The road to my wings
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| Date | 08-08-2006 |
| Location |  |
| Message | (Tuesday 1850) Here I am at Aalborg AB. The flight to the Faero islands got cancelled due to bad weather out there so the crew decided to fly to Italy as training instead. We flew to northern Italy, as the approach to the airfield is rather special and flying through the heavy traffic in main-land Europe gives good training for the pilots. It was a great day. On the way home we got down to low level and flew North along the Danish East coast. The Challenger is a great aircraft and I wouldn't mind having it as an 'office' one fine day. Programme for tomorrow is a flight to Mildenhall AB, Englnd, which is a major USAF base in Europe. We're all quite excited about it... That's it for now. Catch you later. /GEA |
| Date | 07-08-2006 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Monday 1315) I was on the programme today ready for a flight. Everything was the way it's supposed to be so I went in for the briefing with 4 pilots, as we were supposed to be flying a 4-ship low-level CAS mission. After briefing I was told that the aircraft assigned to us had broke down during the morning flight so it couldn't fly again today. Damn!!! It's so frustrating, but that's just it. Now I won't be here for the next 2 weeks which means that if I get an F16 flight, it won't be before the next 2 weeks have gone. It was so close, yet so far away. /GEA |
| Date | 05-08-2006 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Sunday 0115) I just did some changes to the website so now it shouldn't be possible to find my surname anywhere on the site. I did this for security reasons so please let me know if I forgot to remove it from somewhere. Looking back at Friday, it was actually quite a busy day. The squadron was short of staff so I was assigned as Duty Ops assistant where I helped out by sending flight plans to the tower, answering the squadron phone and filling out the authorization sheets which the pilots have to sign before 'borrowing' an aircraft. Apart from that I'm in charge of the team of us 4 trainees who'll be going to Aalborg AB on Tuesday so I had a few things to sort out and quite a few phone calls and email to be made in order to get everything in place. Now I'm off to bed. All I can think about is that F16 flight on Monday, so I probably won't get much sleep, but I'll try anyway... By the way, this diary has had 45,000 hits since I started it in January 2005. /GEA |
| Date | 04-08-2006 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Friday 1645) Back home for the weekend and I think it's going to be a long one as I really look forward to get back to work. Yesterday my collegue JØR got his back-seat ride and today LOD got his...and hopefully it's my turn on Monday so I can't wait! They said it's like nothing they've ever tried before, but that doesn't come as much of a surprise. So if all goes to plan, I get my first flight in the F16, try pulling some serious g's, do some aerobatics, perhaps some air to air or air to ground practise, and most importantly I get to handle the jet. I really can't wait! As I wrote before we'll be going on job training to 721 Squadron in Aalborg next week and the programme seems rather interesting. On Tuesday I'll be flying to the Faero Islands with the RDAF Challenger (VIP jet) on a fishing-inspection mission and then I'll be flying local flights from Aalborg the rest of the week. It's going to be great. If all stays as planned, next week could easily be the greatest week of my life so far. I just have all fingers crossed. Highest priority for me is to get the F16 flight of course, but the trip to the Faero Islands is rather exciting too... This week I also logged a few more hours in the F16 sim and practised some air to air and air to ground scenarios aswell as flying in formation with JØR. Life is good! Stay tuned... /GEA |
| Date | 01-08-2006 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Tuesday 1400) It's good to back at work after the holiday, however one gets used to having holidays and relaxing so it's hard to get going again. Yesterday and today I did some practise in the sim and tried shooting other aircraft down and bombing ground targets among other things. The aircraft is really very complex but it's really nice when you find out how the different systems work. The Air Force is trying to send us a week to a transport squadron and a week to a helicopter squadron too before we start at the Officer Academy. That way we'll know what it's like to be a helicopter or transport pilot too, especially in case that we don't get to fly fighters when the time comes. Now it's back to work and this afternoon we've planned to play a good game of football...however the weather seems to have other plans. Regarding weather, July 2006 has been the hottest July ever recorded in Denmark with an average of 10 hours of sunshine every day and high temperatures both during the day and night. Let's hope that the summer lasts as long as it did last year too. /GEA |
| Date | 21-07-2006 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Friday 1330) Just uploaded a few pictures to the gallery and noticed that there are now over 2000 pictures in there! Now it's time for another week of holiday where Sara dn myself will be going to the island of Bornholm for a week, the eastern-most part of Denmark. Last Wednesday I bought a flight ticket to Malta so this year I'll make it to the yearly airshow in September, meet some of the old friends and spend some time with my family. The chances for a back-seat ride in an f16 are looking rather dim at the moment. We have to be really lucky to get a flight before we start at the Officer Academy in october, but our fingers are crossed...it would be a great motivation to get a flight before starting 2 years of school away from the flying business. Take care. /GEA |
| Date | 18-07-2006 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Tuesday 1430) Almost done for today. This morning, LOU and myself spent some time in the F16 sims, where we practised some formation flying, landings and did some dog fighting. It was good fun. I had my g-suit and life vest on too, in order to practsie what I had learned at the ejection-seat check so as not to forget it all. It was nice to strap myself in the cockpit and then 'fly around' for an hour and a half. The weather has been great for quite a few weeks now, but it seems as if it's going to get bad as the weekend approaches. Anyway, I better finish off the last things and then head towards my quarters before too long... /GEA |
| Date | 14-07-2006 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Friday 0950) Lockheed Martin finally found the official name for the F35, which up to now has been known as the JSF (Joint Strike Fighter). The name is "Lightning II" as Lockheed already had a Lightning (the P38). I don't find it very original to just take an old name and put a "2" behind it. Apart from that, the British also had a Lightning, built by English Electric, better known today as BAe systems. Last week, pilot INE soloed on the F16, becoming the first female to do so in Denmark. Well done, INE! The 1 hour flight ended with a swim in the water tank, just the way that all first solos end in the military. Luckily for her, the water is rather warm at this time of the year. One of our test pilots, PEL, was down in Germany testing the Eurofighter this week. The Eurofighter as you know, is one of 3 remaining bids for the RDAF replacments of the F16, the two others being the Swedish Gripen and the JSF, now officially known as Lightning II. On Monday it's back to work for a week. I was rather getting used to the holidays, waking up late and not doing much. But after next week I have another week's holiday, so I look forward for that already. That's it for now. I'll try to upload some pictures from Leeuwarden airshow later on today or in the weekend. /GEA |
| Date | 07-07-2006 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Friday 2320) Just uploaded a few more pictures to the gallery and I'll try to upload a few more tomorrow. So far I've uploaded about half of the pictures from Skrydstrup airshow and I still have the ones from Leeuwarden airshow of course...so there's alot (I mean, REALLY alot) more where they came from. /GEA, enjoying my holidays |
| Date | 30-06-2006 |
| Location | |
| Message | (Saturday 0030) Yes, you're probably sleeping right now, but I'm still up and kicking. It's weekend now and I also have 2 weeks of summer holidays, which I start off with mixed feelings. As you know I'm close to getting my first ride in an F16, so I almost didn't feel like leaving from work for 2 weeks today...just don't say that to Sara! We had family day at the squadron from 1200 and all went fine. Our demo pilot gave a great flying display which really looked good from the ground. Then we enjoyed a few hot dogs and showed our families around the squadron area. The weather was really great and it seems as if it's going to get even better along the way, which is good considering that I have holidays. I'll upload a few more pictures from Skrydstrup airshow 2006 tomorrow, so stay tuned. Good night. /GEA |
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