Swimming blind and "You have the rest of your life to work on it"

I'm about to complete Aviation Preflight Indoctrination. I graduate on Thursday, the movers come on Friday and I'll leave for Corpus Christi, Texas that evening. I've never been to Texas, much less lived there. My only real experience with Texas was standing on a mountain top at the Eastern edge of the Continental Divide in New Mexico. The guide pointed East towards the horizon and said, "Do you see all that flat gray stuff on the horizon? ... yeah, that's Texas."

Needless to say, I have a feeling it will exceed my expectations.

In the meantime, I have to finish my survival training. On Friday we briefed for and completed the "Helo Dunker." A large contraption designed to simulate what it's like to crash-land and escape from a sinking helicopter. It's a large tube that in some ways reminds me of a big blue grasshopper with no wings or legs. It has 8 seats in it and 3 exits. It looks a lot like this:

It lowers to the water via a large hoist, we swim in and we strap in as it lifts up. Once it's up in the air, we "brace for impact" and then the dunker is quickly lowered into to the water. As it touches the water or "impact" we can grab onto pre-planned reference points near us. The reference point is needed becasue immediately after hitting the water, the dunker flips upside down as it sinks, pretty quickly actually. As was the case in the "spin and puke" it was easy to become disorientated. Once the "violent motion" has stopped. We release our harnesses, grab onto the reference point and pull ourselves hand over hand to the emergency exits and pull ourselves out. The exits are on the side... the big gaping hole is for the rescue divers to pull out the students who can't get out or are freaking out.

It was a lot of fun, it was just as good as any amusement park ride except we had to do it fully clothed and wear blindfolds (well, for 1 out 3 trips on the thing).

Today was also full of fun survival activities (y'know if the material wasn't so very important, I think it would have something of a summer-camp feel going on). We learned how to use our parachutes, should we have to use them. They taught us how to check the canopy and correct for malfunctions.

One student asked the instructor exactly how long we're supposed to attempt to get a malfunctioning parachute canopy to open or to fix a tangled parachute. The answer was pretty clear, the instructor told us not to worry, "you have the rest of your life to work on it."

We went back to the pool and spent the rest of the morning in full gear and harnesses dangling from simulated helicopter hoists and practicing descending into water in a parachute. It's pretty exciting, mainly because they teach you to unbuckle all but one leg loop in the harness as you descend so that you can roll out of the harness as you land and not become tangled in the 'chute or be dragged by it.

We're going to fly with a ton of gear on us... It's all great stuff, but it makes you wonder how it's all going to fit in the cockpit. Well, I guess I'll find out in about a month when I fly the Beechcraft T-34C "Turbomentor" out of NAS Corpus Christi.