11 posts tagged “flying”
I started the month of June off right with my final Mission Observer training flight with the Civil Air Patrol. My husband and I suited up in appropriate uniforms and bundled ourselves off to the regional airport, where our stalwart Mission Pilot was waiting with another MO trainee. I was scheduled for the second hop of the afternoon, so I chilled in the flight planning room while M went up with the MP and other trainee to knock out his first Mission Scanner (backseater whose primary responsibilities in a nutshell are looking out the window and keeping a log) flight. The wait gave me a chance to look over the gouge for the GPS in the Cessna 172--old and busted in comparison to the new hotness of the G1000 in the glass 182, but certainly adequate to its task.
A little over an hour later, M poked his head in the door to let me know they were back from the first hop and I should get my stuff together. I was excited not just to go flying again, but that we were going to be flying together as something other than airline passengers for the first time. Of course, we'll be even more excited about it when he completes his MP qual and we're both sitting in the front seats, but this was a good first step. Out to the airplane we went, and after the MP gave me some coordinates to plug into the GPS, we strapped in and got going.
I felt comfortable with the 172's GPS pretty quickly; one advantage of the slightly more primitive set-up is that there are fewer functions to master. The real meat of this particular flight was using the direction finding system--the analog version, with fiddly little needles instead of my nice, darn near idiot-proof Becker with its clear, simple digital read-out. Finding an ELT (practice beacon, in this case) signal with those blasted needles is indeed, as the squadron's saltier fellows warned me, more of an art than a science. I got comfortable enough making the requisite near-constant minute sensitivity adjustments and figuring out approximately where the signal might be coming from, but I am by no means a DFing artist yet. That will come with practice, but I'm not afraid to admit that given my druthers, I would much prefer to be in the right seat of the 182 if a real mission popped up.
Our training objectives met, we headed home and arrived to find that the fuel trucks had just quit for the evening. That turned out not to be such a bad thing, since it meant I got to see what it was like to fuel the aircraft ourselves instead of just radioing the truck out to do it for us. It's not too different from filling up a car, if you had to attach a grounding wire to your car, climb a ladder to get the nozzle up to the tanks, and measure your fuel consumption in gallons per hour rather than miles per gallon. By the time we taxied back to the tie-down spot to secure the aircraft, I felt thoroughly educated.
Our MP was satisfied enough with our performance to sign off on our training paperwork: pending approval up the chain, M was a qualified Mission Scanner and I was a qualified Mission Observer. Woohoo! At our squadron's weekly meeting the following Thursday, the skipper called me up front and center to present me with my first set of CAP Mission Observer wings.
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...
There's no avoiding it anymore: today is just going to have to be a laundry day. Sigh. I'm trying to muster up some of the excitement from those heady days after we first got our own washer and dryer, but about all I can manage is low-key (yet abiding) appreciation for the fact that I don't have to schlep my dirty clothes out of the house to a set of shared machines. I do like having clean clothes/sheets/towels/what-have-you, and the subsequent piles of clean, fresh textiles does come with a sense of mild household accomplishment, but the process isn't exactly high on the ol' mental stimulation scale.
Hunting down Emergency Locator Transmitters is rather higher on that scale. A couple weeks ago, my CAP squadron had joined another area squadron for the classroom portion of Urban Direction Finding (UDF). This past Sunday, we met again at the airport for a practical exercise. The leader of the exercise hid a practice ELT (which transmits on a different frequency than the real thing) in a park, and we all piled into the CAP van (after a thorough vehicle inspection, also part of the training) to go find it. Once in the area, we set up our direction finding equipment and got a little first-hand experience with the art and science of using it to triangulate the position of the elusive beacon.
The Urban in UDF means that rather than gallivanting through the wilderness like Ground Team members do, we were training to look for these things in a well-populated (and often paved) environment. In our area, that means I can expect to be called at some point to track down accidentally-activated (as 97-99% of the hits we get are) ELTs aboard any one of the local Naval bases. The experienced members who were leading the training or participating in the exercise just to get requalified had some good stories about particularly tricky missions, like the time my commander spent a lot of time (getting increasingly confused and frustrated all the while) tracking down a signal that seemed to have moved with every reading they took. They chased that thing for miles until they finally saw the problem: the readings they were getting pointed them directly at a ship that was heading out to sea. All they could do was wave goodbye as it went past. Guess deactivating that one just wasn't in the cards.
I'm still working on my Mission Observer qual, as I'm keen to be as useful as possible on the aircrew side of CAP emergency services, but it was worthwhile to get a look at things from a ground perspective. The folks in the plane absolutely have to be able to coordinate effectively with the people on the ground who can actually get to the site of whatever it was we were looking for and take care of it. It'll be interesting to help out on real UDF missions in the future; I need one more--training or actual--to complete my qualification.
Looking back on 2008, what were the highlights of your year?
