Thursday, May 8, 2008

Is That a Light ... an Oncoming Train?? ... Maybe it's an Oncoming Jet?!?

All of sudden, I find myself being pushed through the last part of the program at a fairly breakneck pace. I mean I think they like me, so I don't think they're trying to get rid of me. Either that or they're trying, very hard, to make up for the month and a half that spent on my couch playing my new guitar while flying only about once a week (it wasn't that bad, I'm exaggerating, a little, your tax dollars are being well spent here). I've been scheduled twice a day or being "double pumped" as we say for the past week and a half. It took me less than a week to get through 9 simulator events (again, this is compared to 9 flights in a month and a half).
Luckily I'm back in the plane and have been flying for the past two days and I will have an "out and in" tomorrow, which means that I'll knock out two flights in one day by flying to some airport, just like I did during my last formation flight and coming back, all the while accomplishing maneuvers and procedures on the checklists.
At this pace, I'll be done with the first block of Instrument flights tomorrow and have my last block of simulators starting on Monday. Wow, I just got a chill writing that sentence. My last block of T-34 simulators... ever, EVER. That'll take probably a little more than a week at which point I'll only have 5 or 6 flights in the plane left... EVER. That'll take a week, possibly two, which means with a conservative estimate, I'll be done with Primary in three weeks. This means that I'll select in three weeks, which means I'm three weeks from knowing which type of platform I'll be flying for the next 8 years.... wow.
I've heard a lot of instructors and people above me say how this upcoming selection is "the most meaningless you'll ever go through." I disagree, in terms of importance and relevance to my future, this selection is probably second to the one I went through at the Naval Academy a year and a half ago when I chose Aviation over surface or Marine Corps, etc. It will decide not just what aircraft I will fly, but also where I will be stationed, what type of people I will be working with, what type of lifestyle I can expect (6 month deployments on a ship, land-based, whatever). Additionally because of the different lengths of the training programs, it decides whether my commitment will be up in 8 and a half years or 9-10.
Will I be flying in circles for 6-8 hours off the coast of some random country, will I be flying in humanitarian aid to cyclone and other natural disaster ravaged areas, will I deliver mail or will I regularly break the sound barrier? Dependent on a few ambiguities I'll pretty much know the answer in three weeks.

1 Comments:

At May 11, 2008 at 7:53 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Very exciting times, Jamie. We will be thinking of you over the next three weeks and hope that you get what you want in the selection process.
Love,
Aunt Nancy

 

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