The road to my wings
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| Date | 04-11-2008 |
| Location |  |
| Message | (Tuesday 1655) Just had a couple of lessons in Flight Safety. The first one was with one of the German instructors. His background is jets, flying the T38, the F4 Phantom, some F16 and now he's a Hawk instructor. The reason for having him brief us in Ejection and Forced Landings is that he has actually ejected and survived. He ejected from a Hawk about a year ago and told us about the whole chain of events. It was rather exciting, especially to see the video from the control tower. Now it's time to get home. I'm starving and I have a feeling that we'll be flying next week...or maybe it's just wishful thinking. Only time will tell. Anyway, the weather forecast is finally promising steady cold weather. Today was a beautiful day with about 10-15 degrees but the rest of the week we'll have below zero temperatures both day and night. Grrrrr /GEA |
| Date | 04-11-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Tuesday 0920) Haven't written for a while due to different reasons. Mainly because I've moved into the family row-houses and haven't got internet since. It's really irritating not to have internet. Anyway, the prog test in Meteorology went well last Friday. All six Danes got 100% correct answers. This week we mostly have Instrument Flight Procedures which is probably the most difficult subject so far. It's going to be hard flying on the instruments their way. I'm getting used to people saluting me. I guess it's about time! It's funny when some elder person in uniform comes up to you, salutes you, and calls you "sir" just because you're an officer, but you get used to it eventually. I'm considering of selling my Mustang. I just don't think it's worth it to have a car like that just to drive it to work and back. It's value is falling and it's just slowly getting worn down so I think I'm gonna put it for sale for an overprice. If it gets sold it's great as I would make some money, if not I'll just enjoy it while it lasts. Met briefing is up in a couple of minutes, so I better go. /GEA |
| Date | 30-10-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Thursday 1330) This morning I went seeing the doctor and got ungrounded. It's good to be fit for f(l)ight again. The Danish guys from Cold Lake are here today and the rest of the weekend. Later on today we have the yearly Danish Officer's Union meeting and then Saturday we have a few activities together with all the Danish families here. Tomorrow morning I have my water entry which is basically a mandatory exercise in how to land in water after ejecting, releasing the parachute and inflating and entering the dinghy. After that I'll head straight to class as we have our first test in Meteorology. We don't fear it much as we've heard from earlier students that it should be quite easy. Early next week, or maybe this weekend, I'll be having my first CPT's (Cockpit Procedure trainers) which is basically three rides in the Harvard II sim where you get acquanted with the "office." I'm the last one in class to the CPT's so I've had extra time to prepare for them so therefore I should be ok. That's it for now. Stay tuned! /GEA |
| Date | 29-10-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Wednesday 0820) Not much new this week. The weather here is stranger than I thought it would be. Today we'll be having 20 degrees and bright sunshine. However, flying is very restricted here on the base at the moment. The reason for that is the heavy bird migration. The two main bird migration routes in Canada are on either side of Moose Jaw apparently, so there are alot of restrictions during the migration seasons in Spring and in Autumn. This problem just puts us further behind than we already are. Seomtimes it's heavy birds, other times it's heavy winds and when those two factors are out of the picture it's probably icing in the clouds. And when there are no clouds in winter it gets below -35 degrees which is too cold if you'd have to eject so flying gets suspended. It's quite frustrating to be honest. What we fear is that suddenly we hit the flight line and we'll be so busy flying that we won't have enough time to properly prepare for the flights. Let's just wait and see what happens. We moved into our house yesterday. It takes some getting used to and it's still one big mess in there so I look forward until we're all settled down. My little boy is slowly getting over his jet lag I think but he's still quite messed up regarding food and sleeping routines so I feel quite sorry for him. /GEA |
| Date | 27-10-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Monday 0830) It's Halloween week here and it's unmistakable as everyone hangs all kind of ghosts and witches outside their houses. It's cool that everyone does something about it. This Firday I have my water entry which is basically an exercise in how to react when you eject over water. I'll try to make someone take some pictures when the day comes. That's it for now. /GEA |
