© 2022 E-O-V.com JES
In addition to uping my daily use of profanity Pilot Training taught me a great many things. Some surprising, others not. The not category consisted more or less of what I expected – performing mental math gymnastics while wrestling a jet through the air ain’t easy, small details (like how much fuel is in the tanks) if ignored will kill you, and never binge-eat hotdogs from a street vendor in Mexico at 2am. Under the category of “surprising” however, I was amazed with how intensely memorable learning could erupt out of the most vanilla-ly boring and least expected moments.
0 Comments
© 2022 E-O-V.com JES
Memories in Pilot Training are a lot like the cards found in an UNO deck. They come in a range of shades, some are wild, some go one way then flip back on themselves while others leave you drawing not just one, but up to four blanks. Only in flying can something occur in a single second that will stay with you for a lifetime while other things that took weeks of hard grinding work you can’t recall much detail about at all. The pilot trainee mind once strapped to a pair of jet engines and locked in a sprinting struggle to not drown leads to some interesting relocations of events to say the least.
© 2022 E-O-V.com JES
Pilots and poker have a commonality – the bluff. The ability to exude an absolute confidence in one’s actions even when there might not be much to back it up. From day one in a pilot’s life the unofficial rule of “Look cool, sound cool” is drilled in. Hand-in hand with this first rule is a second, know simply as – “Better lucky than good.” Back on the floor of that Parachute Shop, after a flight suit kicked my butt, I was neither cool nor lucky. But the audience was small and more importantly didn’t have any power over my Pilot Training gradebook. In the jet, well there the audience was a whole different story. Particularly if on top of being an instructor they were also leadership.
© 2022 E-O-V.com JES
Pilot training is a unique experience. It’s two parts feeling like you never know enough, one part worry that you’re incapable of ever doing anything right and three parts fixated on what you previously F’d up. Added to these ingredients is also a healthy dash of Type A personality as well as a very generous sprinkling of the invincibility thinking that comes with being in your early twenties. All in it’s an adrenalized concoction that only ever seems to be shaken never stirred. Or more simply put, the experience presents like a Mento dropped in in Pop and you’re trying your damndest to control the reaction.
© 2021 E-O-V.com JES IDLE, NEUTRAL, AFT. Three words, and not just any three words – BOLDFACED three words. In Air Force aviation the use of BOLDFACE in the volumes of volumes of regulations that govern flight is limited. But what boldface lacks in usage it more than makes up for in the enormity of its importance. For when boldface is applied, particularly in the Emergency Procedures chapter of the aircraft’s tech manual, bad things had to happen to put it there. The simplistically phrased procedures the font screamed from the page were designed to prevent the very thing that created them – unrecoverable aircraft damage and the loss of life. As a result, failure to memorize, heed and follow these bolded words exactly as written “would” not could result in a similar fate.
© 2021 E-O-V.com JES In aviation there’s an expression that often gets tossed around which states: “Flying is ninety-nine percent boredom and one percent sheer terror.” However, as a student going through Air Force Pilot Training there’s a provision to that expression that allows for, almost to the point of demands, that those proportions be reversed. From the student perspective rides in early training begin with a deep breath and internal “Here we go” on walk out to the aircraft, are marked by a seemingly endless series of “Holy Crap” experiences during the flight and only meet the calm of “Hey, you got this” about two hours after the whole shebang is done when the brain finally catches up with processing everything that happened.
© 2021 E-O-V.com JES Water skiing behind a boat on a super short rope is a whole different type of experience than trying to do so on one that’s over two hundred feet long. The skills required to perform right at the point of all that frenzied action, react to it all in real-time while also anticipating what’s coming next versus those when you’re little more than a trailing afterthought way back in the behind of everything that that’s going just trying to desperately hold on and not drown are vastly different. Learning to fly a jet felt a whole lot similar. Particularly the part about feeling like you’re never up to speed with what’s going on and only a single slip away from drowning.
© 2021 E-O-V.com JES You can get a lot for a dollar. Well maybe not as much as you used to. But at one time in the Air Force, a dollar could buy you a ride on a jet. And not just any ride. Oh no, this particularly one marked the beginning of a very important journey. In true government fashion however, the dollar used to purchase said experience cost a hell of a lot more than a simple stack of 100 pennies. For this uniquely priced ride was part of a little endeavor known as Pilot Training.
© 2021 E-O-V.com JES Air Force Pilot Training is a lot of things. One thing it wasn’t (at least for me) was what I expected it to be. No, I didn’t think it was going to be easy. I was young, cocky and stupid, but not naïve. I knew it was going to be tough. It was where it was tough that I found surprising. It wasn’t in the air, there things could be difficult, complicated and tricky, but instead on the ground. Yes, the ground. That’s where for me “tough” lurked. Not out with the airplanes on the flight line, but setback down one of the handful of hallways that pierced through the Ops building in a small space simply referred to as the “Flight Room.” Within this room the two words that described the predominant form that tough came in to this day still gives me a mild case of the nervous willies – “Stand Up.”
