Monday, October 20, 2008

FAM 2 and 3

Well, after feeling really confident after my flight on Thursday, I found out I was flying my official FAM 2 on Fri. Sweet. And it was not with my on-wing. Don't know why it wasn't but whatever, I was feeling good. 

So, Friday came, did the brief and flew. Everything went pretty good I thought. After such a clear day the day before, it was extremely cloudy at low altitudes because a cold front was coming through. No worries, we did the maneuvers without ground references and then went to do some patterns. I like cold fronts, the air is cold. Not like in my FAM 1 where when you come down in altitude, it heats up like an oven. So after doing what I thought were decent patterns we came back to Whiting. We had some difficulties because all the low clouds were at the exact altitude we were supposed to be flying at when coming back on course rules. (course rules is the preset directions we fly when coming to or from Whiting) So, getting underneath the clouds was fairly eventful. We spent some time ducking and weaving trying to get below the clouds as we are not allowed to fly through them. In the end, solid flight, got some good scores, the IP was super cool and lets face it, I think I even had some fun. 

Since I flew FAM 2 on Friday, I was expecting FAM 3 on Monday. Sure enough, when the schedule came out, I'm set for FAM 3 today. My on-wing had us brief together and then Garcia was gonna fly and then I would go up when they get back. Well, Garcia got out there to do the ground runup checklist and the plane broke so they were forced to cancel. Great, now I get to fly with a ticked off IP. Well, he didn't want to fly for a couple hours so I got to sit around some more. Eventually, we got a plane, did a quick brief, and finally headed out. Let's just say that this whole flight did not go as well and my last two. I just felt like blah. I was "behind the aircraft" the entire flight. (behind the aircraft means I'm not thinking ahead 10 steps ahead, doing things as they come instead of before they come) So, although it was not a horrible flight, it was not what I was looking for coming off a high the last two. Oh well, one truth of flight school is that you will have off days. Time to bounce back and hit it hard for FAM 4 tomorrow. After this flight I head back to the simulators for some instrument sims. 

Chris 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Way to go, Chris...nice to read about your experiences, and always good to talk to you, too!

We'll be continuing to live your USAF life with you....

Love;
Dad