Friday, May 9

Well, yesterday (thursday) I got to go on my dollar ride, which is my first ride of the program.  The term dollar ride comes from the student giving a dollar (all dressed up and decorated) to the IP for taking you on the flight (or something like that).  We performed just basic maneuvers: takeoff, landings, slow flight, etc, plus I had to do all the radio calls as well.  It's actually a lot of work when you're not used to doing all of it.  It was a great time, and now I finally know what else I need to be studying for for my next flight, which should be on monday.  Today was a "relaxing" day.  I didn't study very much in class and we got off at a pretty decent time.  The guy that ran the formal brief this morning messed up and someone else had to finish the brief.  Our flight commander considered putting us on formal release (we have to be formally released to leave for the day...at least a 12 hour day), but said that since we had worked so hard during the week, he would give us the benefit of the doubt and didn't do it; thank goodness!!

Weekend plans are to go up to Colorado Springs, "the Springs", and check out some sights up there.  No studying tomorrow, but Sunday, it's back to studying and chair flying.  Good times!

Tues, May 6

Sorry I haven't posted in a little while, just busy studying and stuff like that.  Well, we finished off last week with our academic test...I got a 100!  Pretty stoked about that; but can't celebrate for too long because we moved right into flying...at least some of us did.  I wasn't initially scheduled to fly until today, but there was a couple of guys from the senior class who needed checkrides so that bumped me and 2 other folks from our class from today to tomorrow.  However, the weather is supposed to crap out on us later today and tomorrow from what I hear.  I guess we'll see if I get to fly tomorrow.

When we're not flying, we're basically just studying.  Studying includes simply looking at the books or chairflying.  Chairflying is either sitting in front of a picture of the cockpit or going and sitting in the cockpit trainer and "flying" your mission or practicing your radio calls, etc.  It's invaluable to be able to do that, but I find that I can only study so much before I have to actually get in the airplane and do this stuff.  It seems that i've hit a plateau in my knowledge until I can see how it actually goes when we're in the aircraft.