Here we are, starting the fifth day of 2009, and I'm still "looking back on 2008." I guess there hasn't been much of import to report so far this year, which is just fine with me because last year at this time we were running around like headless chickens trying to get ready for a buddy's wedding and prepare for the move from South Texas Town #1 to South Texas Town #2 at the same time. That was not one of the year's highlights, by the way. These were:
M's winging: The culmination of flight school and my husband's designation as a Naval Aviator was a time of joy, giddiness, and relief. Getting to celebrate with M's folks as their son's hard work and accomplishment were recognized was absolutely wonderful.
Adopting our two cats: Sure, there's been some property destruction, an emergency trip to the animal hospital, and some distinctly unpleasant messes to clean up, but we can't imagine life without Vera and Valentine. They provide such affection, entertainment, and liveliness to our household. And hey, if we manage not to screw up our feline charges, maybe we won't do too badly with kids someday.
Honeymooning in the Bahamas: Nearly two years after we signed the ketubah and agreed to embark on this crazy marriage venture together, we finally squeezed a solid week of leave out of the Navy for a honeymoon. We met some interesting people (including a tiny, foul-mouthed pistol of an activities coordinator and a sketchy, overgrown frat boy in his forties who tried to "adopt" a set of sisters in their twenties). We had some amazing experiences (the dolphin encounter, walking through the mangroves to Gold Rock Beach) and some experiences I don't care to repeat (the bonfire, the semi-submersible), but the best part of the whole trip was simply having a week for just us, no other obligations or worries that the squadron was going to call to tell M to come in on a day off. I hope we can manage more such getaways in the future.
Getting involved with CAP: In 2008, I went from having maybe heard of this Civil Air Patrol thing once or twice (but not having a clue what it was all about) to being an active volunteer with my local squadron. Through CAP, I not only went up in a small airplane for the first time, but I got qualified as an aircrew member who can assist on search and rescue operations. I'm excited about what 2009 holds with regard to my CAP "career." In the early months, my squadron is going to continue to focus on getting people trained for various emergency services qualifications. I'm going to be working on becoming a Mission Observer (right-seater in the airplane), so I'm hoping to go flying again within the next couple of months. We should also be working on getting everyone qualified to be on a ground team, too, so we have multiple valuable assets to offer in an emergency. I'm glad to be a part of it, and I'm glad that 2008 brought me the opportunity.
So, 2008 was quite a year. I've got high hopes for 2009.
A curious event recently befell me, one that made me briefly wonder if I had warped into some sort of mirror universe: I came home from flying to find that my husband had dinner already cooking. Considering that I can't even count the number of times I've gotten dinner started while waiting for M to get back from an evening flight, that kind turned my world on its head right there. That is not to say that I object to this turn of events--quite to the contrary, I feel I could easily get used to it.
Long story short: Pending the right person's signature on the paperwork, I have completed all the requirements to become a qualified Mission Scanner. That means I can participate in Civil Air Patrol missions as a member of the aircrew.
Long story long: I finally got to go flying, and it was as awesome as I could hope for. Training flight #1 had me sitting in the back left seat of a Cessna 182T, looking out the window and keeping a log--the duties of a scanner, in a nutshell. Our pilot (a retired Tomcat backseater--go Navy!) took us through the procedures of getting out to a grid and flying a parallel search pattern and a route search. This flight was nominally part of a larger search and rescue exercise, but the way things worked out we didn't actually get much practice coordinating with the other participants. I was still thrilled just to be up there; this was my first time in a small plane of any kind, unless we're counting my "Taxi FAM" in the T-45 (I don't, as we stayed firmly planted on the ground). The weather got iffy later in the day, so we postponed the second training flight a few days.
The second flight was just as successful. This time I was in the front seat, so I had a much better view of the extremely slick Garmin G1000. I'll get to play with that more when I start my Mission Observer training. (Bonus feature: it gives me an excellent opportunity to tease M that my plane is nicer than his; I reckon the COD is as likely to see a glass cockpit in the near future as I am to sprout feathers.) We went through an expanding square search and a creeping line search. We didn't get to do too much with the Becker direction finder, but that one seems pretty self-explanatory. Oh well, I bet we can go practice ELT-hunting in one of the observer training flights.
With the completion of the two flights and a short course on CRM (Crew Resource Management, a topic with which I was already familiar from helping M study back in T-44 land), I became the first of the "new crop" of people in my squadron to finish the requirements for the Mission Scanner qual. The only trouble with being first is that now I have to wait until more people finish before we start the ground school portion of Mission Observer training. It's likely to be quite a while before I get to go flying again, but I'm already excited.
This mirror universe isn't so bad. I didn't even have to grow a goatee.
After yesterday's adventure with bad weather, flight delays, and spending eight hours in an exceedingly ugly and ill-equipped concourse at Miami International Airport, M and I are back from our week's vacation/honeymoon in the Bahamas. We had a great time on the island (fear not, a post with more details is in the offing as soon as I get my pictures organized), but it is wonderful to be back home to our kitties and our Internet access and our own bed and gorgeous autumn weather.
