs, evacuate casualties, or just for logistical support around the carrier. They can also bolt on launchers for missiles and IR vision. HCS has squadrons in Norfolk, VA, Sandy Eggo, CA, and Guam.

HM (Helicopter, Minesweeper) flies the MH-53E. This is the second helicopter that I flew in my last update. It is used to tow a minesweeping sled through the water and other heavy lift missions. It is actually the only US helicopter that can pickup itself. They deploy mainly to shore based instillations, Sigonella, Italy and Bahrain for example. There are only two -53 squadrons, one in Corpus Christi, TX and one in Norfolk, VA.

A year ago, I had just reported to Naval Aviation Schools Command in Pensacola to begin training. It has been a great year.

Shoes of Brown

The average Navy pilot, despite the sometimes swaggering exterior, is very much capable of such feelings as love, affection, intimacy and caring. These feelings just don't involve anyone else.

One of Those Weeks

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 18:19:00 +0000

In Naval Aviation, there are some days that I am utterly amazed that I get paid to do what I do. A perfect example of one of those days was during my aerobatic solos. My job one day was to go take a plane and do loops and barrel rolls for almost two hours and then go home. This was one of those weeks.

This was the week of the Naval Helicopter Association Fleet Fly-In. This can best be described as an air show just for pilots combined with a professional conference. Navy, Marine and Coast Guard helicopter pilots from around the nation flew in. The farthest came from San Diego and took three days to get here. We even had guys from HMX-1 (the guys who fly the president around) fly down.

Tuesday, I was supposed to help out with some rental cars, but I ended us spending most of the day at the welcome-aboard lunch. We greeted the pilots coming off of the flight line with a hot dog in one hand and a beer in the other. It was a great chance to talk to fleet aviators about what they are doing right now in the fleet.

Wednesday, I had signed up to fly a MH-53. It turns out though that a few other planes had flow in overnight and there were less people signed up to fly those. I got in the group for the Marine CH-46. I got to fly for about 15 minutes and tried to do some hovering and landings. It was the first time that I had been flying in over a month and felt great. It was also nice to go flying without have to do lost of studying before hand. The specific aircraft that I flew, was built in 1967. It was old, but plenty of fun.

After flying, I hung around some more to talk to the pilots and see the planes that they fly.

Thursday Morning, I went in for the community briefs. Each of the different Navy helicopter communities gave a small talk about what missions they are doing right now. I am going to have trouble choosing what I want to fly. They all sound like so much fun.

Thursday afternoon, I was signed up to fly a Coast Guard helo. I figured that I would never get to chance to fly one again so I might as well do it now. Much like the day before, plans changed. I instead got in the group for the MH-53. This was the one that I was supposed to fly the day before. It is the second largest helicopter in the world. It has three 4725 hp engines. The tail rotor uses almost as much power as the main rotor on a Huey. ... It is a huge helicopter. The Navy uses it to tow a mine sweeping sled through the water in addition to heavy-lift missions. Much like the day before, I got to do some hovering and landing in addition to flying around for a bit. The only difference was that we all stayed in the helo as we rotated out of the pilot's seat. The day before, we had waited on the ground for the other people to finish.

Me in the back of the -53 waiting to fly.

Friday, I had to go in to work for a half an hour to muster.

The only other interesting news is that my class-up date was pushed back a week. This may actually may be good news in the long run. The squadron that I was supposed to fly with has a long wait to start flying. I will now be in HT-18 and class up on 15Nov. My projected completion date is 04Jun.

More pictures from the fly in can be found at my flickr account.

Update: Here is a great summary of what I have to do to finish flight school. It shows all of the flights, sims and ground school classes.

Whiting Field

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 04:00:00 +0000

Yeah...Yeah...Yeah. Sorry it has been so long.

I left Corpus Thursday, two weeks ago. My friend and I rented a U-haul. He drove his car while I drove the truck and towed my car. I was a twelve-hour drive out here to Pensacola. It was made worse by a problem that I had. As I was leaving a gas station in Texas, the trailer popped off the hitch. I didn't realize it until a driver pulled up next to me and told me. Unfortunately, the hitch twisted as it came off the ball and would not go back on. It took me over two hours for U-Haul to come out and replace the trailer. I ended having to pull over in a rest stop and sleep in the truck in Louisiana. Fortunately, my friend had left a day before me and found us a place to live. I was able to drive straight to the new house the next day instead of driving around town for a while.

Our house is in a nice, quiet neighborhood. It has four bedrooms and a third roommate has since moved in. He is a Marine who graduated Primary a week later than us and is also here for helo training. (more photos of my house here)

Tuesday and Wednesday, a week ago, I had to go in for a few check-in briefs. I found out that I will be classing up on November 8^th. They are basing class up time here on when we started API. Since I started API so late and finished Primary comparatively fast, I have a late class up date. There are people who checked in with me who started classes that same week. That is going to give me a lot of time off with nothing to do. In some ways, it will be nice to relax for a while after working so hard in Primary, but I would also like to get back to flying. Work for me right now consists of calling in four days a week and showing up for an hour on Fridays. Every once in a while I also have to go in for something else, but it is not hard job right now.

