Springtime and flying

After having my event canceled twice for nasty weather, we finally got out my first Mission Observer training flight last week. It happened to be a gorgeous afternoon, just perfect for flying--doubly so with CAP footing the bill. Some of my squadronmates put together a really nice little exercise for me. The exercise literally couldn't have gotten off the ground (ha! I crack myself up) without the pilot who took time out of his day to conduct this training, but I was touched that another member was willing to drive all the way out to the airport just to give me someone on the ground with whom I could practice comms. That was a huge help for me, since talking on the radio is one of my shakier, more nerve-tweaking tasks. I know I'm not alone in that, though; a pilot once told me that you can know exactly what you're going to say, have it all planned out in your head, and still pushing the transmit button can have the side effect of turning your brain off. Practice, practice, practice, right? I'm a lot more comfortable with it than I once was, at least.

Speaking of radios, a certain husband of mine who came along to hang with the guy on the ground, took the opportunity to get me back for the last time I talked to him on the radio when he was in an airplane. Imagine my surprise when I ask for a radio check and I hear M's chipper voice pop back with the very words I sprung on him when he was a wee bit busy trying to get his jet situated for a touch-and-go: "Roger ball, sweetie!" As he was quick to point when I (sweetly and gently) socked him in the arm after the flight, at least we were still on the ground and I wasn't being graded by an LSO on my carrier landing abilities when he decided to exact his revenge. I'll concede that point, and it did work just fine as a radio check, but the remainder of our radio communications were thoroughly professional.

This flight was in the fancy, brand-new-off-the-factory-line, glass-cockpit Cessna 182T, and the main thrust of the event was to prove that I can wrangle G1000 well enough to be of actual use to a mission from the right seat. I had been briefed on a set of coordinates that I was to enter into the GPS as user waypoints, which I did while we were taxiing to the runway before takeoff. Once we were in the air, I could select my first waypoint and hit the Direct To button and point us in the right direction. So, so slick. I could have easily entered in a bunch more points as a flight plan and had the autopilot fly the search pattern for us. Ain't technology grand?

I was feeling pretty confident that I knew what I was doing and was showing it to the pilot's satisfaction when the radio crackled. It was our guy on the ground giving us a new set of coordinates and directing us to go there and tell them what we saw. Apparently those sneaky guys planned that little surprise for me when I was taking one last bathroom break before going out to the airplane (very important--ain't no relief tubes in a Cessna, not that they'd be real useful for me in any case). I'm rather pleased that I wasn't thrown off my stride too much; it's nice to know I'm capable of responding quickly to the kind of thing that probably happens quite often in real missions.

One more task remained in this training flight. As we turned back towards the airport, we heard a distinctive trill on our direction finding equipment telling us that a practice beacon (simulating an Emergency Locator Transmitter) was active somewhere in the vicinity. We have something called a Becker DF in the airplane that points the way to such signals, but the pilot cannot see it very well at all from all the way over in the left seat. The person in the Mission Observer position can see it perfectly, though, so it was my job to point us towards the (practice) emergency signal. The pilot put the autopilot in heading mode, meaning that one could change the direction of the airplane just by turning a knob right or left. Turn the knob I did, and lo and behold, the plane went where I wanted it to go! It turned out that where I wanted us to go was over a boat storage facility where the pilot had placed a practice beacon before coming out to the airport. He said those are good places to look on real missions, as boats have emergency beacons just like planes that can go off accidentally.

Things were pretty much wrapped up at that point, so we returned to the airport, landed, taxiied back to our spot, and filled out a bunch of paperwork. M came out to greet us and see how the flight went; I can't wait until I get to go flying with him. (He can't wait, either--he hasn't touched an airplane in over a year, thanks to a backup in the C-2 training pipeline and an overall cut in flight hours across the Navy.) My next flight, whenever we can squeeze that in, will be in the Cessna 172--no fancy-schmancy glass cockpit there, but I am expected to know what I'm doing in the right seat of any aircraft CAP might fly. I might even get to look like one of the cool kids in my very own flight suit--there was a size 34 Short in the depths of the squadron storage room, and they were more than happy to give it to the only squadron member who could even hope to squeeze into it. I picked up some big black leather boots at the surplus store, so now I just have to sew on the appropriate insignia and veclro for patches and stuff before I, too, will have the privilege of smelling like sweaty Nomex. Oh, the glamour of flying...