Now, off to make a grocery list and drag ourselves to the commissary so we can do important things like, y'know, eat. I'm itching to do some real cooking after my vacation-enforced break. As an added bonus, it is now close enough to Halloween that the purchase of all that temptingly fun-sized candy is now totally justified. Gotta get ready for those trick-or-treaters, and I care so much about their hopes for a delicious Halloween haul that I am willing to personally submit myself to candy quality control before we hand out the goods. It's for the children.
As of 11 April 2008, M is designated as a Naval Aviator and entitled to wear Wings of Gold. Wrapped up in that pin are years of hard work and dedication: long evenings of studying, simulator events hours before dawn, flights lasting late into the night, rough flights, instructors both excellent and aggravating, and flights that made him remember why he wanted to get into the flying business in the first place.
Flight school was an adventure, but we're excited to see what new, different frustrations and rewards life in the FRS and the fleet squadron thereafter will bring us. I bet it won't be dull, even if the gray fleet aircraft he'll be strapping into are rather drab compared to the bright, cheery orange-and-white trainers. I'll miss the Killer Clown Jet and the mighty Pegasus...
...and yes, I'm absolutely okay with that! Naval Aviation will make you say some pretty strange things sometimes, and being able to say -- with a straight face, mind -- that I was absolutely ecstatic to find out today that my darling husband is a hooker is definitely one of them.
Okay, further explanation is probably in order: M has been away since late last week on the carrier qualification (CQ) detachment, and I'd been waiting on the edge of my seat ever since for the word that he completed the necessary traps (landings aboard the aircraft carrier) to earn the right to call himself a tailhooker. The tailhook, of course, is what the planes landing on the carrier use to catch a wire to decelerate themselves. The video below shows an earlier CQ det, and it might give you an idea of the sort of thing my husband's been up to recently.
I don't think I could be any more proud of M right now. He's worked hard for this accomplishment and I know he'll be fantastic in whatever comes down the pipeline next. Right now, though, I just can't wait for him to get home so we can celebrate!
Anything will start to seem routine if you hear about it enough. There are days that I forget that not everyone's husband goes to work in a flight suit, especially living around and socializing mostly with student naval aviators and their spouses. Every once in a while, though, there are days that remind me what a cool job my husband actually has. This past Wednesday was one of them.
M has been extremely busy lately preparing for carrier qualifications, often leaving early and coming back late, sweaty and exhausted from three "bounce periods" a day. The husband of one of my good friends is also getting ready for the upcoming CQ detachment, so Annie and I had been missing out on time with our men. When M mentioned something about a barbecue out at the auxiliary landing field where the CQers were bouncing, I mentioned it to Annie. After a little hemming and hawing over how we would probably be the only spouses to drive out to the middle of nowhere for a poorly publicized barbecue, we finally convinced each other that it might just be an adventure. And hey, it's not like we were doing anything else that day.
The drive turned out to be forty-five minutes of uninterrupted South Texas desolation, and upon our arrival, we learned that not only were we indeed the only wives who showed up, but a scheduling quirk meant that our husbands weren't even going to arrive for another hour. No one quite knew what to do with us, but we stuck around until the guys arrived by van. They weren't real sure what to do with us either, but we eventually snagged some tasty slow-cooked chicken and everyone's mood improved.
Getting to have lunch with the guys was all well and good, but Annie and I had an ulterior motive: we had never actually seen our husbands fly before, and we wanted to stick around long enough to see their bounce periods. We thought we would be able to watch from a distance, take pictures of all the planes, and maybe get a chance to ask later which ones were people we know. When we heard that we might have the chance to be able to watch from the LSO shack, though, the possibilities of this venture looked better and better.
We didn't get in touch with either of the LSOs for such a long time that we thought we were out of luck, but just before we were about to give up, "Demar" walked over and asked us if we'd like to come out. There was no hesitation in our "Yes, please!" We joined him on the ride out to the shack, where we met up with "RJ," the other LSO who would be waving our husbands' passes.
A quick note of explanation: A Landing Signal Officer, or LSO, is someone who controls aircraft as they approach and land on aircraft carriers. They are highly trained and can tell just by looking whether a pilot is on glideslope for a good trap, has too much or too little power, or whether they need to move right or left. LSOs grade each landing, as well. On an interesting note, the highest grade one can ever get is just "OK." Got it? All right, moving on...
My husband was in the first bounce group, and I was excited just to be so close to the action. I watched his first couple of passes from outside, and man, those jets are loud. We're talking chest-vibratingly, shack-shakingly loud. Annie and I were lucky that Demar had some extra sets of earplugs.
Well, I could write on and on, but every English teacher I ever had told me I should show, not tell. I don't think video is quite what they had in mind, but hey.
Having a spouse in the military brings its share of annoyances, certainly, but it also opens the door to getting to see and do some pretty cool things. How many other people get to see that kind of seriously cool aviation up close? I think I'm pretty lucky.