| Date | 26-10-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Sunday 2135) My wife and my little boy arrived last night and it's great as I had missed them. It was a hectic weekend with getting our house ready even though we're far from ready but we hope to move in tomorrow or Tuesday latest. My little tiger is enjoying his stay so far but I think he was a bit cold today. It wasn't the ideal arrival weather... We had winds blowing up to 90km/h yesterday and it was also very windy today. The weather is hard to get used to here, especially because it changes all the time here. Tonight it'll go to -9 but then the temperature will be going up again all during the week and by Sunday we should have +20 degrees! That's it for now. We start at 0730 tomorrow so I better get my red pages done so I can head to bed and get some well deserved sleep. This week I'll get ungrounded - and I look forward to that! /GEA |
| Date | 23-10-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Thursday 2330) Just a quick entry to mention that our AR test tomorrow has been postponed by a week or so. The reason is that we're not flying yet so there's no point in taking the AR exam and then forgot what we've learned by the time we've hit the flight line. Tomorrow evening on the other hand, we have our Bandit flight welcome party which should be good fun. The senior students in bandit Flight want us to wear the flying suit that we "like least." I wonder what they have in mind... After the welcome party we'll be heading off to the Officer's mess as it's TGIF and tomorrow is no ordinary Friday; Zhe Zermans have organized the yearly (and popular!) Oktoberfest with real Zerman beer and hopefully a few busty Heidis serving them. It's gonna be fun. i don't want to get too drunk though, as I'm pretty damn busy this Saturday. /GEA |
| Date | 22-10-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Wednesday 1900) I got my final egress trainer today where I had to practise getting out of the cockpit in a hurry on the ground without actually ejecting. To pass the egress trainer you have to complete the egress in 15 seconds, including the Red page, unstrapping yourself and opening the canopy. It's not as easy as it may sound but it went ok. I uploaded a couple of pictures in the gallery if you want to take a look. Apart from that we had our first lessons in Aviation Physiology today with one of the flight surgeons. Most of it was known stuff, especially for us Danes, but it's always good to refresh the symptoms of Hypoxia, Hyper-ventilation, Anti G straining maneouvr and air sickness. Tomorrow we should have our second and last lesson in Air regulations, in which we have the exam on Friday. It's basically been a self-taught (boring!!) subject but it's quite important. Yesterday I lay on the couch and started studying it and it honestly made me fall asleep. Then I got up and started reading it again and fell asleep again. Oh well, hopefully we get a good review tomorrow so that we're put on the right tracks regarding what we should concentrate on... /GEA |
| Date | 21-10-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Tuesday 2205) Not much has happened these two days apart from the fact that Len (a Canadian) and myself have been doing cockpit drills in the aircraft parked in the hangar. It's a good way to get acquainted to the systems and the "office" itself. I really can't wait to fly the thing. When you sit there in the front and you have that big engine cowling in front of you you feel kind of powerful and I'm sure that it feels even better when the engine is running. It's a funny feeling doing cockpit drills in this aircraft though, at least compared to doing them back in Denmark on the T17. This aircraft has a glass cockpit, which means that all instruments are actually screens, so when the aircraft has no power, all the screens are black and dead. Apart from that, you're sitting on a live ejection seat with that handle between your legs and you know that if you do the wrong things during a drill, the ejection seat will get you killed. It's a strange feeling but I'll get used to it I guess. Hopefully not too much that I start taking it for granted. We got our logbooks yesterday and it's going to be good to start filling them up with our flight data. Both flights and simulations get logged on. Remember I mentioned that they have fancy terms for everything here? Well, the simulator is normally called "sim" elsewhere for practicality - but not here! Here it's called FTD, Flight Training Device. Grrrr. /GEA |
| Date | 19-10-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Sunday 1835) Just been flying my A4 model with a French Canadian dude who has a sweet F5 model. It was good fun to do some formation flying. Then just before we landed, this guy came by to take a look at the models. He's a Canadian instructor who just got back from Texas where he instructed on the T38 and got 1,000 hours on the jet. That must have been awesome. I always enjoy meeting new people, especially the ones who share the same interests as myself. Now it's time for some studying before the new week kicks off tomorrow. I kind of hope to get ungrounded by the end of this week or in the beginning of next week as I feel almost completely well. /GEA |
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