I’ve decided to keep the Black Hawk. As with most decisions, this was a matter of finding the appropriate context. I was having a hard time doing that earlier because the ideal context, in which I had the opportunity to try both aircraft and choose after, was impossible. It’s no good trying to predict how [...]
I’m really not sure why I’m so interested in Japan, or the Japanese language. It’s easy enough to find the point of entry of my interest; it was when I started to match sounds to subtitles in the anime I watched in college. However, that was little more than a passing fancy; it doesn’t explain [...]
We on hold are required to sit in place all day. We have no duties other than to be here, and perform miscellaneous tasks as assigned. In the last five weeks, we have received exactly one such task, which took us all of two hours. Some of us read, some play computer games, some watch [...]
Posts about my day-to-day activities have been somewhat sparse recently, and are likely to remain so for a long time. I’m in a bubble in training: a period of uncertain length during which I don’t even have a training class to call my own. At any given moment, there are about 200 young officers here [...]
We got a new company commander recently, and today he delivered his in-brief. He spent five minutes talking about his command philosophy–in essence, Do The Right Thing and Everybody Will Be Happy–and then settled down to the important issue: the Ultimate Frisbee league that, starting tomorrow, everybody in the company will be participating in twice [...]
In June 2003, I flew to South Dakota for field training: the AFROTC equivalent of boot camp. Three weeks later, having failed three PT tests, all due to pushups, I was ejected with prejudice. This led to my forcible disenrollment from ROTC, and the transmutation of what had been a nice scholarship into a loan. [...]
Today in the academics portion of training we were learning about close air support systems. In passing, the Lt. Col. teaching us mentioned this nugget: “The Army spent a few million dollars for a custom computerized battlefield orders management system. It can handle hundreds of detailed orders per day, and coordinate them with the rest [...]
It seems that the ALSE people rock. Aviation Life Support Equipment is a small, but heavily-trafficked office just outside the briefing rooms at the stagefield. Before every flight, one of the pilots goes to ALSE to check out life-support vests to wear in-flight. The vests are packed with goodies which are only useful after having [...]
Back when I was in AFROTC, hoping to fly for the Air Force, I was required to memorize a poem: Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things You have [...]
I soloed* today. I was the first in my class to do so. I rock at flight. Soloing is, of course, a strictly controlled and tightly scripted event which leaves no decisions in the hands of the pilot in training. It is a ritual designed to demonstrate that they have passed the minimum thresholds of [...]