UPT Week 10 (Novemeber 9-13, 2009)

My office space!

Monday November 9, 2009 ( Day 44)
Flew a 1.3 hour sortie (C4005) into the clouds within an hour of sunset, it was cool! It was my 2nd flight in 9 days, so Im working out the kinks. 4 Landings. Yee-hah!

1.3 hour flight (7.8 hours total T-6 flying time)
19 Total landings

Tuesday November 10, 2009 (Day45)
Wasn't scheduled to fly and I didn't! Instead I studied for the 12 hour day! AHHHH!!! =0

Wednesday November 11, 2009 (N/A)
NO FLY DAY - HAPPY VETRAN'S DAY !!!
Special thanks to all the Veterans who served before!!!

Thursday November 12, 2009 (Day46)
Flew again this week with a 1.3 hour sortie (C4006) ride with clouds all around. This was the last ride of the first "block" of training, so after this all of the grading criteria goes up a notch, making everything harder. As I recall there were 6 landings of mine, not a bad number for a single sortie!

With less than 10 hours of flight time in the T-6, there are still some areas of improvement to work out (actually, ALL areas need work on)! Today's focus would be on while inside the "MOA" - Military Operating Area. This is where we fly out to and do all of our aerial maneuvers. On paper they look like city blocks all next to each other, all with different numbers. However, in the air they are a 3-dimensional shape, with altitude ranges governing the tops and bottoms, distance measurements governing the front and the back, and radial degrees governing the left & right side of the area.

http://www.t6driver.com/gouge_ifg.html

While inside any of the MOAs, cloud restrictions are in place and you must avoid them by at least 500ft. Well I was setting up inside my MOA for the first serious of maneuvers. The first set were Traffic Pattern Stalls, which include 2 turning demos and then the last one you simply fly straight ahead (3 stalls total). For reasons unknown to me, I decided to do the straight ahead stall first but I did not happen to comprehend that there was a GIANT cloud right in front of me! All the while, the airspace to both the left and right of me were clear and open. So if I would have started with the turning portions first, to either side, I would have been just fine. Since I did not, the IP (instructor pilot) had to "take the aircraft" and dive down and turn 180s away from that giant cloud in my MOA. Not a big deal, but it was just really funny because he's like "I don't know why you decided to go straight ahead into that big cloud directly in front of you. The entire area is clear, besides in front of you."But its ok, because its pilot training! Just gotta work on that situation awareness!

"If I knew what I was doing, then I would already have wings!" - me

1.3 hour flight (9.1 hours total T-6 flying time)
25 Total landings

Friday November 13, 2009 (Day 47)
Flew another 1.3 hour sortie (C4101) with a whopping 10 landings! I am now in that new "block" I was telling you about earlier - the grading is harder and I can now do spins in the air. Also, my world just got opened up to instruments, so I will be having instrument sims starting real soon.

Nothing too serious, but the fastest I've flown to date is 250 miles per hour, which is Mach 0.53 - so its official to say that I've flown at half the speed of sound! (Note: this is flown at altitudes of 7,000ft above sea level, and Im just going off what my airspeed indicator and Mach indicator read).

Also, I am officially in double digits of flight time in the T-6!!!! 10 hours of flight time!! WHOOT WHOOT!

1.3 hour flight (10.4 hours total T-6 flying time)
35 Total landings