The road to my wings
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| Date | 29-09-2008 |
| Location |  |
| Message | (Monday 2135) I mentioned yesterday that some of the components in the aircraft have very fance names, so I thought I should give you an example. The harness lock handle on the ejection seat is called: "Powered inertia retraction device lock release plunger." Now that's just one component out of a million in this aircraft. However I do think that it wins my award for the fanciest name in town. That engineer must have got a big chunk of money for coming up with that name! Greg, one of the Canadians has just been here so while he was here we quickly tested eachother on all the Red Pages in order to stay sharp on them. All went well and it feels good! As the AOI instructor says: "One day, the red pages might save your life." So there's good reason to take them seriously. I really like my Canadian mates. We get along well and they're all quite relaxed and are very open towards us Danes. Anyway, now it's time to study another half hour before I hit the pillow and get ready for yet another great day in the praries. /GEA |
| Date | 29-09-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Monday 2035) Another day over and it was an eventful one too. This morning I had to show up at 0700 for my first egress training. It's basically a lesson in how to strap into the aircraft and how to get out of it in a hurry, without using the ejection seat that is... It was nice to finally sit in the Harvard and see the cockpit. All the instruments are CRT's except for the standby ones, which is why it's called a glass cockpit. When the aircraft is switched off, all of the screens are black so I can't wait to get some life into it. Tomorrow I have the next egress lesson and should be able to unstrap myself and exit the aircraft in 15 seconds if all goes well. We had the AOI progress test two today and everyone passed. I got 100% in the Red Pages which was good as the pass mark IS 100% but I got 97.17% in the other half of the test as I had a couple of (stupid) mistakes. JØR is the one doing best at ground school so far, having got 100% in all the tests - not bad at all! This friday we have the final exam in AOI, where half of it is ALL the red pages and the other half is the AOI itself. Passmark is again 100% for the red pages and 85% for the rest. Today I also had a chat with my old friend, PLA, who has recently started flying the Hawk here in Canada. He says it's fantastic but I almost figured that out on my own. It's a big motivating factor for me to have the Hawk as a reward for doing well on the Harvard - not to mention the F16 at the end of the line. /GEA |
| Date | 28-09-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Sunday 1150) Not much of a Sunday today... Started off at 0700 with the inspection. I got up at 0600 in order to clean the place up, take a shower and shave and get everything ready. Since then I've basically been studying for tomorrow's AOI test number 2. The test is again shared in two parts. Half of the red pages, where the pass mark is no less than 100% and then the actual Aircraft Operation Instructions where the pass mark is 85%. I'm not nervous about the red pages as I have them under control but there's still alot of systems in the aircraft that I have to learn about before tomorrow. The Harvard II must seriously be the most complicated aircraft in the world, considering that it doesn't have any weapon systems or autopilot. Some of the components are so over-complicated and the names that they invented for them are mind blowing. I think that the engineers who designed those components got commission for inventing fancy names. It's amazing how much flying experience most of the instructors have, here at the school. One of them has had time on aircraft from the F86 Sabre, F4 Phantom, F104 Starfighter and F16 among MANY others which I just can't remeber right now. That must be the dream carreer to have done duty on so many fantastic jets. There are quite a few veterans who quit flying in the Air Force and are back as ground instructors. It's really entertaining to hear about their "war" stories. One thing that was entertaining was our welcome party yesterday... /GEA |
| Date | 26-09-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Friday 2135) Quite a few things happened today and they changed all of our plans. First of all the test went ok - everybody passed. Myself I got 96.88% which I'm satisfied with. Apparently last weekend some broken beer bottles were found outside the mess and because of that, this weekend we're going to have inspection at 0700, both Saturday and Sunday. So officially it means that we're on duty both days and are therefore not allowed to drink tonight in order to be presentable tomorrow morning when the base commandant comes over to inspect our rooms, our uniforms and most importantly us. We're all quite frustrated about the whole thing but there's no other way around it. So our intro party got postponed to tomorrow at 1pm. That way we can drink our brains out in the early afternoon and still be able to recover for Sunday morning's inspection. Somehow it feels like the old times when I was a recruit doing Sergeant school. We'll survive. I suppose I better find my formal uniform and clear up this mess I have in here. Have a nice weekend! /GEA |
| Date | 25-09-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Thursday 2120) Just finished studying for tomorrow's Aerodynamics test. It's quite a handful to be honest and there's alot of new stuff, even considering my background at Flying School in Denmark and the background in gliding that I have, and not to mention all the books I read in Aerodynamics just of pure interest. Well, we'll see how the test goes tomorrow. After school we have our intro party tomorrow, where the theme is "70's Olympic athletes." The party is organised by the class who started before us (2 months ago) and it will most probably involve ALOT of drinking. There will be alot of onlookers as the intro pary is always fun for the audience, as you would see all the newbies go through a whole torture programme just for the sake of it. The only problem tomorrow is that we're the newbs. But we look forward to it none the less. The weather development has taken another turn. Apparently it's going to get warmer again in the next few days which is just great. The longer it stays warm, the better. I'll probably won't write tomorrow evening as I'll be at the party but I might drop a word or two during the day just to let you know how it went with the test. If you don't hear from me then it's probably ok. As they used to say: "No noose is good news..." /GEA |
