Split field ops

I thought I’d take a quick break from studying to explain a little something I forgot to mention in my last post. Would you believe my last flight Thursday night was the first time I actually had the entire length of the runway at my discretion for takeoff and landing at NAS Whiting Field? Well, it’s true! That’s because during the day, the active runway at Whiting is normally configured for “split field operations.” Allow me to explain. Essentially the runway is split in half such that one half is used for departing traffic and the other half is simultaneously used for arriving traffic. The end result is that a larger number of aircraft can use the field than would otherwise be possible. Of course, in the event of an emergency the entire runway length is used. The entire length of the runway is also used during night flight operations to increase the margin of safety. As far as I know, North Whiting Field is unique in this regard. Needless to say, it can be a pretty busy place with aircraft taking off and landing on the same runway! It’s also easy to forget the sheer enormity of the facility here. The two runways at North Whiting Field are 6,000 feet long by 200 feet wide. By my estimation, a typical takeoff and landing in the T-34C requires only about 1,500 feet of runway (depending on several external variables and pilot skill). If you think about it, that’s really not that far…and especially not while landing an airplane! Thankfully, the T-34C has a reversible pitch propeller that we use during the landing roll to help slow the aircraft (along with the brakes of course). So now you can clearly see how using “split field operations” is both advantageous and safe. Well, I hope you found this post enlightening and whatnot! I need to get my head back in the books - my first formation flight is scheduled for tomorrow morning!

Night flight!

I’m still in a holding pattern waiting to start the formation portion of training so yesterday evening I swapped out the tinted visor on my helmet for a clear one and knocked out a night contact flight. My instructor and I took a little sightseeing tour out to Mobile Bay then turned around and flew east along the Gulf Coast to Pensacola Regional Airport for a few touch-and-gos. Night flying is pretty much like flying during the day, except that it is more difficult to judge your altitude and attitude. During the brief I was warned of how easy it is to experience vertigo while flying at night, so I found myself using my instruments a lot more than normal. This was most true when flying along the beach because large bodies of water at night blend into the dark sky so the coast often provides a false horizon. On more than one occasion, my mind flashed back to a lecture from one of my Aviation Preflight Indoctrination classes: “Trust your instruments!” Sure enough, a quick check of the attitude gyro showed that I’d been in a shallow bank when I thought I was straight and level. After a few touch-and-gos at Regional we headed back to NAS Whiting Field for more landing practice. What a difference between airports! Pensacola Regional is extremely well lit because it’s a large civilian airport located in the “heart” of downtown Pensacola. Whiting is nowhere near a metropolitan area and the airport is surrounded by farmland so it was dark out there! All said and done, this flight was quite enjoyable. It seemed the skies were much calmer and less crowded than usual. And it’s always cool to see and experience new places…especially at night!

Aerobatics complete!

Finally – a full week of good Florida weather! This means I was able to get out the four flights (including two solos) I had left and finish the “precision aerobatics” stage of training. This morning during my last aerobatics solo flight I spent a good hour or so practicing loops, barrel rolls, aileron rolls, wingovers, and One-Half Cuban Eights along Mobile Bay. Overall, aerobatics was a lot of fun, but I’m happy to be making progress in the syllabus! It looks like I’ll be waiting a few days for my wingman to finish up his last two aerobatics flights before we can start the “formation” stage of training. That means I’ll be flying in formation with another airplane in a position about four feet off my right wing, twenty feet back, and ten feet down. Don’t know about you, but this sounds challenging to me! I’ve heard the first few flights are pretty frustrating, but (as with everything else) after a while you get the hang of it. On an unrelated note, I spent last weekend in Jacksonville, Florida for my friends “winging” as a Naval Flight Officer (NFO). Watching him get his coveted “Wings of Gold” was a motivating experience seeing as I still have about a year left in training before I get my own set! I’m just happy to know there actually is an end to all of this! Of course, it’s always good to get out of the Pensacola area for a little while (even if it means spending five hours in a car on I-10) and I had a great time over there in Jacksonville and Saint Augustine. The trip had the added bonus of allowing me to check out the P-3C squadrons over at NAS Jacksonville. This experience will definitely help me out when it comes time to select what platform I would like to fly and where I would like to be stationed next. Since I seem to change my mind on this particular topic at least once a day, I’m not going to speculate as to what I’ll actually put down when the time comes! In any case, Sergio and I served together aboard USS GEORGE WASHINGTON (CVN-73) so many years ago and we were both selected for the Seaman to Admiral-21 enlisted commissioning program back in 2003. It was awesome to see him earn his wings…even if they are “just” NFO wings (Aviator joke most of you probably won’t understand)…Congratulations buddy!

Navy P-3C on the ramp at NAS Jacksonville
Checking out the flight deck of a P-3C
After the Naval Flight Officer winging ceremony

Musings from the couch...

Boy, have I been racking up the “couch hours” these past few weeks because of the weather! For the uninitiated, the concept of “couch hours” is a thinly veiled parody of an Aviator’s obsession with logging things. You know: the number of hours flown, number of landings, number of hours spent sitting on a couch waiting to fly...stuff like that. In any case, I was definitely hoping to have finished the aerobatics stage of training by now, but the Florida Panhandle has been experiencing a bout of either low clouds and fog or very winds for the past few weeks. Seeing as you can’t fly aerobatics safely without being able to see the ground, my flights have been consistently cancelled. This is not to imply the Navy will not fly unless the weather is perfect. If I were attempting to fly a different type of mission (such as an instrument flight) during this time, I probably could have gone flying some of the time. Anyway, all this sitting around made me realize that I forgot to tell you folks about my “tie cutting” ceremony that took place a few weeks ago. This is a Navy tradition that occurs following a student’s initial solo flight. Part of the ceremony involves the student and “on wing,” or primary instructor pilot (IP), exchanging humorous anecdotes about each other. Similar to other Navy events of this nature, your story (which does not necessarily need to be grounded in truth) is judged by a panel of IPs, and then a fine is levied against the student as deemed necessary. The student then presents his on wing a bottle of his favorite alcoholic beverage as compensation for his many hours of instruction. I’m not sure my story is appropriate for a public forum such as this, but it involves my IP attempting to urinate into a stuck relief tube at 4,500 feet, followed by a sudden rush of wind noise as the rear cockpit canopy slid open, and a subsequent order to “fly straight and level.” As you might expect, watching these events unfold in the rear view mirror while avoiding “unexpected turbulence” was quite comical! My IP didn’t really have a story for me, simply stating that I’d “make a fine Naval Aviator, so long as I didn’t have to take off, land, or do anything out of the ordinary in flight!” Not quite the vote of confidence I was hoping for, but he was mostly kidding (I think)! The event culminates with the IP literally cutting a tie from around the student’s neck. How much tie your IP decides to cut off indicates how big a pain in his posterior you were during initial training. Seeing as I have about half of a tie remaining, I must not have been that bad! On an unrelated topic, I snapped the picture up top there while I was standing “wheels watch” earlier in the week. This is a safety watch designed to ensure the landing gear is down on airplanes as they attempt to land and that the runway environment is safe (in other words, there aren’t any deer or other airplanes on the runway). If something is unsafe, it was my job to “wave off” the airplane that is attempting to land. On an unrelated topic, congratulations are due to my friend Gabe for successfully completing Primary Flight Training last week. Well, I’m off to check out the Santa Rosa County Fair. Deep-fried food and bull riding contests, what more can you ask for on a Friday in Milton?