Robot mail

AFPC is the Air Force Personnel Center, the folks who manage manning for the whole service. They periodically send out automated emails advertising jobs they need to fill. Lately the most common ones have been 365s to Iraq or Afghanistan for various purposes. Recently I got a couple of interest.

There is a new airframe being spun up by the Air Force, the RC-12 Liberty Ship. This is a light twin engine airplane (a Beechcraft King Air if memory serves) that they are going to slap some sensor balls on and start flying all over Iraq. I wonder if this is because they are having trouble fielding enough UAVs, and/or recruiting enough pilots for them. I flew the T-44 in pilot training, which is extremely similar to the King Air (about 700#s less)...I don't know if I'd want to fly it in the desert.

The other email is a request for pilots who can no longer pass the normal flight physical who might be interested in UAVs. As the "blood from stone" post a few days back noted, the Air Force is suddenly desperate for pilots for this field. This publicity we've gotten is an interesting way to understand how big organizations work. Based on the press, you would expect that the UAV world is a big, up and coming field and it's a great place to be.

Well, it is up and coming. And in a big picture sense, it's a good place to be. I am getting to see and learn things here that not many people get to see and learn. And in the long run, the UAV world, both military and civilian, is only going to get bigger. But...at the tactical level (i.e., day to day), all this publicity and growth makes things very chaotic at my level. We just non-vol'd (sent people who didn't want to go) to Holloman AFB to help set that up. And we are now looking for some more people (volunteers or otherwise) to go to the schoolhouse/FTU squadron. But that squadron is also moving to Holloman next year, so those people will also be moving. So there is very little certainly about where many of us will be in the very near future. That type of uncertainty was the reason I took this job in the first place, but I didn't escape it here.

~
published 8oct08

Folks from UPT

Been busy, am busy, will be busy, so this will be brief.

I heard a rumor from a friend that they are going to start sending guys straight from UPT to Preds starting late 2008. I don't know if this is a good idea (and it certainly seems a little odd since they've been paying pilots to quit the last couple of years), but they are desperate for pilots.

Moving up in the world...

I don't have time to do a long entry on this, but the Air Force people out there will know what this means: I was recently made DO of the squadron here.

Have to go, the cafe is busy today and they are booting me.

mIRC

We use a chat program here called mIRC that allows to talk to all manner of folks for all manner of reasons. I obviously can't talk much about operations, but needless to say, chat rooms allow for all for all kinds of miscommunications, both amusing and rage inducing. Some of the most proficient chat typers in the world are probably the average high school age cell phone owner and a whole bunch of military folks over here. See mirc.com.

Some relevant chat abbreviations, far from a complete list:

c: copy; this means, "I understand what you just said."

ty: thank you

yw: you're welcome

tyvm: thank you very much

rog: roger; means the same as copy

sb: stand by; I heard you but stop talking for now, I will get back to you when I'm done with a more pressing matter.

.: people will often use a period to check if they are still connected to a room and see what their nick name is. Sometimes in moments of boredom, these will become running jokes such as...

~
redhead_42:.
killer-mc:..
oddjob_mcc:...
~

We generally run things in rooms, where multiple people can read and write things to the whole room, but you can also talk one on one via a method called whisper which looks the same as a normal room, but only you can the other person can see what is typed (unless the chat is logged, which it often is). You can also give the room you are in a title, which provides an additional way to communicate. This can be for relevant business, or just a joke, more often the latter on nightshift. A recent room title: Bear Blasting, the sport you'll invent because you'll be too energetic for normal sports! (See entry on Powerthirst.)


[originally started this entry 29 mar 08, added to it 30mar08, 10 apr08, 12apr08.]

IDF; pilot advice

Just sitting here about to start writing when the Big Voice came on:

"This is the Command Post. There has been an indirect fire attack. All personnel are released. All personnel are to remain vigilant for UXOs. All clear, all clear, all clear. I say again, this is the Command Post...."

My cousin is in IFS in Colorado and has asked me a few questions on flying via Facebook. The letter is somewhat interesting, maybe even to non-pilots, and I don't have anything else to write about today, so here it is.

~~~
4:19pm Mar 19th

Good stuff, well tell the Major I said hey. Got to fly yesterday, went pretty well. We did some ground reference maneuvers (S Turns/ Turns around a Point). Going up again today in two hours for a lot of the same. Should be a good time. They tell us we're ten days behind schedule and that as soon as the super senior class gets out its game time. I believe the words my flight commander used were, "Get ready for the suck... its gonna hurt." Basically they're double turning us up the ass to try and make up for lost time. Yay... at least it means less time in the Dirty P.

Any advice on mastering trimming or pitch picture?