| Date | 23-09-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Tuesday 1950) We had two tests in Aircraft Operations Instructions (AOI) today, specifically about the Harvard II. They went ok for all of us I guess. The first part was about the first half of the red pages (EP's) in which I think everyone got 100% correct answers. You might get the idea that it's an easy test because of the results, but it isn't! You have to know every little detail in every procedure as one day it might save your life. They take them very seriously indeed. One of the reasons is that some of the systems in the Harvard can only be operated from the front cockpit which means that on your very first flight you might get a real emergency which you'd have to deal with...and the instructor sitting about six feet behind you won't have time to explain and guide you through the procedure. You just have to know what you have to do. The other part of the test was hard I think. I only got 95.4% which wasn't too good but I'm ok with it. This Friday we have yet another progress test, this time in Aerodynamics. Then next week we have the last AOI prog test at the beginning of the week and the final exam in AOI at the end of the week...and perhaps another Aerodynamics prog test. I suppose they just want to make sure that we don't get bored and that we don't notice the weather getting colder until it's too late. And by the way, it IS getting colder but nothing I can't handle yet. However I don't think it'll be many days before it goes freezing. /GEA |
| Date | 21-09-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Sunday 2225) Still awake but it won't be long before I head to bed. I've just uploaded a few pictures from the road trip and been looking at our route on Google Earth. Man, what a great adventure that trip was! I'll probably never experience anything similar in my life. It's just over four weeks ago that we left Denmark, yet somehow it feels like it's been years. I guess it's a number of factors that make it feel like it's been longer than it actually has. One of them is that we've experienced so much in such a short span of time. The other factor could be that it's because we've been so busy during the whole period. First with buying six sports cars, then the road trip itself with lots of planning, changing of plans, driving and sight seeing and since we got here we've been busy with Ground school. Today I was dying to charge up my A4 Skyhawk model and make a flight with it but I don't want to fly it until the exams and the hardest part of ground school are over in about 3-4 weeks time. It would only take time away from my studying which wouldn't be too good. By the time I'm less busy it would probably be too cold to fly models so I'd probably have to wait for spring, but that's ok. Right now, NFTC has my first priority by far. Off to bed. G'nite. /GEA |
| Date | 21-09-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Sunday 2015) The weekend is almost over, yet it was another good one so no regrets from here. The welcome dinner at our Senior National Representative yesterday evening went great. We had a good time and got to know eachother a little better, those of us who hadn't met before, anyway. Otherwise we did some physical training today and some more studying of the Red Pages (EP's) and some more of the White Pages (Normal operation check-lists). JØR and myself also took our rides "for a spin around the block." It was good fun. The Mustang gives you most horsepower at about 6000RPM and best tourque at 4500RPM. So I figured that the quickest way to accelrate would be to rev it up at 4500RPM and then bring the RPM up and keep it up while changing gears. It goes nicely and it's amazing that the wheels actually spin when you go into second gear and release the clutch, even though you're going pretty fast by then... Tomorrow we'll be having a few lessons in Aerodynamics and Aircraft Operating Instructions. Other than that we have a test in the first half of the Red Pages Tuesday and a test in Aerodynamics on Friday. This isn't exactly a walk in the park, yet I don't feel under a stressing amount of pressure yet. perhaps it gets worse - let's wait and see. The weather is starting to change, rapidly indeed! The locals say that it gets cold very suddenly. I don't look forward to the freezing weather but we've passed the point of no return I guess. /GEA |
| Date | 20-09-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Saturday 1430) One thing I'm blessed with is that I never get any hangovers. That way I can party and still be somewhat productive the next day. Today I learned the Pre Start checklist for the Harvard II, which incorporates just about 70 items in the cockpit which have to be dealt with in the check. It's the first one of many, so tomorrow I'll go on to the othercheck lists. I took a drive in the Mustang today, just for the sake of it after having visited MAT. It's still so much fun to drive it - I love it! And I seem to appreciate it more now than when we were in the USA. It's not that unlogic, considering that we drove 6-10 hours per day during our road trip. It was fun when I was downtown at a club yesterday and this guuy comes up to me and says: "How are you doing, Bandit brother?" We're ordering some Bandit Flight T-shirts soon with our callsign on them. The T-shirt says: When we're good, we're good. When we're bad, we're better. When we're drunk, we're naked. Bandits! /GEA |
| Date | 20-09-2008 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Saturday 0320) Just back from downtown where some of us partied a bit after being at the officer's mess. We had an arrangement called Hungarian night tonight at the mess, where the Hungarian students made food and enetertainment - Hungarian style! It was a good evening. At one point there was a competition where they needed a representative from English Canada, French Canada, Germany, Italy and Denmark...and guess who drew the short straw. You guessed it - I had to represent the Danes. The competition was about drinking three shots quickest with your hand tied behind your back. I won and brought the honour to the Dane camp which made me feel a bit better after today's exam. Zhe Zerman instructor who was representing his country was quite experienced in the game and therefore quite confident that he would win, hehe, but no. At one point we'll be having a Viking night, where we, the Danish students, will do a similar arrangement for everyone else. Our intro party got postponed to next Friday by the way but tomorrow we have a welcome party by the senior Danish students and our Danish instructors. We look forward to it. Now it's time to go to bed. Next time I'll remember to say my prayer before an exam. I get quite religious during exam periods. The prayer should sound something like this: "Dear Lord, please don't let me f**k up." /GEA |
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