Its the little things...

Tomorrow marks the 1 year anniversary of my return to the states. Its been quite a year and not a day goes by that I don't miss Oxford. My time in Ox had a huge impact on me and changed me in ways that I couldn't imagine before I left the states just over 3 years ago. Before I came back I knew there would be many things I would miss about Ox including my friends, football, being so close to London, and the beautiful and enchanting city itself. But, in the past year, I have realized there are so many little things that I miss about being in Ox that I didn't even realize I would miss until they were no longer there. Here is a small sampling of those things (with some of my fav Oxford photos interspersed):

--Being called "love" in shops or on the street. Here you sometimes get "darlin'" but "love" was great. I miss being called "mate" as well.
--People putting an "x" at the end of a text or facebook message. The few times I forgot who I'm texting and accidentally did that here just got weird and awkward...

--Having people say "PREM-ier" (emphasis on the first syllable) league rather than "Pre-MEER" league. Or calling them "United" and "City" rather than "Man U" and "Man City."
--Coffee and sandwich shops on every corner and places to go, sit, and work/study. In particular I miss the Alternate Tuck Shop and the two shops in the Covered Market for sandwiches and I miss Queens Lane Coffee House and Nero on High Street as study places.

--Men's fashion. I never thought I'd say this when I first got there but I miss guys wearing weird coloured trousers and blazers (or pretty much anything apart from jeans with t-shirts or polo shirts and trainers)
--People walking around town with one pant leg rolled up in their sock because they were cycling and forgot to roll it back down

--People non-ironically wearing tweed and flatcaps. And routinely seeing people in that sort of outfit walking down the road (probably with their plant leg rolled up as seen above) muttering to themselves like an absolute crazy person.
--Percy Pigs, Ben's Cookies, Kopparberg Mixed Fruit, breakfast at Spoons post training, Indian food, and Shepherds Pie

--Ordering tea and being asked "milk and sugar?" rather than "regular or sweet?" and having it be implied its iced
--White cheddar cheese that doesn't cost twice as much as yellow cheddar and that actually has flavor. The "medium" cheese in the UK was equivalent of "extra sharp" here and interesting cheese is super expensive here.

--Being able to watch Rugby. Had never seen a rugby match before I got to Ox but thanks mostly to Matt and Leon, I now really enjoy watching it and obviously can't find it anywhere!
--The Poppy Appeal every November. You get a few places around here with poppies for VFW but its nowhere near the same.

--A real honest-to-goodness English pub that doesn't have a single red phone booth or underground sign or Union flag anywhere to be seen and has more than just 3 beers on tap and that actually calls beers beer and lagers lager.

And since of course life isn't all bad, here are a smattering of things I don't necessarily miss (with some photos from since I came back):

--Having to buy new jeans simply because the inner thighs have holes in them from being worn down from rubbing on the bicycle seat
--Stochastic model predictive control and MATLAB (ugh... shudder.....)

--Feeling bad when I didn't buy the Big Issue
--Being caught in the rain while cycling somewhere and having to spend the whole rest of the day soaking wet

--Hoards of tourists and student groups descending enmasse into town during certain times of year thereby making it completely impossible to get where you need to go
--Christmas starting mid-October because they have nothing to celebrate in between Halloween and Christmas

--Being forced to watch college football via sketchy streaming (or via webcam pointed at my parent's TV at home) in the middle of the night by myself because once Neal left nobody else cared about American Football

There are probably many more things that don't immediately spring to mind but on the whole, I'm glad I spent two and a half amazing years in Oxford, but I'm also glad I'm back in the states getting to do some pretty amazing things here too. I love all my Oxford friends (oh who am I kidding, my Oxford FAMILY) so much and miss you guys like crazy and can't wait until I next get to come back and visit!

Thanksgiving Weekend with the McBrides-- or me geeking out over space stuff

Thanksgiving has always been a family holiday for me and when I went to England I was afraid that Thanksgiving wouldn't be the same spending it away from family. Instead, I gained an incredible new tradition of spending Thanksgiving with my Oxford football family with the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd annual OUWAFC Thanksgiving Extravaganzas. So naturally I was again fearful that, seeing as it was far too expensive to go home for just a few days over Thanksgiving, I wouldn't have any family to spend Thanksgiving with this year. I was saved by my amazing Basic Training roommate Vicki McBride when she invited me to Wichita to spend Thanksgiving with her, her husband Tim, and their other guests.

