Chris's Short Lived
JSUPT Diary
In the beginning............
I arrived at Vance AFB is lovely Enid OK (SALUTE!) on March 1st of 2001. At the time, the casual job status consisted of you calling in everyday by 10 and seeing if the casual office had some work for you, the trick was to call at about 9:40, you didn't want to call to early, all of the crappy jobs would need to be filled, and not to late, because they needed to punish the lazy guys. That's all gone now, because some bonehead decided to call in from Florida for a week, then they told him he needed to be at the office in 15 minutes for an appointment. So he ruined it for all of us.
I had only one casual job while
awaiting class, get drunk.
No really, that wasn't a hobby. The local sheriff department sponsored a quarterly event
to train local law enforcement on DUI indicators, tests and procedures, it was a two day
event. In the morning the attendees would listen to seminars designed to keep you and I
safe, while the UPT students would get hammered. The afternoon, they practiced what they
learned on us and decided if we were drunk or not. The sheriff liked to use military
because we are harder to detect than most citizens. I think it's because we quickly revert
into "military mode," and let's face it, we can do the stupid human tricks in
our sleep, but at the end of the second day, there was no fooling these police officers,
they were wise to us and our streets are a little safer for that.
Our class started at the beginning of April, the Friday before we started our class leader
had a get together. This is a fairly standard tradition and our class leader was no
exception. He was a prior enlisted boom operator who had attended OTS and then flew on
B-1s. He was a great leader and happy to share his experiences in the CAF. I met most of
my class and genuinely got along with them. We had one girl for 27 class members and she
was married as well.
Another UPT lesson, there are no girls there, so if you're a single girl, you rule all, if
you're a single guy, well then it sucks to be you. We had a phrase, most girls in the
local area were M.U.L.E.S ; married, underage, lesbian or enlisted. Pay attention to that
last one. If you were on the town (such as Enid was) and there was a good looking girl,
you can bet she was enlisted, otherwise there was 15 UPT student waiting on her hand and
foot. I was engaged at the time, so I had an import. Most of the lucky guys did.
The first two weeks of UPT is aerospace physiology (AP). Among the many topics covered are
what happens to your body in flight, how to combat negative effects of this things, the
warning signs of the bad effects, basic survival in the local area, and ejection. You will
also take a fitness test. If you want to fly in T-38's, you have to pass this test. So if
you want fighters or bombers and you're not in shape, get there.
The most fun part of this is the
ejection portion, in addition to knowledge of how the seat works and what you get do
do, you sit in an ejection simulator and you practice parachute
landings by parasailing. At Vance this is done in a clear field across the street from the
base. You are towed by a truck to an altitude of a good couple hundred feet and then the
truck stops and you glide (relatively speaking) to the ground. You are expected to
practice the form that was taught to you by the AP instructors.
The trick with parasailing is that it has to been done when the winds are within narrow limits. If anyone has ever been to north western Oklahoma you can imagine the wait for this. So on the day we parasailed, we had to rush to the field without lunch. Well there are only two parachutes and everybody has to go twice, we got kinda hungry. Thank god for cell phones. 1 hour and $67.35 later Papa Johns had us covered. Lesson learned: Order enough for the instructors as well, they were super pissed when the pizza dude showed up. Well, no one said we couldn't order pizza.
The next three weeks or so of UPT
is purely academics, this is taught by civilian contractors. 99.9% of them are retired
military. These are the same folks who will be your simulator pilots. Most of the
academics is classroom work, the rest is Computer Based Training, the most boring creation
man has ever devised. The awful thing is you have to stay on. The instructors get a
printout of how long each student was logged into the CBTs, so even if you get it quickly
the first time through, review it. And for god's sake, don't work ahead, I mean not even a
little. We were scheduled to come in early one morning, and some of us decided we would do
them in the afternoon and have a late morning. We were all issued letters of counseling.
During this time I met some great guys and four of us decided to be roommates. One guy had
found a huge house while looking and figured four guys could swing it. It would become
known as the "Aviation Ranch." This house rocked. We were on almost two acres
set 1/4 of a mile from the road. Two car garage, two baths, four bedrooms, a formal dining
room, living room, fireplace room and huge back porch with landscaping. We put in a
horseshoe pit and were ready to go. All parties were held there as a matter of forgone
conclusion. The picture at the top is from one such party. It also made for a really good
study place, we never locked the door and classmates came and went.
You can also imagine the audio visual capabilities of four unmarried Lt.'s. Yes it was
impressive and two of the roommates were geniuses. We ended up with a home theater
rivaling some movie houses, a separate game television with Playstation and Nintendo
capabilities, and the rear porch wired for sound. If I had had this house is college, I
would have never left school. The nearest neighbor was a country club, and as we discovered, they never
locked their pool.
Believe it or got we also got a lot of studying done. It quickly became clear I was the
dumbest of the group and after my first test failure (three and you're out) they would all
take great pains to help coach me through the demanding academic schedule.
Then it all came to a abrupt end. Not the house, the easy schedule. At the end of April we
moved to the flightline. You still have academic responsibilities, but now you're flying
as well. As a matter of purpose, they don't make it easy. Hey, if you don't wanna play, go
home.
The JSUPT page In the Beginning.. On the Flightline....... Avoiding Airsickness ....
So here it is, summed up in a few flights and a handful of sims, kinda depressing when I see it laid out so simply, so small, so short. I only made it a few flights after solo. But if it helps anyone or entertains anyone, then maybe it was worth it Sim 1 Sim 2 Flight 1 Sim 3 Flight 2 Flight 3 Flight 4 Flight 5 Sim 4 Sim 5 Flight 6 Flight 7 Sim 6 Flight 8 Flight 9 Flight 10 Sim7 Sim 8 Flight 11 Flight 12 Sim 9 Flight 13 Flight14 Sim 10 Flight 15 Flight 16 Flight 17 Flight 18 Flight 19 Flight 20 Flight 21 Flight 22 Flight 23 Flight 24 Flight 25 Flight 26 Flight 27 Flight 28
