The story of the Williams' Family
We started our cross country earlier this morning and made a stop in Amarillo, TX for lunch then made our way up to Denver where I am right now watching a Colorado Rockies game. The game plan to tomorrow is to fly over the Rockies into another little airport before flying our night leg into Albuquerque.
So we woke up this morning just like any other starting to get ready for church. I needed a haircut since I’m starting to get a little rough looking and Frances graciously agreed to get it cut before I got a shower. So Frances got halfway through the haircut and wouldn’t you know it the power just goes off. So there I am stuck with half my head cut and the other half not. Hopefully they’ll get the power back soon. In the meantime I’ll just have to go find a hat to wear,
Thursday was a fun day for me. It marked a significant event in my UPT career. It was more than likely the last solo that I’ll ever having the Air Force. I got to fly solo against my IP who also flew solo and trusted me to be 10′ off his wingtip the whole time. We both had a lot of fun. I was the first student he solo’ed out. That is I was the first student he approved and flew against solo in formation. Now if I track T-1′s I won’t ever fly an aircraft solo again.
I just knocked out the last academic test we’ll have in the T-6. It’s a happy day. So now we just have 2 checkrides left and about 20 flights until I get to move on to the T-1.
Well, today I got to solo meaning I took the mighty T-6A Texan II up and burnt some holes in the pattern over Del Rio, TX. Frances got to come out and watch and took some pretty good pictures that you can look at by clicking here.
The OSS commander here, a Lt Col was the one who flew my ride with me in the morning and he was also the person who “solo’ed” me out. That basically means he flew a ride with me in the morning and approved me to go solo. There are a couple things that made this pretty cool in my book. For starters, when we are flying we have a call sign and when we solo we take the number from our IP’s call sign and use that for our number and we replace the word with “Pogo”. The OSS commanders call sign is “Rattler 01″. So when he solo’ed me out, I got to use the call sign “Pogo 01″. Now this may not sound too significant, but it was pretty cool in my books, reason being that “01″ is the number designator that is used for Commanders. So, in essence we were joking around that I was the “Pogo Commander.”
After soloing, the tradition is then to get dunked in a pool which you’ll see in the pictures. There is a little more to it as well. If you put up a fight, run, or struggle any when the rest of the flight goes to dunk you, they dunk you with patches and boots still on. If you give up easily, they allow you to remove those items. The other tradition is that if you make it back into the flight room without being noticed or intercepted, everyone in the flight owes you a drink of your choice.
Well, it just so happens that I made it back to the flight room unnoticed. Go me. Now the bad part is they decided to dunk me anyway (which follows with tradition) but they also decided that since I was a little sneaky that they wouldn’t let me take the boots off or the patches. So now I have soaking wet boots and patches, and one awesome sense of accomplishment. It’s now off to getting ready for my first checkride, the Mid-Phase contact checkride.
Frances and I got all settled into Del Rio. We picked up a pretty nice, yet small house on Laughlin, and are starting to enjoy it more here than when we first arrived.
I just finished up a week at Aerospace Physiology, scored a 96% on two tests and completed my FACT test (Physical Strength and Endurance Test). It’s been a relatively stressless week and from what I understand now is where the fun starts. We being learning about the Systems of the aircraft tomorrow (Hydraulics from what I understand, so we’ll see how that goes.)
Frances got to Taxi in the T-6 as part of the Spouse Taxi program and we’ll get some pictures up soon from that.
Well, I broke down and ended up getting a truck. Now I know I’ll get some crap from Jimmy about it not being a Ford or Chevy, but I think it outclasses them both. I made the purchase and got all of the loan funness taken care of. It’s now time to fly out to Salt Lake City, UT to pick up the bright red truck. I got a great deal on it and not oly can it pull 9300 lbs, but it’s LOADED. I mean it has:
I think that covers the big chunk of things.
Well, after a day or slaving over the computer, I’ve managed to upgrade the site, get a new theme installed and update the photo gallery. I’m planning on keeping up with this site a little more in the future. Hopefully that should allow you guys to follow our travels a little easier.
That’s all for now folks.
So I am and have been up in Pueblo, CO now for some time. It’s been pretty busy, certainly not what I was expecting. We are usually up around 0430 and have a Formal Brief at 0530. First Go of the day is around 0700 when it get’s light out. Formal brief consists of the students going over the weather, and any other pertinent information regarding that day’s flying. We then have an EP Briefing and then a Stand-Up EP. Stand-Ups are when there is a scenario presented and a random student is chosen to stand up at the front of the room and work through how to deal with that particular emergency. They tend to be a little stressful but prove to be a great learning tool.
I’ve completed two flights now; my dollar ride and my C201 ride. The dollar ride is nothing more than going up and getting use to the DA-20. I got 4 landings in and we accomplished a few slips. On my 201 ride we went over Steep Turns, Slow Flight and Power-Off stalls. All in all they’ve been going well so far.
Days are pretty long. We typically go from 0430 to 1630 or 1700 and then spend the next couple of hours chair flying or studying. Chair flying is where you use a poster or the cockpit simulator and run through your entire flight for the next day. Everything from checklists, to what departures, radio calls, etc.
The instructors all seem to be very helpful, but of course everyone has their own way of doing things.The food has been pretty good. We aren’t getting paid per diem, so we pretty much have to eat in the Dining Facility or pay for food out of pocket (Which isn’t happening for me). The food is alright, not the greatest, but then again they are serving 60+ people each meal. Honestly it’s better than what I was expecting. Typical meals include a specialty meat for the night, veggies, and various sides. They have a grill where you can get Burgers, Cheeseburgers, Chicken Nuggets, Grilled Cheese, Fries, Onion Rings, etc every night. They have a nice wide variety of drinks and then a salad bar as well. They also have a sandwich station. All good, it just get’s pretty repetitive.All in all, not too bad. Just a shame the wouldn’t let us come up accompanied.
Yes, it has been a while, but I thought I would take a few moments to give a recap on what’s going on here at Altus. I’ve been working a lot of a ton of different projects, everything from a Database in MS Access to a huge Poster Display Board to represent the Town of Altus and the Air Force base during symposiums and conferences. I’ve almost completed all of my training for becoming a DZCO (Drop Zone Control Officer) and I’ll have that completed hopefully next week when I take a flight and watch a cargo drop out of a C-17.
Mom is currently out here with us and we just got done two pretty busy weekends. We went down to Sheppherd Air Force Base in Texas for an Open House/Airshow and got to see a lot of cool planes there (B-2, F-22, CV-22, C-5, to name a few). Needless to say I’m getting pretty anxious to get to Pilot Training and start down the flying path.
I’m heading to Pueblo, CO in a week to start IFS so I’m getting pretty excited about that too. There should be some new pictures uploaded here soon of Palo Duro Canyon in or outside of Amarillo, TX, so keep an eye out for them.