I drove up to Wichita on Wednesday after my first T-38 Sim (landed it on my first try :) ) and we stayed up way too late chatting and catching up. Also I got to "fangirl" a bit by looking at all the memorabilia that Tim has from his brother Brian (of the Columbus Crew/US mens national team/Everton/Fulham/Chicago Fire fame). Highlight was the jersey that Brian was wearing in the 2006 World Cup against Italy when he got is face bashed in by the elbow of Daniel De Rossi. It had obviously been washed but you could clearly see the bloodstains-- so cool!!

Thursday was Thanksgiving and I played Sous Chef to Vicki as she cooked up a great Thanksgiving feast of turkey, mash, sweet potatoes, corn, green bean casserole, homemade cranberry sauce, rolls, and cookies. It was nice to meet Vicki's squadmates and friends in Wichita and enjoy the holiday together. (And of course eat way too much food...)

On Friday Vicki and I drove to Hutchinson to visit the Cosmosphere, a space museum. Seeing as it was in the middle of Kansas, I didn't have much in terms of expectations but BOY WAS I WRONG! It was incredible!!! We spent ALL DAY at the museum and I could have stayed even longer.

The museum began in World War II with an exhibit about German rocketry, using that as the starting point of the space age. I learned loads about the V-1 and V-2 rockets that terrorized the population of Britain and learned a lot about the German infrastructure that created these rockets. Some intersting facts I learned:
-Werner Von Braun was imprisoned by the Nazis because he was too concerned with his rocketry research (looking for ways to get his rockets to space) and not concerned enough with militarizing them to support the Nazi cause. Its only because he was good friends with an influential general that he escaped execution for treason.
-The V-1 rocket (more of a flying bomb with a rocket motor than your stereotypical rocket) terrorized Britain in the beginning of the war but the Brits soon developed ways to fight against it. The most interesting was "rocket tipping": A British fighter would fly up next to the V-1, maneuver its wing underneath the wing of the rocket, then do an aileron roll. The aileron roll would impart a spin onto the V-1, causing it to go completely off-course and (hopefully) miss the centre of London.
-The Brits also succeeded in turning the German spies who were living in London and reporting back to the Nazis about where their rockets were landing. While the rockets were actually hitting directly where the Nazis wanted them, the recently turned spies reported back that they rockets were landing well east of the city, causing the Nazis to change their calculations and consequently make their rockets less accurate than they originally had been.
-Both the V-1 and V-2 were silent as they fell towards earth, albeit for different reasons. At the start of the V-1's descent, the change in pitch attitude was so drastic that the negative-Gs would cause the engine to sputter out and die, making the rocket fall silently down to earth. The V-2, on the other hand, traveled faster than its own sound waves, making it silent. The silent impact of the V-2 actually led Londoners to initially believe the large explosions were caused my gas leaks rather than bombs.

The V-1 "Buzz Bomb"

A Spitfire "Rocket Tipping"

From the World War II section it went into a Cold War section which described the way in which the Americans and Soviets fought over the German rocket program and it highlighted the men in charge of the space programs on each side. The German rocket scientists knew the end was imminent but most of them were committed to the science they had been studying and wanted it to get into the right hands. Many of the scientists followed Von Braun's suggestion that they stick together and surrender (along with their technology) to the US soldiers. This was in direct disagreement to the decision made at Yalta that the technology discovered in the area that the US or the Soviets were to control would belong to that occupying nation. The headquarters of the rocketry was in the Soviet area but the American's smuggled out almost all of the technology and most of the scientists, leaving very little for the Soviets when they arrived.

Interesting comparison between Sergei Korolev and Werner Von Braun, the two men in charge of the Soviet and US space programs, respectively. Can't really read it though... sorry

 From then on it became more of your typical "space museum", chronicling the history of the two space programs from the launch of Sputnik all the way through to the current commercial space interestest of Virgin Galactic and Space-X. Some highlights included:

Gus Grisson's Liberty Bell 7 Mercury Capsule:
Guss Grissom piloted America's second (suborbital) space flight but once he has splashed down his door malfunctioned and the explosive charge blew before he activated it and before the rescue craft was ready to recover the vehicle. Water began leaking into the capsule and Grisson had to be pulled out to keep from drowning. The helicopter tried to lift the capsule but the increased weight from the water threated to take down the helicopter and so the capsule was dropped to the bottom of the ocean and NASA failed to recover it.

In the investigation of what happened, Grissom swore that he had down nothing wrong and that the hatch just blew. However, with no reason to expect a malfunction and no craft to test, most engineers failed to believe Grissom. Grissom died in launchpad test fire of Apollo 1 and there were many who, until his death, believed that he had messed up and been responsible for the loss of the craft.