© 2020 E-O-V.com JES Pilot training in the Air Force is so much more than just training. Its where ego meets execution. Sure, you can learn mechanics and memorize procedures but there’s also a healthy dose of an intangible secret sauce that ripples through it all that either you can stomach, or you can’t. If you can’t – pack your bags and seek life elsewhere. If you can, well there might just be some wings in it for you.
© 2020 E-O-V.com JES In the now of today pictures are easy, unlimited and given their digital nature pretty much reside everywhere. We take so many of them we often forget to ever look at them again. In the time before the ubiquitous cell phone selfie and the social media “like” industry it spawned pictures were much more of an intentional act. They had to be given all that went into them – the camera, the film, the crap I need more film, the double crap I bought the wrong film, the cost to develop said film and the annoyingly long “wait” that went with sending everything out to be “processed” before ever getting a final product in hand.
© 2020 E-O-V.com JES Five years of military school added to a paycheck and multiplied by more free time than was good for a twenty-something young Lieutenant equaled one thing – an attempt to make up for perceived time lost. I was living across the river from the Nation’s Capital in Alexandria, working a job that didn’t require a lot of heavy lifting at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland and trying to absorb every last molecule of “fun” I could find out of every watering hole and club spread between them. After all, I was headed off to pilot training in just a few short months and that made me, well nothing…but why should that stop me from thinking otherwise?
© 2020 E-O-V.com JES Growing up I’d always thought military members and particularly officers were mature, sophisticated and inherently always knew the right thing to do. Most of this stemmed from a very wide-eyed and in awe kid’s perspective of those I came across in uniform not to mention an absolute adoration for one retired Lt Col and 8th Air Force World War Two B-17 bomber pilot who was my Grandfather. That perspective largely remained intact until the day I raised my right hand, and that very same Grandfather commissioned me as Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force. I remember going into that commissioning not feeling all that mature, wondering if the ceremonial “act” of commissioning would change anything and coming out on the other end thinking “nope” I pretty much felt the same.
© 2020 E-O-V.com JES I have an older brother. He’s a Westpointer. Me, I’m an Air Force Academy grad. That right there made for more than a little good-natured rivalry but at least we could agree on one thing – BEAT NAVY! I don’t bring it up to highlight a rift or showcase a football rivalry but instead to introduce that between military branches fundamental attributes of early officership differ vastly. In the Army my brother led troops from day one as, that’s simply what they did. In the Air Force for a large many of us emphasis day one is first placed on gaining, retaining and honing technical expertise. Leading groups of folks often doesn’t even enter the equation until years down the line. Basically, it boiled down to learn first, learn some more, and lead later, oh and try to stay out of trouble along the way. Emphasis on the try.
© 2020 E-O-V.com JES Life as a Butter Bar wearing Second Lieutenant goes by fast. Blink and you can miss it. And the days that go into that blink? Well, they can run the gamut from dull, to exhilarating, to “Oh my God” with more than a few “Oh crud I screwed that one up” thrown in for good measure. My early time as a tags-still-attached-in-case-there’s-a-need-to-make-a-return-to-the-manufacturer-due-to-defect young officer were no different. Back in the long-ago days of yore, careers started first with an apprenticeship and that’s what my short time at Andrews AFB prior to going to pilot training sure felt like. Little was expected of me other than take in as much a possible, learn from it and build a knowledge base for future applications. They say: “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing” but what’s more dangerous is the one who never lets a little lack of knowledge get in their way. Welcome to my life as a fresh from commissioning Lieutenant.
© 2020 E-O-V.com JES Becoming a Second Lieutenant in the Air force after five years of clawing my way through military school in two different states felt a lot like winning the lottery. Not one of those Mega-Millions you never have to work again dealios, that be cool but let’s be realistic. No, while my commission felt rightfully like one of those “I did it” moments in life, it was more akin to winning $2.00 in a contest where you bought $20 dollars in tickets only to see a guy in Jersey walk home with $300 million on numbers he played on a whim while buying a Slurpee. Sure, I won my freedom from military school, but all that got me was a bar called butter and a rank that well frankly told the world – “Warning training wheels attached treat with caution.”
© 2020 E-O-V.com JES Andrews Air Force Base was not only my first assignment but was also my first exposure to the Air Force’s culture of seeming to never have a culture that lasted longer than two minutes. As an aside, the Air Force during my time was a force that seemed to endure a perpetual top-down identity crisis. While just and solely an opinion, one only had to look at my closet full of uniform changes handed down from on high over a very short period of time as an anecdotal example of some of the symptoms. While the desperate need for contradictory continuous change in order to fit in with the perceived wants of the larger military may not have been unique to the Air Force, its ever present manifestations sure made for some interesting situations.
