Wings of Gold

Here are a few photos from the July 2nd winging ceremony at NAS Whiting Field. Many thanks to everyone who attended or sent their support. Becoming a Naval Aviator was challenging, exciting and at times humbling. Attaining this goal would not have been possible without the love and encouragement of family and friends.

Below are some of my numbers from Advanced:

• 7 months to complete
• 124.6 total flight hours (90.4 hours as pilot in command)
• 3.8 actual instrument hours
• 50.7 simulated instrument hours
• 23.9 hours night time
• 39.0 hours in the simulators
• 18 simulated precision approaches
• 48 simulated non-precision approaches

Next month I’ll be leaving the Pensacola area for sunny San Diego. Up next is two weeks of Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training, followed by several months at my community’s Fleet Replenishment Squadron (FRS), Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron TEN (HS-10), at NAS North Island in San Diego. In about eight months I should be reporting to a Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron in Jacksonville, Florida ready to fly the HH-60H and SH-60F (shown below) in the Fleet. It’s going to be an exciting ride!

The Blues

I was down at the beach this afternoon (working on my tan) and happened to catch Pensacola’s very own Blue Angels practicing for the air show Saturday. I’m waiting on pictures of my winging ceremony last week, but I’ll post them as soon as I can. Thanks to everyone that came down though!

Syllabus complete

Ever wonder what it would be like to strap a few thousand dollars worth of night vision goggles to your helmet and go flying? Well, I didn’t either until a few weeks ago. I’ve got to say it’s pretty amazing how much you can see with those things…even on nights when there is no visible moon. As the instructors are keen on saying, “they don’t turn night into day.” Very true, but the goggles do have the ability to greatly increase the situation awareness of the crew. The picture above is a great example of what it looks like to fly on goggles.

Imagine you’re flying toward the perpendicular ridgeline in the middle of the image (notice the trees on top of the ridge and the open field below it – good pilots are always looking for safe places to land in an emergency). Bear in mind that without the goggles, you may or may not be able to see any of these terrain features. If you’re wondering, the bright white spots beyond the ridge are the result of an artificial light source (like a city) called “blooming.” The goggles work by amplifying existing visible light and near infrared energy, and “blooming” is the equipment protecting itself from damage. Phenomenon like this is why we spend so much time studying performance characteristics of our equipment.

One other downside is the reduced field of vision. As the photo clearly shows, you’re basically looking at a tiny, green, circular representation of the world around you. That’s both good and bad. For example, I had no idea how much I relied on my peripheral vision to judge airspeed and altitude (particularly during the critical takeoff and landing phases) until I started flying on goggles. Because of this, students spend the first few flights in the landing pattern learning to hover again and fly a proper pattern.

The last three flights involve low-level navigation routes around the local area. After all, the best way to learn the inherent benefits and limits of the equipment is to actually use it! And who knew aviation wasn’t only about sounding cool on the radio and looking good (see below)? This block of flights was probably the most challenging for me because it was my first experience with the equipment. That being said, I’m happy to report successful completion of the Advanced Rotary Wing syllabus Thursday night. The “winging” is set for July 2nd at NAS Whiting Field.

144 events down, 5 to go!

This week I completed the formation and search and rescue portions of the syllabus which means exactly FIVE EVENTS (all night vision goggle flights) stand between me and Wings of Gold!

It’s pretty hard to explain the formation maneuvers without some type of visual aid. Well, after scouring the internet for an exhaustive five minutes I stumbled upon the above video which shows the last two minutes of a typical formation flight as viewed from the “wing” aircraft. The last thirty seconds of the clip shows the “section break” at South Whiting Field (in this maneuver, the “lead” aircraft turns away from “wing” to gain separation so they can both land). Honestly, this particular video is not all that great, but hopefully it gives you some idea of how we fly “forms.”

You will notice the student pilot of this helicopter (front right seat) is looking directly at the “lead” aircraft. Staying in position in formation requires the pilot to observe and correct any relative motion between his aircraft and the “lead” aircraft. I had a hard time staying in position at first because I think it’s a little unnatural to operate so close to another aircraft in flight. Just like any other learned skill, it got easier the more I practiced it. On a side note, the instructor pilot is at the controls in this video…which may or may not explain why “wing” is able to maintain position so well!

Unfortunately I don’t have any video or pictures of any of the actual maneuvers (aside from the one above) we perform on these flights. I’ll just say the maneuvers are similar to those done back in Primary, except they have been adopted for helicopters. For example, helicopters perform “overruns” instead of “underruns” (these maneuvers allow “wing” to gain safe separation from “lead” if required) because helicopters have additional spinning parts that airplanes don’t have (main and tail rotors)! One additional maneuver unique to helicopters is the “section high speed approach.” I wish I had video of this because it involves two helicopters coming in to land while maintaining a relatively high approach speed all the way down to fifty feet and then executing a steep approach to landing while maintaining formation. I’m pretty sure the words don’t do the maneuver any justice, so let me just say it was one of the coolest things I’ve done lately.

Thursday’s events involved flying one of our low-level navigation routes (the Purple Route) in formation. Part of the route follows the Blackwater River and I can only imagine the folks floating down the river in their canoes staring up at me wonder why those orange and white helicopters feel the need to chase each other around the sky a mere two hundred feet above them. Short answer: because we can…and it looks cool! Plus it’s good training (bonus).