In 1999 the Cosmosphere decided to (with the help of the Discover Channel) sponsor a search for Liberty Bell 7 and, against terrible odds, discovered her on the ocean floor. They dragged her and restored the capsule for display in the museum. Examination of the craft led scientists to believe that blowing the hatch would have required extreme force and doing so would have left obvious bruise marks on Grissom, which he didn't have following the mission. The investigation led scientists to believe that Grissom had been truthful when he said he hadn't caused the hatch to open and he was vindicated. Interesting footnote: Grissom went on to be the commander of Gemini III and he named this capsule "Molly Brown"

Liberty Bell 7

Gemini X: This Gemini capsule was piloted by John Young (who would go on to be the commander of the first Space Shuttle mission) and Michael Collins (who would become the Command Module Pilot onboard Apollo 11).

Gemini X

Apollo 13 Command Module: The Odyssey
Everyone knows the story of Apollo 13 and if you don't, what rock have you been living under! The Cosmosphere had the restored Odyssey Command Module in which the Apollo 13 crew made their return to earth. SO COOL!

The Odyssey

Inside the Odyssey

Some of the Mission Control computers from the Apollo Mission control:
These computers were used by the Flight Docs to monitor the medical status on the astronauts on the Apollo missions.

Moon rock: Just what it sounds like, its a moon rock.

There was too much stuff to actually be able to explain everything we saw but I will post more photos on Facebook and you can take a look at those.

Vicki and I just chilled and caught up some more on Friday night and on Saturday morning and I headed back to the Falls midday on Saturday. It was really great to get to see Vicki and Tim again. It had been 2 years since I had seem them at their wedding and that was far too long! Hopefully I will get to see them again sometime soon. I'm so thankful for great friends all over the country and world and for people like Tim and Vicki who opened their home to me so I could spend a holiday with my ever growing and expanding "family."

My "midterm break" if you will-- trip to Boston

So when last I wrote I had just started formation. Since then I have COMPLETED my time flying the T-6 and I am halfway done with pilot training!! Formation was really fun and really rewarding-- it was pretty incredible to know that I am capable of flying in close formation (10 feet away from another aircraft) and am also capable of doing aerobatic maneuvers to include barrel rolls and cloverleafs in formation with another aircraft. To finish up the T-6 we did 2-ship low level in which we flew 500 ft above the ground, 200 knots airspeed, in formation with another aircraft. It was cool to get to put everything together at the end of the program and demonstrate everything we had learned.

Because we pushed ahead of the schedule midway through T-6, we were actually quite fortunate to finish our T-6 training about 2 weeks early. Because we didn't have anything scheduled until our centrifuge training, we got some time off. So I chose to go to Boston to visit Anson for a few days.

I arrived Thursday evening and hung around MIT while Anson was finishing working on a big group project for one of his urban planning courses. We then went back to his house and the next day while he was at school presenting the project I took his advice and visited Mt Auburn cemetery. The cemetery was consecrated in 1831 and was the first "garden cemetery" in the country. The cemetery now stretches over 174 acres and serves as both a cemetery and an arboretum. 

Famous "residents" include Edwin Booth (well known and respected Shakespearean actor and brother of John Wilkes Booth), Dorothea Dix (nurse and hospital reformer), Fannie Farmer (the cookbook author), Buckminster Fuller (scientist and architect and interesting character), Winslow Homer (artist), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (poet), prominent Boston family the Lowells, Bernard Malamud (author) and many others.

I ran to and from the cemetery and then after showering I walked to MIT to meet Anson. I wandered around Cambridge a bit, crossing over the Harvard Bridge and admiring the beauty of the Charles. It was interesting to walk around Harvard and MIT and be reminded of the what its like wandering around a university campus. It brought back a lot of memories from Oxford and made me really nostalgic. 

Once I met up with Anson we got on our bikes (I used the citywide bike system of Hubway) and we rode up to Prospect Hill and the Prospect Hill Monument. It gave us a great view of the city of Boston but sadly the monument was closed and we weren't able to climb it.

On Friday evening we went to the Thirsty Scholar (a pub now famous for being the location of the opening scene of The Social Network) and met up with Johan. It was great catching up with Jonah and it was crazy to think about how long all of us had known each other. Johan and Anson went to school together through 2nd grade, Jonah and I were in the same class my 4th grade (his 3rd grade) year, Johan and Anson went to middle school together, and we all did the same internship at the Human Relations Commission. After a little while we were joined by an Academy 2012er Casey Horgan who was a JINSA traveller with me the summer after graduation. She is currently at MIT and we got to talk a bit about UPT and I gave her my incredible wisdom and knowledge....