~~~
2:48pm Mar 20th

Ha...yes, welcome to the suck indeed. Every training training program you go through with the Air Force will be just as rushed.

First let me say that piloting advice is very individual. I might say something that works perfectly for you, or it might be totally useless - this was one of the hardest things for me learning to fly. Sometimes, for no obvious reason, a certain instructor just can't teach things to me very well.

Okay, trimming. The trick with trim for me was that it was hard enough for me just to know what normal control movements were. Adding another movement on top of that would suck my concentration. And then I would forget I had trim in and have to fight it in some other phase of flight. So, here's what I did, may or may not be good advice and or work for you: I would just fly by hand, and only when I noticed how much pressure I was holding would I trim. And I wouldn't use a ton, or try to fine tune it, just a couple of clicks. (Your trim button/switch does click, doesn't it?)

Or, one other thing you can do is just plan a few clicks here and there,
i.e., when rolling wings level in the pattern in the Tweet after initial climbout (as I recall), I knew three clicks of nosedown was about right, and then I didn't think about it again for awhile. So just find the points in the flight where you have a lot of control pressure (nose down on final, nose up on t/o, etc.) and come up with a preprogrammed trim movement
(i.e. one click, 3 clicks, etc.)

(This is a really funny conversation considering trim in the MQ-1, but I'll save that convo for another time...the MQ-1, of course, as in so many ways, is completely different from normal airplanes.)

As for pitch, I assume this is on final? Pitch was even harder than trim, in terms of seeing the same thing as the IP. In fact, I'm not even going to try to describe a pitch picture in text. Let me just give a technique for final that I didn't really start using religiously until after pilot training. I assume you won't be doing any instrument flying there, but that is where a first learned this. I would give myself a PAR, which is to say, I would call out everything I was looking at, something like, "I am on airspeed, high, on centerline, now hot - pulling some power, on altitude, on centerline, on airspeed, low - adding some power, slightly right of centerline - coming left..." etc., all the way to the flare. This has a couple of advantages: the first was that because I was verbalizing it, it improved the speed of my crosscheck which improved my flying, and second, because I was verbalizing it, the IP knew what I was looking at and his/her feedback was much more focused, i.e., "you caught the sink, but you got into the sink because you pulled power too early," etc.

Incidentally, who are the instructors of this program? Active AF? Civ?
Also, how long is your commitment for your wings?

~~~
5:03pm Mar 20th

Ok, here goes:

I consistently adjust pitch and trim before power... which is obviously wrong. I'm going up today and I'll try flying first (pitch/power) then trimming as you suggested. The trim button doesn't click but there's a series of lights on the instrument panel that shows the setting.

My pitch on final is horrendous. Part of my problem is on my base turns I was making 30-40 degree banks and rolling out way early and inside the runway. Then it becomes an aileron/rudder struggle. Throw a bit of wind in there and forget it... I'm doing a go around. Yesterday was a good correction day for that... we did 6 touch and goes so I think I've got a better idea of what to do. I'm still flaring a bit too early... those numbers just get so damn big... :)

I have been talking through things lately and it's help tremendously, especially on checklist items. The tendency is to rush and then forget a step and that's never good for business (or check rides). Talking has kept me "honest".

The IPs here are mostly civilian. The AF contracted the training out to Doss Aviation:

http://www.dossaviation.com/

But with that, there are a number of active duty officers here. They serve as our "Military Training Officers" and some of the upper staff. They'll fly with us on occasion but typically just on check rides. A lot of the civilian IPs are prior military... many retired 04s - 06s. Good instructors over all.

The commitment for pilots is the same as its been: 10 years after you pin your wings on. As you know, I'm getting paid as a 2 lou right now but it doesn't count towards that contract. A reality I know you faced coming out of the zoo. But hey, if I wanted fair I wouldn't have taken a commission... ;)
~~~

3:49 PM, 21 Mar 08

Yes, don't trim before you know what normal control pressures are at a given attitude.

Wow, no click in the trim button, that would mess with me.

