Hundred-Dollar Hot Dog

Ahhhh, Columbus Day... Nice to have Monday off, right?

Yes, it is. But instead of me getting a three-day weekend, they just made last week a six-day work week. I had two flights yesterday. Fortunately, they're my last two under the hood for a while.

I almost didn't get to go flying. The instructor I flew with really grilled me on my emergency procedures during the brief and promptly convinced both of us that I really don't know them as well as he thought I should. He almost gave me a "ready room unsat" which would mean not only no flights, but some extra disciplinary paperwork in my training folder. Ouch.

Fortunately, he didn't, and we went flying. Fortunately again, I flew much better than I briefed. My partial-panel timed turns were so good (on one of them I rolled out within two degrees of the assigned heading) that I got my first 5 in the airplane. Most of the other procedures were 4s.

On the first leg we flew out to Florala, AL and did all of our high-altitude work. Luckily, we didn't do any partial-panel or unusual attitudes, so my stomach was in great shape for the free lunch they had for us out there. The FBOs (Fixed-Base Operators) that sell fuel at the little airports around here give free/discounted food to fuel customers. So it's common practice for training flights (armed with government credit cards) to go out, buy fuel, have lunch, and fly back, thereby accomplishing two training flights in one day. It's also quite a boon to the local general aviation business. I'm pretty sure most of these places wouldn't even exist if not for military "fuel customers."

The trip home introduced the dreaded partial-panel unusual attitude recoveries. These require getting the plane back to straight-and-level flight with no outside reference and no "artificial horizon" or heading gyros in the cockpit. All I had was a turn needle (tells the rate of turn and in which direction), an altimeter, and a vertical speed indicator. All of those instruments have a considerable lag in their responses, and so using them to recover from an unusual attitude is a process of bracketing and oscillation until the airplane finally settles back down.

I didn't puke this time, but I was sucking oxygen all the way home and was feeling generally miserable for quite a while. I've got an appointment first thing Tuesday morning to see the flight surgeon about my airsickness. I'll probably be on drugs for my next few flights. Kinda scary, huh?