The next morning, we (along with Anson's roommate Subra) got on the Downeastern Train to Portland Maine. Anson wanted to ride the train and we thought it would be fun to go to Maine. It was a really nice ride and Portland was a cute little town. We had lunch at an "Irish pub" and then wandered around the town a bit before touring the Maine Mead Works and getting to taste some of the mead. It was really good and much better than I expected. It was an interesting way to spend the day but an enjoyable. We shared the train ride back with many Justin Bieber fans who were traveling to Boston for his concert and we enjoyed watching them and seeing how excited they were for the concert. Also ridiculous were the number of limousines we saw pulling up to the TD Bank Garden for the show. These parents really went all out for their kid's night out!

 On Sunday morning we relaxed a bit and caught up on the sleep that we had missed out on over the past few days. Once we had sufficiently recovered we went to the JFK museum. I have always been really fascinated by JFK, his personal story, his presidency, and his legacy. I love his polities and the causes that he was passionate about, but I can't seem to reconcile his personality flaws and his womanizing with the clear devotion he had to his wife and family. Personal issues aside, the museum was really interesting, very well done, and I really enjoyed it. Another cool part of the museum was the exhibit which featured Alan Shepard's Freedom 7 capsule, the capsule in which he became the first American in space. As a self-professed space geek this was obviously very cool for me to see. I learned quite a bit about Kennedy (as well as his family and the legacy of his siblings) and all of the programs and events that happened because of him and his legacy.

We left the museum and went to MIT for the annual Diwali celebration. This included Indian food and a show that included traditional dancing, singing, music, and even an example of acapella mashups between traditional Indian songs and One Direction and Adele! The show was really interesting and fun, despite the horrible corny jokes of the emcees.

On Monday, before heading off to the airport, Anson and I rode down to the Beacon Hill neighborhood and wandered around. Beacon Hill is the richest area and in our walk we saw Senator John Kerry's house, Louisa May Alcott's former house, the registered voting address of JFK, and the Massachusetts Statehouse. We then met Jonah and his girlfriend Kathy for lunch and then I headed off to the airport and back to Wichita Falls. It was a fun couple of days spent in an awesome city with a great old friend and a very needed break after the busy hecticness of pilot training.

Another pilot training update

When I last posted on this blog I had just started the instrument phase of flight so that is where I will pick up with this post.

My class, 13-05

Instrument flying is how pilots fly in bad weather, at night, when visibility is limited, etc. This is done solely by looking at and relying on your flight instruments and not using any external references at all. In order to simulate this we wear a funny looking hood on our helmets that keeps us from seeing all outside references and forces us to focus on the instruments. Instrument flying is very slow, very methodical, and almost completely opposite from contact flying. This is, in many ways, extremely boring and is based on lots of procedures and step by step lists to follow. While the flying itself is pretty boring, the instrument phase is when we actually got to leave the confines of the Sheppard AFB bubble and fly out-and-backs to other airfields.

A large part of the Instrument phase is cross-country where we take the weekend and fly somewhere about 600 miles away from Sheppard for the weekend. For my cross-country I went with 4 flightmates up to Denver, Colorado. On Friday we flew to Denver via Lubbock, TX and we flew back on Sunday via Amarillo, TX. On Saturday we got to fly VFR (basically just navigating from point to point with no set flight plan or directions and not under the control of any air traffic control authority) through the mountains of Colorado. For those who know the area, we flew from Denver, down south past Castle Rock and Monument, past the Air Force Academy, around Pikes Peak, through the Royal Gorge, around past Buena Vista and Breckenridge, and landed at Eagle County Airport in Vail. It was the coolest flying I had done thus far.

 My jet at Centennial Airport, CO

 Eagle County Airport, Vail, CO

Cross-country Crew

 

After the Instrument phase we move on to Advanced Contact (where we get to do loads more aerobatics) and Low Level. The Advanced Contact phase includes area solos, where we get to go out and practice our aerobatic maneuvers by ourselves with no IP in the back seat. That was really cool and super exciting; I still can't believe I get to do this and get paid for it.

Low Level is designed for us to practice point to point navigation by flying prescribed routes at 500 feet above the ground and 210 knots. It was really cool flying that low and that fast and it was fun to get to dodge towers and birds and aim for reaching our "target" as close as we could to the planned target time.