Another technique for learning pitch/power/trim is to get the plane relatively stable and then relax your hands a lot. The airplane will show you what it's natural tendency is. This is what you trim out. When you get good, you can remove you hands entirely and the plane should most stay on airspeed/altitude/heading.

Obviously you can't do this in a critical phase of flight like short final, turn to final, etc.

Overcontrolling (e.g., 30-40 degs on turn to final) is my natural tendency, so it's something I had to fight against, or you become you own worst enemy (e.g., you turn late, so you bank a lot, but then you turn too fast and roll out inside final, have to turn back and dump the nose because now you're too high, etc...one large correction leading to another large correction, all the way around.) You will get over the worst of it early on in the flying.

The verbalizing trick became a lot more useful in a crew airplane, because it keeps your crew on the same page (literally, in the case of checklists). Your co-pilot would know you were addressing sink, your nav would know you were addressing heading/centerline, your engineer would know you were addressing the fact that the engines were NTSing, etc. One of the single best pieces of advice I ever got from an instructor was this: "Any time someone talks to you in the airplane, say something back." If you don't say something to acknowledge it, they don't know if you heard them, if there's another problem, if you were listening to a radio call, if you are asleep/dead, etc., especially if they can't see you, as for a loadmaster in the back.

more questions? Send 'em.
~~~

That's the end of the letters, here's the oddity of the MQ-1:

Most airplanes trim to an airspeed, i.e., you set the trim nose level and the airplane should mostly stay in level flight at the same airspeed, assuming you don't touch the power. If you pull power off, the plane will pitch nose lower (that is, descend) to maintain the same airspeed. If you add power, the plane will pitch up (climb), still trying to maintain airspeed. But in the MQ-1, because of the number of computers between you and the airplane, you trim to an attitude, i.e., you set five degrees nose up and the airplane will fly it. The nose up attitude will start a climb, but if you don't have enough power set, you will run out of airspeed. Opposite problem with nose down trim (too much airspeed if you've got the wrong power).

Whiplash; Why blog? What's a pilot?

If anyone out there has actually been reading all of these, you may have noticed that I tend to switch topics without warning between paragraphs. If I had more time, I would make each topic it's own entry, but I don't, and I apologize for the whiplash.

[Interesting note, a two ship of helos just flew over the building.]

So why blog? A topic I will continue to return too, but here's another example of the reason: Anne Frank has been in the news lately again, since a photo of the boy she loved has recently surfaced. There is hardly a better example of someone who has changed world in spite of a short life (and they're all too short) through writing. I'm hardly putting myself on par with Anne Frank, but her resolve is good motivation. Ironically, I haven't read her book, but I plan too; I have a copy that bought in Amsterdam last summer.

What's a pilot? The question comes up because some people might wonder if what I do (flying planes from the ground) still counts. It's a relevant question, and one the AF is still wrestling with. There are concepts in play here that are totally new and thus deserve a great deal of examination. For example, if one pilot is controlling two planes from the ground at the same time for an hour, should he/she log two hours of flight time? So, far the AF says yes. When I am in the ground station operating a plane, is that "flying?" That's what we call it so far, I personally think of it as operating. As to whether or not I am a pilot, I don't really care. I know what I do is important, and that's enough for me. Regardless of the new usage, the skills used as a pilot are the closest possible match to what I do now, so until we come up with a new word, it'll have to do.

[edit 3 mar 08: corrected spelling of "note" in helo line]

Posting by email

Testing out posting by email. After I wrote the entry where I mentioned I'd like to post by email, I started to think about how it was possible to post from my mobile phone via Jott, and I figured the good people at Blogger would be smart enough to include an email post function, so I went searching and it was there. Apparently I can post photos too, may have to play with that.

Working things by email is the best option while deployed, since email is about the only electronic resource we have that isn't heavily restricted (either for security or due to limited resources, and even that varies: often large attachments are automatically stripped off).

Photo is me next to the plane with a service star. The picture was
taken in the states, not here. Deployed photos coming soon.

<<deployment photo.JPG>>

Iraq = Z+3

Time zone here is zulu plus 3 hours, putting me 11 hours ahead of Vegas. Not sure how Blogger tells what time it is.

So I found out from my sensor operator over the phone last night that they moved up my deployment date by two weeks. Without resorting to profanity, I'm pretty mad at the air force over this.