My First Flight in the T-45C Goshawk

<- (this is not me, but this is what it would look like if it were me...)




I had my first flight today. It wasn't a syllabus event, that is to say it wasn't graded, instead it was what's called a "trunk flight." That means that I flew in the backseat or "trunk" of a plane that would otherwise be a solo instructor on someone else's syllabus flight. Usually, if you're in the trunk, you don't have controls and are merely there for the ride, a lot like my F/A-18 ride in Miramar.

It was pretty amazing, but I was there to work so I don't have any pictures (and they're illegal again). We didn't pull any Gs, we didn't drop any bombs, we flew a simple formation flight just practicing maneuvers over central Mississippi.

The flight was an instructor training formation flight and I flew in the backseat of the lead's plane, which would otherwise be empty. The brief was, well, brief because the instructors all knew what they were talking about so I just sat there on the couch, the lone Ensign, trying to absorb this flood of slang and bits of information as best I could. What made it worse was my pilot, the lead, was the French exchange officer here. He is the liason for the roughly 15 French Navy students here who train with us before learning to fly the Super Etendard or the much cooler Rafale M off the Charles de Gaulle.

Of course, those of you who know me and all the time I spent in France know that I was a little psyched to fly and practice my French. However, when said Capitaine de Corvette is going through a brief in broken English and broken English aviation slang, it's a little tough to follow. However, it was pretty awesome to practice my french in the airplane, and at times it actually made communicating over the garbled ICS a little easier... unfortunately, as he told me, he's trying to practice his English so I was welcome to speak french but he would only respond in English.

Anyways, we started up the Jet pretty much just as I was getting settled and as he's going through the checklist I was trying to figure out what the hell to do with the little 8mm camcorder tape he'd handed me before I climbed in. I knew the plane had a VCR in it, to record through a camera positioned to record the view forward, a couple of the display screens (Multi-Function Displays or MFDs for short) and the audio from the flight. The only thing else I knew was the location of the unit in the rear cockpit and that if you didn't position a latch just right the whole thing (the VCR itself) could fall out and jam the controls, possibly resulting in an out of control flight situation.

So here I am, first time in the jet, still pretty uncomfortable in the gear, barely able to understand my pilot over the Intercom (ICS), somewhat lost as to what checklist item he was doing at the moment and struggling over my one simple task, loading the stupid VCR. The jet starts moving. We go through a few taxi checks and I give up with the VCR, I close the latches and leave it be. Once we arrived at the last pause-for-more-checklists area called "Marshall" (don't ask me why) I suddenly thought that maybe we were required to have the VCR working... in case we have to eject and they need the tape for the investigation.

With a renewed resolve I again mount the attack to figure out how to load the tape into this godawful VCR. I remove the entire unit, take it completely out of it's place on the lower right console and with a sense of dejection realize that I'm looking at a black metal shoebox with no controls, no slots, only a weird dangerous looking access panel on the back. Also, I should say that I'm held firmly into place in the ejection seat by exactly eight different straps attached to eight different points on my body, each designed to suck me even further into my rocket chair should I have to pull the big yellow and black rubber handle located snugly between my legs (har har, yes we've already made a million jokes about that dangerous thing between our legs...).

By this time we're moving towards the "hold-short line," which is like the big white line at a stop-light intersection. Naturally I'm scrambling and suddenly I figure out that the weird rectangular access panel is how you finally insert the tape (so obvious right?). However once I get it open I reach into my bag to find the tape he gave me and, big shock, it's not there. We're still rolling and I'm scrambling to find this dumb tape and suddenly the ICS comes alive (for the first time, he's not a talker) and Capitaine is asking me why he has a "VCR Degrade" message on his MFD. This is after I tried to ask him at least three times how to load the VCR, but of course I forgot that Cassette is kind of a french word, so I was trying to do it in English, which didn't work.

Finally, I give up, for the last time and put all the little pieces back together and assume that I've "FODded" the cockpit with the tape. FOD= Foreign Object Debris/Damage and is a huge deal in aviation. You can't wear hats on the flight line for fear they'll be dropped and sucked into an engine and everything in the cockpit has to be either big enough to not be lost or be physically attached to something else (all my pens are tied to my knee-board). The cassette was not attached to anything.

I put this whole big black metal piece of poorly designed recording equipment off of my lap and back into its hole, shut the latch just before takeoff and look down to find the cassette wedged between my crotch and the ejection seat handle.... merde...

It was good flight and the part that made it amazing was after about an hour of flying around we came back to the landing pattern here at Navy McCain Field and did some "bounces." After a carrier landing practice and an emergency landing practice the instructor gave me controls (me, the guy who's having his first flight in over a month... and first flight in the jet...in the Pattern?!). The pattern is probably the most challenging place to fly due mainly to the number of other jets flying around this very precise race-track pattern around the runway and the risk of collision associated with them.

So I had controls and thought I was just going to fly for a minute downwind before turning final, (maybe he wanted to adjust his seat or something) and then he'd take controls for the touchdown. Nope, I turned final when he told me to and he didn't say anything except "Nice Approach!" after the wheels touched down and I shoved the power forward, pulled in the speed breaks and lifted off again.

I'm learning a lot pretty fast, but today was a huge confidence builder. Wow, if I can do this jet stuff in the rear cockpit (with a much reduced view) and without a whole lot of experience when it doesn't count, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to make it happen for the gradesheets and better.

Also, I'm working sometimes 12-hr+ days but the jet is so very cool and it's so worth it.