Today was my first Formation ride. In T-6 we do 2-ship formations and fly, at the closest, a mere 10 feet from the other aircraft! It was pretty terrifying but absolutely amazing!! I'm told that formation gets easier really quickly, which I hope is true because staying in the proper "fingertip" position for even a few seconds was pretty difficult, but I guess thats what practice is for! Within only 7 or so more rides I'll be doing my formation solo, taking the jet out in formation by myself!! Craziness.....

I'll probably not update again until after T-6 is over (which is going to be super soon which blows my mind) but if you have any questions about what I'm up to, don't hesitate to ask!

Pilot training update

So, to say that I've been busy these past few months would be a bit of an understatement.... Its been a WILD ride so far but despite the long hours and loads of studying and tons of hard work, I have loved just about every minute of it!

So, pilot training:

We started out with Aerospace Physiology. Essentially learning all about what flying does to your body and how to take care of your body so that it can survive the rigors of flight. Also included in the Aerospace Phys was egress training where we learned what to do if we ever had an emergency that required us to get out of the aircraft immediately, either on the ground or in the air. We learned about our ejection seat, about how to handle the parachute should you have to eject, and what to do once you landed after an ejection. Not something we necessarily want to think about too much, but important to know if you ever needed it...

After that we started academics where we had lessons in systems (learning about the T-6 and how it works), aeronautics (basics of flight and the science and physics behind flying), contact (the initial phase of flight training where you fly based on outside references), flying fundamentals, weather, instruments (how you fly when the weather is bad and can't see outside), and navigation. This was pretty boring but I guess we needed to learn it in order to start flying!!

Your first ride in any new aircraft is called your "dollar ride." This dates back to the barnstorming days during which you could go to a county fair and pay a dollar to take a ride in the backseat of a barnstorming aircraft. This began the tradition of giving your Instructor Pilot (IP) a dollar after taking you up and down safely in one piece. My dollar ride was with our Flight Commander and apart from the fact that it was exciting to finally be flying, it was pretty non-cosmic compared to pretty much any flight afterwards. My IP did most of the flying and we didn't really do anything fun or exciting so it was basically just going up, fly around in circles for a bit, then come back down.

After the dollar ride, it was on to business with all our contact rides. There are only 14 rides between when you start flying and we you do your first solo and there is tons to learn in those first flights. I had some trouble getting the hang of landings but I figured it out eventually and got to go solo! This was ridiculously exciting and nerve wracking and terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time. I waked out to the plane with my IP, he watched me strap into the plane after doing the walk around inspection, gave me a high five and wished me luck, then sent me on my merry way alone! Being up in the plane by yourself is quite the experience. Its so quiet and almost peaceful when there isn't an instructor in the back seat harping on you and constantly telling you everything you're doing wrong. It was so cool just being up there, flying around, taking off and landing. I absolutely loved it and can't wait to go up solo again!

 Another tradition in the Air Force is that of the Solo Tank. Tradition is that after your initial solo your goal is to make it back to your flight room without being seen by any of your flight mates. If you do, they all owe you a case of beer. If you don't they throw you into a big tank of water (and anything else that happens to have made its way into the tank) fully clothed. The water was pretty nasty and disgusting, but it was brutally hot and the cooler water felt good and, considering the fun of the tradition, it was pretty awesome to be thrown into the tank!

After solo we got into aerobatics. I learned first and foremost that "clowns do acrobatics, pilots do aerobatics" and in addition to practicing all the maneuvers and procedures we learned thus far we added several new ones: aileron roll, split-s, loop. To be honest, I was a bit nervous about doing the aerobatics but as soon as we started doing it, it was awesome! That led into our first check ride, the midphase contact check. Check rides are essentially "exams" where they are flights in which every event is graded on a strict standard and it includes a ground eval. Its an extremely important ride that requires lots of prep and is a huge step in the pilot training progression. I had the midphase check yesterday and passed it which was a HUGE load off my shoulders and a huge relief.

Today I began my Instrument phase of flight. We started out with flying solely off the instruments but when we had done a bit of work out in the area my IP decided that a) since it was Friday and b) I had just passed my midphase check, we were going to blow off the rest of the instrument stuff for the day and just do some cloud chasing. So basically, we put the power in the jet up to max and just started flying in and around and over and through and under clouds. Loops and rolls and figure-8s and just basically screwing around in the plane. It was AWESOME! What an amazing way to spend a Friday afternoon!!

For those of you trying to get an idea of what exactly I'm doing over the course of this year, this video made by the graduating class of 12-05 does a pretty good job of explaining pilot training here at ENJJPT. Enjoy!