Today I re-hacked my low altitude currency. There’s nothing like flying 500 mph 500 feet above the terrain! After the low-level across northern Honshu, we buzzed over to the range and simulated dropping 500# laser guided bombs and designating the target with LANTIRN targeting pods. Finally, we capped the relatively short 1.2 hour mission with three simulated high-angle strafe passes, safed everything up, and RTB’d. All in all, it was a good day.
Archive for March, 2007
Go Low, Go Fast
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007The Weather Here
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007The weather was so cloudy today, we could have transported the entire fight one continent over to Europe and I couldn’t have felt more at home flying a training SEAD mission. That said, this flight was replete with air-to-air action (I got two of the ‘bad guys’), and had plenty of air-to-ground hurdles as well. The extra stuff on the jet (IFF interrogator, LINK-16, HMCS) just continues to make life easier!
The only thing that happened today that was really different was we took off and landed on Runway 10. There’s always a first time for everything! The approach coming home was interesting. There’s nothing like getting a descent to 2000′ when there are mountains just 12 miles away from you. Thank the good Lord for a radar with ground mapping capability!
Happy (Belated) Homecoming
Sunday, March 25th, 2007The Ready First Combat Team is back in Friedberg.
I wish I’d known Chely Wright was going to sing for them! That certainly would’ve taken the sting out of a 13-month deployment for me! Aside from Christina visiting me in Korea, Chely’s concert was practically the highlight of my tour there.
Fox Three
Saturday, March 24th, 2007No, the title doesn’t refer to the third version of the reasonably successful 24-hour cable news channel. Last week I had a few simulator flights, one 4vX tactical intercepts/air combat tactics, and a suppression of enemy air defense mission. It was the first time I’d really had a chance to do a 4vX since 2003, and SEAD was even farther back in history. It’s hard to believe how much you can forget in a few years. But then, it’s nice to know the basics haven’t changed and most of the essentials learned long ago still apply.
Life’s Been Good
Monday, March 19th, 2007This evening was one of those rare ones. It was a long but decently productive day at a day of work after a long week of a lot of work. I was a little tired, but not too tired. It was nearly 9 PM and dark. The traffic lights on the base had switched to flashing red or flashing yellow, while the traffic lights in the town were still cycling normally. I was only about three minutes into my fifteen minute commute home for the night.
The canned music show that plays classic rock from about eight to ten PM every weekday evening on our local American Forces Network radio station happened on the one song that just fit this evening: Life’s Been Good, by Joe Walsh of Eagles fame.
The song has been around since 1978, I remember hearing it frequently growing up. But what made it really sink in was the summer of 1987, my high school friends Brian A. and David W. and I were cruising back and forth between Meramec State Park and the town of Sullivan trying to go from our campsite to find a good spelunking cavern. I think David had Life’s Been Good on tape, along with a number of Beatles songs and a song he and another friend, Chris T., had created. My car didn’t have a cassette player at the time, so we were playing the tape with my 1980 Realistic portable stereo, which I referred to as a ‘Boom Box.’ It hardly boomed, although my parents might disagree. In any case, the windows were rolled down because it was summer and my car’s air conditioner didn’t work, so the radio was up relatively loud, we were rolling along through the forested hills of south central Missouri. Our lives at that moment really were good. The song earned it’s place in my musical heart in that moment.
I don’t hear from Brian or David very much anymore. I know Brian is happily married to a beautiful woman and they have a baby. David, who was always a talented violinist, went on to eventually play with the Colorado Chamber Players. I went on to earn one of my dream jobs. Life’s been good ever since 1987. It’s had it’s moments, of course. The trend is definitely up. I think I can speak for all three of us in saying that.
Saddled
Tuesday, March 6th, 2007I had to re-fly my local area orientation sortie today since I haven’t flown since December. The plan was for Huck and I to fly out to the CHARLIE airspace, do a quick G-warmup, and take a look to see what we could see with our training mode of the HARM Targeting System Pod and to just view the coastline and some of the references out in the ocean. Afterward we were going to go back to Misawa to beat up the pattern. I was out of landing currency, so updating it was the primary feature of the mission.
It was not to be. The first problem was the solid undercast from about 800′ AGL up to 9,000′ MSL. We couldn’t see any of Hokkaido or northern Honshu. The second problem was after a couple of spins in the area, Huck had an issue with his jet which upon consulting the almighty checklist said to ‘Land as soon as practical.’ We buzzed straight back to RJSM, held over the field to burn down to a reasonable weight to land on the wet runway, and landed relatively uneventfully.
As for the new toys, I think I only hit the IFF interrogator once. LINK-16 worked like a champ all day! The HMCS in my jet wasn’t very cooperative, but it worked to a limited extent. Who needs a stinkin’ helmet-mounted sight, though!? I grew up as a HUD-baby, and I can fly with just a HUD quite easily!
Some F-4 guy probably just read that and is snickering. Clock-to-map-to-ground navigation is challenging enough, I must grant (they used to teach us that at pilot training). But then, those guys had a back-seater to watch the radar for them.
I may have grown up in one of the best times in the F-16. Active radar missiles, the dawn of the J-series weapons, and advanced targeting pods. By the end of my career, the mighty Viper will still have some useful life in her, even if it is just a ‘legacy jet.’ It (and the F-15) will forever be the first of the fighter jets to max out human endurance. The F-22 and F-35, as good as they are or will become, will still be 9G jets. Sorry, Phantom, Starfighter, and Delta Dart guys!
Semper Viper!
Carbon Roundup
Sunday, March 4th, 2007Here are some entertaining takes on former Vice President Al Gore’s "Carbon Footprint":