How I Became a Pilot: Part 3 Becoming a Navigator

Driving away from Texas and leaving my family behind was really hard.  Being the cry baby I am, I am pretty sure I was still crying somewhat until I got through Dallas three hours after leaving.  

I had just been blessed with a son and I wanted to play with him and see him grow up, not go through another boot camp.  I just had to keep reminding myself that it was the long game I was playing here, and not a short game, so I continued on to OTS.

What can I say about Officer Training School?  Not much that is relevant here, though there was one experience that summed it up pretty well.  Upon arriving at the OTS complex I was greeted by a member of my upper class who saw the sticker on my car from my previous base and asked if I was prior service.  I explained that I had done six years in the Marines.

He then proceeded to ask me when the last time was that I had been yelled at by someone who had been in the military for 7 weeks.  I replied that I didn’t think I ever had. To which he responded, “Welcome to OTS, go park over there.” I still laugh a little thinking about it.

There wasn’t much about the OTS experience that related to flying, so I will skip ahead to becoming an officer in the Air Force on 16 Dec 2010.  Though honestly that was the second best thing that happened that week. The first was going to the Atlanta airport to be reunited with my family after 12 weeks apart.  Just to be clear, it was being reunited with my family, not going to the airport, that was the highlight there.

The day after graduation we headed down to Pensacola, FL which is where Combat Systems Officer training takes place.  That is technically what I am, a Combat Systems Officer or CSO(if you doubt me Google “Air Force CSO” and look at the images and see who comes up first), though in the C-130 community we only refer to my crew position as navigators or navs.

The first aspect of training was leaving the family behind again for a three-week crash course known as Initial Flight Screening in Pueblo, CO at DOSS aviation flying the DA-20, or more affectionately, the Mighty Katana.  

The first week is strictly academics, which gets a little old, especially if you have a background in aviation, but any learning is good learning in my opinion.

After that first week you get to wear your flight suit for the very first time and you get to start flying.  Fly days consisted of a stand-up brief that started well before the sun came up. I recall it being at 0430, but I could be a little off.  This is a chance for you to show your preparation, and for instructors to challenge the group to rise to the occasion of being professional aviators.

It made me throw up in my mouth a little to type that, but the more I think about it, it is true.  In no way did I enjoy doing those briefs, but they are a good opportunity to learn and grow as an aviator which was the whole point of the training.

Once I started flying I flew every single day, which was amazing.  The Colorado skyline is quite the scenic place to be learning to do something that is that much fun.  The first few flights are really no different from anyone else that is learning to fly. After 3-4 flights though we shifted to an emphasis on navigation which was what the Air Force was paying me to learn.  It was a bummer not really being at the controls anymore, but it was nice to feel like I was moving in the direction I had signed up for.

Looking back now there was nothing cosmic about what we were learning.  It was really just basic dead reckoning, clock to map to ground, navigate along a route to get you back home.  The crazy thing is that not a whole lot has honestly changed in the intervening 9 years. I still do pretty much the same basic thing.  I am just a lot better at it now.

After 14 hours of flying in 8 days I completed the course and headed back to Pensacola with a total of 22 flying hours where I sat on the dreaded casual status for 3 months.  The only training that took place during that time was a three-day water survival course that was mostly parasailing, but still with some valuable lessons to be learned.

Then in June of 2011 I was assigned to a CSO class and started training.  This post is about becoming a pilot, so I will spare most of the in-depth details, but it does seem valuable to mention some of the things that got me to where I am.

After about a month of academics, that included everything from physiological concerns to weather, to the details of flying the T-6, we got our first simulator sessions in preparation for hitting the flight line.  There is really no simulator that can prepare you for your first flight in an aerobatic airplane.

For me it was an awe-inspiring experience, and incredibly uncomfortable all at the same time.  Flying in such a high-powered plane with a bubble canopy so you can look all around…I really don’t have words to describe it.  The uncomfortable part came when I threw up about an hour into the flight. It was not one of my finer moments, but I am proud to say it is the only time in my life that I did so.  I’ve come close a few times, but never again have I repeated it.

Continuing to fly in the T-6 was a joy and I really started to feel like an aviator at that point.  We were not allowed to actually fly the plane a ton, but even just being in the plane and executing the various maneuvers made the whole thing very real for me.  I was going to fly in airplanes for the rest of my life, and even better, people were going to pay me to do it.

It was during this phase that I started a habit that I still have to this day.  On every flight I try to take a moment to just take in the magnitude of how cool my job is.  I know I am lucky to have this as a profession, and I never want to lose sight of that.

Your first few flights are all about just getting in the air and getting comfortable with the plane.  We did loops and rolls and even got one formation flight. Then it was time to learn some instrument flying where we started executing instrument approaches and navigating airways.  After we completed basic navigation it was time to execute visual low levels.

At the time I thought it was pretty fun flying a few hundred feet off the ground at 240 knots.  We would joke that you could tell if you were on course because the cows you flew over wouldn’t run away since they were used to the noise.  While it was still pretty cool, my experiences in the intervening 8 years have made it a little less impressive because of how flat the southeastern United States is.

After the completion of T-6s I entered a series of phases with a whole lot of academics with a mixture of simulators.  These simulators would be more something akin to Microsoft Flight Simulator, the old one, not the new one (that looks freaking amazing by the way).  Like many things in life, some phases were interesting, and others were meaningless, but you play the hand you are dealt and I got through relatively unscathed.

It was now time to prepare to go back to the flight line for the T-1, but it wouldn’t be the Air Force if we didn’t spend a few more weeks in academics and simulators first.  It makes sense though because the amount of time we spent preparing on the ground made all the difference in the world when it came time to get in the air.

For the T-1 phase of training we executed a very similar training profile as we did in the T-6 of contact with the plane, instrument flying, and finally low-level flying.  Though we didn’t try doing any loops or rolls in the T-1, except maybe in the sim.

Upon completing the T-1 phase of training we were essentially done with the challenging part of the syllabus, and after about 12 months of training, I  was awarded my Combat Systems Officer Wings on 1 June 2012.

It was a truly amazing day, and incredibly fulfilling to have completed such a rigorous training program over such a long period of time.  Having my family there to support me and enjoy that moment was something I will never forget.

I was not a pilot, and I didn’t know at the time if I ever would be, but I had wings on my chest, and I am still really proud of that.  We lost a fair number of people during training that didn’t cut it for one reason or another, so to actually get through was pretty cool.  It also was special having my wife put my wings on my chest.

I was super proud of her when she reared back and punched me on the wings as hard as she could which made everyone, including the Colonel presiding over the graduation, laugh.  Most of the wives or parents just gave a nice little pat, but that is not my wife.  She socked me good, and I was so proud because I am a big fan of tradition.