© 2020 E-O-V.com JES Rank in the military is a funny thing. You’d think it be tied to age, wisdom and experience. How much and in what proportionality of the three one had would then determine where in the pecking order known as the military hierarchy they fell. A system structured in such a manner would make sense. However, what makes sense doesn’t necessarily make policy, particularly in the military and even more particularly when it comes to the chasm that exists between the two major demographics of people who comprise the ranks – Enlisted and Officers. These two separate and distinct categories of uniform wearers are both historied and storied and stretch back for as long as there’ve been militaries. What’s amazing about this chasm though is an absolutely know-nothing incredibly inexperienced kid on one side can and does outrank everyone on the other, even the ones who’ve been in longer than the kid is old. These are things that should make a Second Lieutenant “Gulp!” Emphasis on the should.
© 2020 E-O-V.com JES Training for it was one thing, the Special Airlift Distinguished Visitor (DV) mission at Andrews Air Force Base when put into practice was a whole something else. One that exposed military crew members to some interesting situations, not to mention the habits of the passengers they supported that often left lasting and memorable impressions. Whether there was any truth to them or not stories abounded about the various political celebrities that graced the base’s planes as passengers, their unique personalities and diverse proclivities. The First Lady at the time of my assignment had many, such as her hard arrived at requirement to always leave an engine running until well after she’d disembarked the aircraft.
© 2020 E-O-V.com JES Finally, schedules lined up and I got my Air Force career underway as the Executive Officer for the Operations Support Squadron at Andrews AFB. The title sounded much better than the tasks assigned to it. I answered phones and oversaw the endless trail of paperwork that passed through the boss’s office. Many Lieutenants in situations similar to mine relished their time. We were on what was referred to as casual status, filling temporary assignments throughout the Air Force while we waited for our pilot training classes to start. As freshly minted officers months old from our commissioning sources we weren’t trained to do much and our transitory nature made investing in upping our expertise in a specific area a poor return on investment.
© 2020 E-O-V.com JES At the time of my assignment Andrews Air Force base had two Special Airlift squadrons on base – the 1st and the 99th. I suppose they choose book end numbers with a wide chasm between them as designators so the two wouldn’t be confused. On the ramp it was clear; the 1st flew the large airplanes and the 99th the smaller business jets. The Boeing 747 often dubbed and thought of as “Air Force One” fell under neither, it was flown by a special little outfit known as the Presidential Pilots Office. How one became a member of this office seemed shrouded in secrecy, conjecture and lore. They hired their pilots from the other two squadrons, that much was known but beyond that l could find out little more. Theirs was a tight-lipped group that appeared little interested in quelling or dispelling any of the rumors about them that swirled about the base.
© 2020 E-O-V.com JES On the way out the door at the Air Force Academy my fellow graduates and I received a thin little yellow pocket-sized book on how to prepare and survive as a brand-new Second Lieutenant. Within its pages and amongst the no kidding cartoons used to illustrate key points was a passage on how to report for duty at you first assignment and the etiquette associated with it. Step one required contacting your supervisor in advance to set up the date, time and location of the first meeting. Step two outlined that in order to make a favorable first impression one should wear the slightly more formal Air Force Blues and not (it couldn’t stress this enough) the daily, doesn’t need polishing-shinning-and-ironing utility uniform of the unit you were showing up to work with.
© 2020 E-O-V.com JES My Grandfather answered the call and flew bombers out of England with the Mighty 8th Air Force in WWII. Growing up I was drawn in and captivated by his stories. As he talked, I listen building up a stack of questions internally until they toppled over and I couldn’t contain them anymore. Each received a patient answer and we’d pass hours discussing flying. Whenever I could, I’d spirit away to a small clearing on the floor behind a red leather chair used not for sitting but for organizing papers in his jumbled study and pour over his books on airplanes. I would read and reread them even after I outgrew that small spot on the floor and had to move to an open chair in the house’s front room.
© 2020 E-O-V.com JES Most of the aviation related programs at the Air Force Academy were about learning how to soar through the heavens. Most but not all. There was one which took an entirely different approach. It was more interested in teaching folks how to successfully plummet at near terminal velocity towards the ground. Airmanship 490, or as it was better known amongst the cadet body – Jump. A five free fall, no tandem, no static line, you’re on your own and responsible for deploying your own canopy from jump one to jump last parachute program. Yah, needless to say I wanted to do it and wanted to do it badly!
© 2020 E-O-V.com JES The Air Force Academy wasn’t all overpowering academics, uncomfortable uniforms, an abundance of authority figures and mountains of rules. Most of it sure, but not all. Layered in with all that “not-so-fun” were a few opportunities to scratch the surface on topics that were strictly and uniquely Air Force, such as the intro to aircraft navigation course freshman year. Navigation was one thing but flying – well that was something else completely! At least for me, and as luck would have it the Air Force Academy came equipped with its own Airfield.
|
SupportPROUDLY PROTECTED BY COPYSCAPE
|
© COPYRIGHT 2018 EOV JES ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
|