"Friendly Pilot Boot Camp"

I started API a week and a half ago. API is the very first step in becoming a "Naval Aviator." It stands for "Aviation Preflight Indoctrination" or as a friend of mine who recently graduated called it, "Friendly Pilot Boot Camp."

That's pretty much exactly what it is. It's the 6-week course you have to take where they teach you the basics and decide whether or not they're going to allow you to move and actually fly a plane for the Navy. If you search "API Navy" on YouTube, you'll find a ton of sweet videos of dudes in flight suits swimming around, shooting flares all while rocking out some hard rock riff or patriotic ballad. It leads you to believe that we've embarked upon some historic quest and have mountains to climb, obstacles to jump over, burning pools of oil to swim through...

While that would be cool... and yes, this is actually a pretty intense experience... It's not like the movies or the commercials... we don't shower, strip down and then go play beach volleyball. I don't feel like my life is accelerated and the Marine Corps guys in our class don't climb tall mountains every single day. We do a lot of very cool things, but a lot of mundane things at the same time... for the most part all I've done until this point is Swim, PT and sit in class. It's like being in a very structured high school (one that starts anytime between 06o0 and 0800 on any given day).

API is organized into classes, each class is composed of 30-50 Student Aviators and each class lasts 6 weeks and starts on a friday. My class is #4907, my roommate, in class 4807 started one week ahead of me... if that helps make things more clear.
Each class has a set schedule and we've usually hit the pool the first thing in the morning or have gone onto a field and been told to organize ourselves and 'play a sport' - 10 of us got together and we played soccer until it was time to go to class.

It's a lot like being a senior at the Naval Academy... except with freedom and good weather. I wear a uniform everyday to classes taught by officers, we're in structured units squads and such and each day is scheduled, planned out and run to the point where all I need to do is remember what time to show up in the morning and I'm good for the rest of the day.

Swimming is kind of interesting... a lot of it is conditioning for the mile swim that we're doing next week, but as of the past couple days half our swim period is spent learning how to tread water in full flight gear.

Actually, learning probably isn't the word... I mean there is an instructional video that we watched, but really when you're in a 12' deep pool while wearing a flight suit, gloves, helmet, survival vest with stuff attached to it that we're told isn't normally on there but "it adds a little weight" and a pair of combat boots, keeping your head above water, at least for me, comes pretty naturally.

Oh and I did, however, actually learn how to swim through a pool of burning oil... and they did play hard rock on a radio while we swam... which added to the intensity.

As this is getting pretty long... I'll wrap it with a quick note on Academics... I had my Aerodynamics 1 test on Monday and I have Aviation Weather on Thursday morning at 06. I got an A on the Aero 1... however a B is a passing score, so there's a pretty good incentive to study hard... which is what I'm about to do.