Our Dumb Blog

* Amazon: 800/201-7575
* EBay: 800/322-9266

Know the company’s number but don’t want to wade through menu options? Usually, hitting 0 works. Otherwise, check Find-A-Human.

Of course, all those will send your call straight to someone in a calling center in India, I’m sure.

And today I learned how to open hangar doors.

I was actually scheduled to fly at “blue flight, second go.” Because giving me an actual time would have been too simple. I sat in on the blue flight commander’s standup. This was the second standup I’d been to, and the blue flight commander seems to be more easy going than the white flight commander, but his students seemed to perform better. I’m not sure how well I would have done in his students’ shoes today. They certainly gave better answers than I would have expected from any student around 10-15 hours of flight time and possibly better than many private pilots.

When I got to the air field, the posted status was “STANDBY” which means that no one is flying, but that they haven’t given up for the day. The situation was no better after standup. Storms were building in the southwest and headed northeast right over the field. After a couple of hours things cleared up a bit, and many of the students were released to fly.

The Chief Flight Instructor, Leo, sent the white flight commander out on a “functional check flight” (because “test flight” is too short) and sent me with him, with the intention of completing my first new hire flight lesson. The plane was rigged with a digital fuel pressure gauge as well as a hand-held digital tack for the test flight. Maintenance just completed a factory modification to the fuel system to help prevent vapor lock and needed fuel pressure readings at various altitudes. My new hire lesson involved flying a North Departure, a tour of the north areas and the Greenland Corridor as well as a North Arrival. Since the test flight required precise readings at precise engine RPM and altitudes, Samuelson performed the takeoff and climb-out while I alternated between trying to make sense of the Air Force chart of the practice areas and helping take readings. Right after we climbed through 10,000 feet and got the required reading, we were recalled back to the field for thunderstorm activity. Anxious to get the test flight out of the way, Samuelson decided to let every one else head back ahead of us while we finished the last reading, to be taken at 12,000 feet. I doubt we were maintaining 300 feet/minute, and it took awhile to get up there. After getting the reading, he pulled the throttle to idle and set us up on a pretty steep descent so we could get down to 8,500 before we hit the North Corridor for the arrival. Right as we were about to report leaving area india to head back, they told us that they’d gotten lightning within 10 NM of the field and that it was closed, so we should hang out in the north areas for awhile. We thought that would work out just fine and let us finish the lesson. I took the controls and turned back east so he could show me the borders of the northeastern practice areas. We got to point Douglas, which I tried to commit to memory, when they told us to return to the field as quickly as possible. Samuelson conferred with Skywalker (the call sign for the AFS (Academy Flight Screening) monitor in the Academy tower), and they decided that we could head straight for the airfield and not fly the actual corridors. Since the field was behind some hills, I couldn’t really see it, but headed for the Academy on the hill. Samuelson punched up KAFF on the GPS (which, in spite of being a big beautiful moving map screen in front of me, never occurred to me as being an option), and I flew the course it suggested. While I was watching him program the GPS (not what I should have been doing) I managed to lose about 300 feet of altitude which took a little while to get back.

Mostly happened because I have no instrument scanning ability when sitting in the left seat for instruments on the right. I got used to instruments in front of me, and then instruments on the left while I was on the right, but not vice versa. It’s going to take some time to adapt. Also, I’m not sure I completely love the electronic trim. It just lacks a certain amount of feedback that you get with a physical trim wheel. Perhaps it will just take some getting used to. Also, flying a stick with my left hand feels like writing with my left hand. I figured it wouldn’t be a big deal since I’m used to flying with my left hand on the yoke, but the muscle movements are very, very different.

Anyway, I gawked at the 141 knots across the ground indicated by the GPS that we managed in straight and level flight. Faster than a 172 with a much smaller engine. As we neared the airfield, Samuelson took the controls and turned us downwind. He kept the speed up until midfield where he pulled the power to idle. The aircraft is so slick, it doesn’t slow down like a 172 will. We maintained altitude as the airspeed slowly bled off. As we passed our touchdown point, he dropped the flaps, and turned base while putting the aircraft in a slip to lose altitude. He rolled out on short final and actually had to add a little power to fight the sink, and executed a near-perfect touchdown. I couldn’t even see the sink– my only indication was the sound of the wheels hitting the runway.

The good news is that since I didn’t see everything, the lesson is incomplete and I get to do it over again. The more flight time before my check the better.

After the flight, we met the Safety Director for his brief, which took several hours. Considering the challenging flying environment (high field elevation, mountain winds, dry microbursts), it’s amazing that there have been no accidents in the program in its 7 year history. We spent the last hour learning how to open the hangar doors, which are basically glorified garage doors. Why they pay $25,000 a piece for them, I don’t know. They’re bigger than a normal garage door, and the center posts remove so that you can actually get an airplane through them.

So, I’m working dispatch at 0530am tomorrow, and possibly flying in the afternoon.

I came home to find a blog entry with the wife challenging the math of a someone quoted in a Newsweek report. It’s just not a good idea for her to challenge other people’s math. Apparently posting her mispost would be immature and wrong of me.

I will say that she had me momentarily confused. I even cranked up rpncalc in a shell to make sure. “Jonah, aren’t there nine and not eleven?”

Every door at the Air Force Academy has a sign that says FPCON: ALPHA. It’s clearly very, very important. As best I can tell, it’s no different than the terror alert color code warnings. FPCON stands for “Force Protection Condition”. How do they come up with these things? I mean, what does that mean?? Is it really English?

Every Academy telephone has a pad of paper next to it on which you’re supposed to write down bomb threats. I don’t know that the academy has ever HAD a bomb threat. Our tax dollars at work.

At the training today, they passed around stacks of “AF” stickers to be added to badges, which apparently means “Air Field” access. Previously, if you didn’t have an AF on your badge, they printed a new badge with it on it. Now, a sticker is apparently acceptable. It’s one of those self-destructing stickers so that if you try to pull it off, it will tear. Only, it’s a plain blue square with black letters AF on it. I could make one look right with my laser printer no problem, why would I bother pulling one off a badge?

Being the military, they have to come up with stupid names for everything. Someone finally asked what a “Hard Gate” was in the training today. That means it has a padlock on it. As opposed to a cipher gate, which means that you can theoretically wave a pass card in front of it. Only, the cards they give us don’t have the RFID tags in them, so we have to swipe them anyway. And there’s other kinds of gates as well, but I don’t remember what they’re called.

The other side of this is that I get to enjoy the good side of the Air Force. The planes are all clean. They’re so well maintained, it’s hard to tell them apart. The mechanics are agonizingly painstakingly careful. No one flies a wide pattern. The radio calls are all concise and to the point.

Given the rather high-profile nature of my current job and the fact that it’s so difficult to talk about generically, I’m going to have to restrict future job-related posts. The only way I’ve found to do this that makes sense so far is to require users to create accounts and login. After you login, if you accept the cookie, you should stay logged in forever.

If you don’t log in, you’ll simply never see Berck’s job-related posts. After you log in, they should magically appear. Clearly I’ll need to manually authenticate users, so there will be some delay after you register.

So, if you want to read about Berck’s current job, click here to register. After you register, I’ll need to manually promote you to see the hidden posts.

I’m sorry for the obnoxiousness, but I don’t see another alternative. One of the big reasons I haven’t blogged this week is I hadn’t figured out what to do about this issue. I tried writing about it without using specifics, but it just didn’t work. That post has now been hidden and is titled “A busy, tiring week.”