Wow!
First,
JaimeZX, keep working and chairfly. You are doing the right thing and you seem to have the right attitude. I think UPT must be too soft if you have time to be on the message board. Follow Albie's advice until you are at least through Final Contact, then it lets up a bit. 80s? You should come to Laughlin. Last year it hit 111F in May, and we always get a 40 day period of 105+ every day sometime between mid June and end of August. Three years ago, it was 97 on the ramp on 21 Jan and 115 on 15 Sept. Laughlin is only a dry heat if you come from the south. If you are from the west or the Academy area, DLF is humid. Just ask my wife about her hairdo. Wait until you are a T-37 FAIP at CBM and trip turn in the summer. Just Kidding! Hang in there, you'll do fine.
You should not be memorizing checklists! Memorize the flows and build good habit patterns so that you don't have to read each item of the checklist to accomplish it. Flows save you time, mneumonic memory aids (or acronyms as they have been dumbed down to in recent years by both civ and mil) help you remember what to do (FOZI-Fuel for example), and the checklist is there to save you from anything that may have interrupted your habit patterns such as a radio call.
Second,
Learlove and everybody else who wants to turn this into civ vs mil, re-read Albie's post very carefully. Learlove twisted Albie's words or mis-read them. He was talking about flying his fighter in particular and that shooting approaches to mins, was not the most challenging part of his mission.
I won't even bite the old mil/civ issue, but having landed an F15 "by myself" many times in Europe with 200 ft ceilings, I'd say shooting approaches to minimums is hardly the most challenging phase of flying any fighter. If point A to point B is all we needed to train for, UPT could be over in 4-5 months. However, the formation and fluid maneuvering skills required for air combat are just as integral a part of UPT as are approaches, and the high-G and acro work that are part of the syllabi are sometimes some of the biggest shocks to students who've never done anything like that before.
Albie and Talon,
Well said as usual. I would have said the exact same stuff. All you guys on the way to any military flight training, listen to when these guys give advice. From one who sits on the IP side of the table in PhaseII, they are right on!
For those of you out there on the way to flight school, read on.
Some of this is a restatement from previous posts, and some of it is new. But this is what I wish every student could bring to my table. Because the future of our great nation is riding on your shoulders. The more you bring to the table, the more of my knowledge I can pass on to help you do your job in the real Air Force and win the fight so we can all enjoy the freedoms of this great nation.
Once you get to UPT, your prior flying experience will help. Flying is flying and nothing changes that. Talking on the radio, shooting an ILS, navigating visually, tracking VOR radials and course intercepts, entering a traffic pattern at a non military field are all the same regardless of whether you are wearing shorts and tennis shoes or flying in a nomex flight suit. Military flying is different only because our ultimate goal is to break things and kill people to support and defend the constitution and save democracy. We demand precision and discipline. Precision because ultimately how precise you fly may determine the difference between nailing the target or having a bunch of Al Jazeera reporters screaming about collateral damage; or getting beans and bullets to good guys on the drop zone instead of having the enemy eating the MREs you just dropped and shooting good guys with our bullets. Discipline to work as part of a team and do the right thing always. A good friend of mine often makes the following statement. "You can't play hockey and learn to skate at the same time. Your feet and balance have to be nearly automatic while your brain keeps track of the puck, thinks about swinging the stick, and all those rules."
At the beginning of UPT for most students it is very much like learning two things at once. The T-37 is an easy but demanding plane to fly. It goes 2.5 to 3x faster than what most civilian pilots came from (we cruise everywhere at 200 IAS and fly final at 100-110 IAS), it has a stick and just to make things fun, it doesn't have split differential ailerons like all those GA planes so adverse yaw in turns is a big player. One of the biggest hurdles most students have is making level turns. The bio-mechanics of turning with a stick cause most people to add premature back pressure as they roll into the turn, then they forget or don't use rudder and boom they just gained 200' plus in a turn in the traffic pattern. The sooner you chair fly, mentally learn the procedures, radio calls, visual pitch settings, and power settings, the better you can learn to fly the jet, because I don't have to constantly harp on basics, but can start talking about judgment calls and finesse issues. In the old days before IFT, people who had their licenses generally did better than those who just had completed flight screening or the academy soaring program. Academy graduates who were soaring instructors also did very well in the program. Now the bar is raised to a new level playing field. The cost of admission to UPT is having a PPL. If you already have that or a higher civilian rating, then the Air Force pays for no additional flight training. Now people who tend to do better early on are those with more than just their private tickets: soaring instructors, instrument ratings, commercial ratings, or flight instructor tickets.
People who don’t do well are those that are full of themselves and have closed minds. Regardless of your prior flying experience, you can always learn something more about flying. As the quote on Flight Training Magazine says, "A good pilot is always learning."
Attitude is key. So is how you carry and present yourself to both the instructors in the flight room and the jet; and your fellow students. Not everything every IP says is completely correct and not every IP teaches the same way. If an IP says something you don't understand ask for clarification. If you think, it is wrong, ask the next IP you fly with, without mentioning the other IP’s name, to explain the concept. If the next IP asks who taught you that, then tell him or her, because sometimes the older more experienced guys have to mentor our younger instructors. Help out your classmates as much as you can without being a know it all. If you have a good handle on things, you may find that teaching during study groups, makes you understand the material even better. Don't brag about your flight time or certificates, sometimes people will figure it out, and sometimes people can't tell you have prior experience. Whenever there is an IP sitting around the flight room not doing anything, get them to explain or teach stuff because that is our duty. We won't pour knowledge into your head, but if you seek us out the cup will run over.
Almost everyone should make it through the program. There are only a few people who make it through the screening process of the AFOQT, the BAT test and getting a private license who just aren’t cut out to be military pilots. The rest of the people who don’t make it, usually thought they knew it all and did not work hard enough at the beginning or have poor attitudes, or lack the attention to detail to fly with the precision and discipline demanded by the military. The Air Force used to take people with 15-20 hours in either C-172s or T-3s, send them to UPT and turn a nobody into a pilot. For a time when the T-3s were grounded, some people came with no flight time and made it to fighters. We can turn someone who is already an accomplished pilot with a good attitude and an open mind into a much better pilot. Or we can take somebody with lots of hours and ratings and a closed mind and help them find civilian employment.
Seek out CFIs who have military flying experience. There are many guys in nearby Guard/Reserve units with their CFI tickets who can challenge you and blend the right balance of military techniques to help you get your Private and get you ready for UPT. If you can’t find a prior military CFI, seek out the CFIs who enforce checklist discipline, don’t fly with lazy pilots, don’t learn bad habits.
Except for the UPT traffic pattern and formation skills, most civilian flying rules and techniques are the same if not similar to what we do in the military. The world of flying is like a foreign language. There are many different dialects, but if you know the base language, it is easier to learn the slang terms and pronunciation of the dialect. Military flying is just a different dialect. If you go to pilot training with a firm grasp of the language, you can focus on learning to play hockey instead of learning to play hockey while you are trying to learn to skate.
Keep an open mind and a positive attitude and you will do fine. The more you fly and most importantly the more you keep yourself in a learning mode the better off you will be. I recommend studying the AIM on radio communications techniques, airspace, weather and airport markings and lighting. I recommend to anyone the Jeppesen Books/Cessna Pilot training manuals for Private and especially the Commercial Instrument Manual as the book that will give you the big picture on flying in the real world. What would I do in your place? Get your Instructor, Instrument Instructor, your Multi Instructor tickets if you have time, fly aerobatics with a stick in a Citabria, get your tail dragger sign off if you don't have it. Go fly gliders if you get the chance. Do some of it, if you can't do it all.
