It's getting hard here.

Need to keep pushing.

Settling

It's been a few weeks, but things are coming together here in Meridian. I have an apartment, and now, after a month-long delay by the moving company, my things are here. That makes me happy. Also awesome are the abilities to cook and have a place to sit in my apartment (it's the little things!).

Flight school is going okay. It's tough, and I am putting in extremely long hours.

Jets!

Following a very exciting form solo, I waited for a whole week.

This morning, my commander came into the flight room and told my roommate and I, both of us complete in the naval program, what our next aircraft would be. He got helicopters for the Marines, I got Navy jets.

This is a big thrill. Can't wait to fly the plane, really excited for that.

In the mean time - try to perfect formation in a T-6.

Now We Wait...

I may have flown my last time in a T-6.

The formation solo marks the end of the road for Navy folks who don't select/track Tactical Aviation. To quote an instructor, "it's the most fun, scariest time you will ever have in an airplane." So true. I flew across from my roommate, JT Morgan, for 75 minutes, most of that time positioning our aircraft within 10 feet of each other. Crazy! It's wild that they let us do that.

To make things even more insane, I was the only person in my plane.

The flight was awesome. The most smooth and controlled I have felt in a long time, in the plane. Really exciting to do all those maneuvers, even a loop, with another airplane in trail.

One of those days, I would have flown for free.

The Wichita That Never Happened...

Instrument check today.

We ended up in northwestern Arkansas, since Kansas was a living, breathing tornado that day. Between formation flight to the airport, and a night instrument flight to Fort Smith, those were my favorite times so far in an airplane.

Wichita

An adventure starts shortly. My roommate and I are flying to Wichita this evening, accomplishing three flights before returning to Enid on Friday, midday.

We'll fly formation out there - which should be outstanding.

Night instruments in the Wichita area, maybe even a bit of tooling around the area - Salina, Kansas, anybody?

Formation back to Vance AFB. Sounds fun.

Recent Recap

Things of late...

Started formation flying (aka "flying dangerously close to other aircraft...and doing so on purpose"). The first flight scared me a good deal, and I didn't even fly that much of it...but the second felt a lot better. Looking forward to my next shot in the formation medium.

Finished cross country. Great fun! Changed the itinerary a bit.

We went to Omaha first, looking for a specific type of instrument approach that has proven beguilingly difficult to find nowadays. The one at Offutt AFB in town was broken, like so many, so we opted for a quick landing and some Jimmy John's.

Off to Duluth, Minnesota, through frozen rain and nighttime at 29,000 feet. Pretty high up!

In Duluth, spent a good deal of time enjoying Sammy's pizza, cruising along the lake shore (by airplane, by foot), drinking coffee, and admiring planes - saw a Canadian jet on the ramp at the airport, and got the pleasure of seeing a sweet airplane factory, Cirrus. Woot!

On the way back, flew low and slow over the southern edge of Lake Superior. Found some sweet islands to admire. Flew into the weather a bit, though, so we recovered by instruments to LaCrosse, WI. No problem, we thought, we'll be off to Lincoln, Nebraska before we can say "cheesehead." Well, a major aircraft accident at Vance, my home base, changed that (everyone was okay, no worries there).

So we spent a good deal of time in LaCrosse, home of the world's most bars-per-capita. Saw the Harlem Globetrotters, walked the Mississippi River, had Cajun food, enjoyed beer.

The flight back, we finally got those beguiling approaches in a little airport in northwestern Missouri. I'll be eternally grateful to St. Joseph, and their awesome PAR controllers. Much love.

Back to Woodring airport in Enid, where I got my first double-clicked landing (that's a good thing!).