While I am in the greater Pensacola area, I am not actually stationed at Pensacola Naval Air Station. I am stationed at Whiting Field NAS. It is located about an hour Northeast of Pensacola NAS. It is a small base that only has training squadrons. Three of the five Primary squadrons are there (The other two are in Corpus). It also hosts all of the training squadrons for Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard helo pilots. Many foreign nations also send students there to train as helo pilots.

One of those things that I had to go in for Monday was my flight physical. We have to get one every year on our birth month. It was not that much fun having to get blood drawn and shots, but there was some good news. I was able to pass my vision test without my glasses meaning I won't have to use them in the cockpit anymore.

Yesterday, I had to drive down to Pensacola NAS to do some more water training. Because of the high risk of a water crash and the problems with getting out of the aircraft, helicopter aircrew are issued a small small SCUBA bottle and a flexible hose with a regulator on the end. This gives us around two minutes of air to help us get out. If you have ever seem the movie “The Perfect Storm”, you may have noticed when the helicopter crashed into the water, the pilot used an older version of this device. Well, I had to go and get some training on how to use this device. We practiced things like crashing into the water and flipping upside down. Our seatbelt was “jammed” so we had to get out the regulator before fixing it and making our way to the exit.

I managed to get some pictures recently. Hope you enjoy.

I finally had my tie-cutting Thursday, three weeks ago. That was the same day that I found out what I am going to fly. The tie-cutting celebrates our first solo and is supposed to be soon after. I only had mine two months late. This is a picture of my on-wing cutting my tie.

I finally was able to get a picture of me in the plane on one of my form flights. That is me in the front cockpit.

There are three advanced helicopter training squadrons at Whiting Field that teach students that just came out of the T-34 how to fly a helicopter. It is interesting to note when these squadrons were established. The first one was established during the Korean War when the Navy realized how useful helicopters were. The second one was established during the Vietnam War as lots of helicopters were used. The third was stood-up three months ago. This is a good time be going into helicopters.

P.S. Don't tell my mom I'm a pilot. She thinks I play piano at the whore house.

The End of Primary

noreply@blogger.com (HokiePilot) — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 04:07:00 +0000

Last Friday, I had my next three formation flights. We actually flew these as two flights and just doubled up what we did on the second one. This was a cross country flight, so we ended up in Austin and spent the weekend up there. I had a great time up there. The only negative was that I had been up there the weekend before. It would have been nice to go somewhere different. Oh well...

Sunday, we flew back down and did the same thing as on the way up. We counted three syllabus flights as two actual flights. Halfway through our first flight, Our instructors told us we were on our solo flights. It would have been nice to get an actual solo flight, but again, oh well.

Monday, I had my last two flights in the T-34. These two flights are called Cruise Formation flights. Instead of being a nice stable platform to fly off of like the first part of forms, now lead does some aerobatics and wing tries to keep up. I had an absolute blast on these flights. I finally had gotten to the point where I could feel comfortable flying that close to another plane.

It was strange walking away from the plane for the last time knowing that I would never fly it again. Overall, I have accumulated 88.3 hours in it including 6.9 hours solo. If I come back and instruct in a few years, they will probably have replaced the plane with the T-6 by then.

Tuesday, I found out that I was the last person to finish by the fiscal year. My form partner needed one more flight and could have completed in time, but I was the last person that they needed. This year, my squadron flew 27,000 flight hours to graduate around 180 aviators. Even with all of the problems with flying this year, we set a record for flight hours.

I finished with grades just around average. Unfortunately, my grades were just below the minimum to ask for fighters. I put down helos as my only choice.

Thursday, all nine of us in the squadron that finished this week sat down with our Commanding Officer and learned our fate. I got helicopters!!! Most everyone else got what they wanted.

I have spent the rest of my time getting ready to leave. I will be leaving sometime this week to head back to Pensacola, FL. I am super excited to start learning how to fly helicopters. I will start ground school out there 17 October. They are not wasting any time. Out there, I will be learning to fly the TH-57 Sea Ranger. This is the military version of the Bell 206 Jet Ranger, the stereotypical news helicopter.

Drug Rep. Dinner

I am not sure that I ever mentioned this, but one of my roommates is not a flight student but a doctor. He is a resident in the family practice program at a local hospital. He was having one of his medical students over Monday night and they mentioned that they were going to a drug rep. dinner that night at a really nice restaurant. After some talk, they invited me and I accepted. The plan was for me to pretend to be a third year medical student on rotations down here. When I was in Blacksburg, I lived across the street from a medical school so it didn't take me long to figure out where I go to school. Overall, it was a great time, I got to act like I knew what I was talking about and I got a great dinner for free.

As always, I will keep out updated.