Earlier in the week I also finished the Search & Rescue (SAR) portion of the syllabus which consisted of one simulator event and flight. SAR is actually a challenging mission to fly because the pilot must divide his attention between searching for the downed pilot and actually flying the proper search pattern at low altitude. After a bit of searching I found the simulated crashed airplane north of Choctaw and then went on to rescue the pilot (who somehow ended up in East Bay). After that, the instructor and I looked for alligators (no luck) and flew down the coast to check out a shipwreck off NAS Pensacola. Flying along at 200 feet I did see a few small sharks and stingrays in the Gulf and opened my window to wave at the folks hanging out on the beach Tuesday morning. On the way home I couldn’t help but notice someone had painted “Fly Navy” in giant block letters on top of one of the buildings in downtown Pensacola. Whoever that was…thanks for the motivation!

First boat landing!

Here are a few photos of me landing aboard our training ship yesterday in Pensacola Bay. Yeah, that’s me at the controls in the right seat. Overall, another great day at the beach! Anyone who lives locally and has access to a boat may consider looking for our trainer (it's the grey barge with the orange and white helicopters circling it) south of NAS Pensacola during flight operations pretty much every Tuesday. If it was me, I’d show up early and watch the Blue Angels practice first then drop anchor, crack open a tasty beverage and watch a bunch of students try their hand at landing on a (slow) moving target. I started the formation portion of the syllabus this morning, so I can’t write much more. I have a lot to learn in a short amount of time!

Low-level navigation

The Green Route

I’m ever so slowly making progress towards attaining my own set of Wings. This afternoon I finished the low-level navigation phase of training. These flights teach us to navigate using natural (rivers, hills, lakes) and man-made (roads, towers, buildings) features while operating at low altitudes (like helicopters are supposed to). The first three flights aren’t so bad because they’re flown 500 feet above ground level. At this altitude you can see most of your checkpoints from miles off. The fun starts on the last two events, which are flown just 200 feet above ground level (that’s height above the ground…not height above the trees). You really can’t see much of anything (except the miles of forest you’re flying over) until you’re right on top of it. This is where dead reckoning (flying a heading and airspeed for a predetermined time, adjusted for current winds aloft) and a bit of luck come in handy. Sometimes my timing was right on…and sometimes it wasn’t! Then again, it doesn’t help when one of your checkpoints (each highlighted circle on the chart (“map”) above is a checkpoint) is a small pond surrounded by no less than fifteen other small ponds…

Anyway, I also knocked out the Night Vision Goggle (NVG) simulator event last week. It definitely takes a little getting used to flying around “on goggles.” As they say, “goggles don’t turn night into day,” but they do allow us to see much more than we could without them…thereby improving situational awareness and flight safety. Plus they’re cool! Of course, no piece of technology is perfect (the goggles are heavy, greatly reduce your field of vision, and cause eye strain if improperly adjusted), but I’m really looking forward to doing it in the plane this week or next. Last week I was also promoted to Lieutenant (Junior Grade) and passed the FAA Military Competency Exam for a Commercial Pilot Certificate with Airplane Single Engine Land, Rotorcraft-Helicopter, and Instrument-Helicopter ratings. That last part is a huge deal, and a great benefit of completing military flight training. Tomorrow I’ll be learning to takeoff and land aboard our training ship in East Bay. Everyone who has done this before says this is supposed to be a really cool flight and I can’t wait!

Navigation Solo

HT-8 solos at Panama City

I’m happy to announce that after weeks of instruction, simulator events, training flights, and checkrides I have apparently convinced enough people that I can safely navigate the skies in the trusty TH-57C. And so it was that my partner and I (another student) set out this past Thursday on our navigation solos. I was lucky enough to pick up the first leg from Whiting Field to Panama City flying east along the beach. Not only did this make the visual navigation portion of the flight superbly easy, I got another opportunity to fly along the beach between 1,000 and 500 feet. How cool is that?

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who had this idea, though, as I distinctly remember dodging an CV-22 Osprey on short final to Hurlburt Field, an HH-60G Pave Hawk who decided to play chicken with us, and some guy who appeared to be flying a lawn chair with a giant fan suspended from a parachute. Seriously, that guy was crazy. I still haven’t been able to adequately describe the feeling I get when the Navy hands me an airplane and tells me to bring it back in one piece.

We landed in Panama City for gas and I swapped seats with my partner so he could fly me to Tallahassee. He chose to do his instrument navigation portion first, and “I can’t believe they’re letting us do this” resounded in the cockpit as we punched holes in the clouds at 5,000 feet. Following a quick trip out in town for lunch I hopped back in the right seat for my instrument flight back to Panama City. The controllers were nice enough to grant my request for a block altitude so I did my best to fly through every cloud along the route. I was even lucky enough to get in a little cloud surfing (skirting through the cloud tops) along the way.

On deck in Panama City my partner and I again swapped seats so he could finish his visual navigation leg along the beach and back to Whiting wrapping up a long but rewarding day. These flights mark the end of the instrument navigation portion of training and the awarding of a standard instrument rating. And so the “hardest part of flight school” may be behind me, but it’s not over yet. I started the low-level navigation portion of the syllabus Friday, and I still have formation flying, night vision flights, search and rescue, and the shipboard operation portions (about six weeks) until Wings of Gold.