Time is starting to go by so quickly! Nick could very well be finished flying by this time next week!!!!!
My last update was back in early April so a lot has happened since then.
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| Me in front of Nick's helo, the TH-57 |
Nick started out flying the TH-57B (Bravo). It allowed to them learn the basics of flying and hovering. They learned to autorotate, a term which sounded fun until Nick explained it's learning to "crash land". Essentially, when the engine is cut, the blades autorotate and provide a little lift and lighter "fall" while they try to regain power or control. (These are the things your wife doesn't want to hear. While I'm happy he's learned to do this and it could save his life and his crew's life, I'd just rather not know. A simple "training went well today. I've landed safely" text will suffice.)
The TH-57B has one set of instruments (or gauges), no stability and although it can fly at night, they only flew during the day and it had to be flown in good weather. They start out in this learning the basics of flying a helo and hovering in about 18 flights.
They start with the “contact” flights which is just familiarization and learning to fly a helo, then a checkride to determine if they’re safe for solo and then a solo.
After their contacts solo, they do “super-FAM” (familiarization) flights to fine tune the previous skills. Following these is “tactics” flights. These are exposure to confined area landings (for example, landing in a gap of a trees), pinnacle landings (landing on a raised surface, like a plateau or building), external load operations (pick up weights and drop them, lift, transport). Since it’s an “exposure” to them, they only do one flight for each of these
Below are videos of him doing the external load operations:
Below are videos of him doing the external load operations:
Once they've "mastered" flying, they move up to the TH-57 Charlie model. This is a different model of the helicopter (but to me looks exactly the same): It has two sets of instruments, stability control, and is capable of flying at night and under poor weather conditions (such as conditions where you don’t have to see outside.) Again, they start out with familiarization flight learning the new helo. It begins with basic instruments, which is learning to use JUST the instruments in the helo, without visual. For these, Nick flew with a hood attached to his helmet that blocked his vision outside of the helicopter. (An instructor sits in the seat to the left of him and is his eyes for the left side of the aircraft, with another student sitting behind Nick, acting as his eyes on the right side. Just in case.) These skills will greatly come in handy when he’s flying over the water at night when it’s pitch black with nothing visua to reference.
After these flights, Nick moved onto RI flights (radio instruments). This is where he started flying to other airports in the area such as Mobile, Tallahassee, or his “cross country” flight to Memphis. During this phase of flights, he uses the instruments that are receiving signals from navigations devices on the ground to fly. Essentially, this stage allows them to learn to fly and operate under instrument flight rules (IFR) which allows them to navigate without seeing where you’re going using things like GPS, signals, etc. This is THE most important and biggest stage of all of flight school because once he completed this, he was essentially “instrument rated” meaning that if he were a civilian (or Navy pilot) he could fly under instrument/IFR conditions without having to have someone else who was qualified for that.
During this time, Nick was pretty non-existent around our home. He was putting in about 10-12 hour days on base, coming home, showering, and going straight to the office to study. He spent the rest of the night in there until about midnight (sometimes later.) It was rough on him and he was downright exhausted all of the time. (Good thing he loves what he does!)
After this, he did a “cross country” flight to Mobile where he took the helo off by himself (with an observer, but no instructor because there must be two people at the control at all times), landed somewhere else, shut down the helo, went and grabbed lunch, then came back.
After this it was on to “low levels”. Despite the biggest hurdle being accomplished (the instrument rated part I just mentioned) and the rumors that flight school was all downhill after that, there was still a lot of work to do for the remaining flights. Low levels (there were 5 of these flights) required a great deal of planning, preparing charts and planning routes at low altitudes, beginning at 500 ft and later flights at about 200 ft above ground.
Next was “formations” (4 flights), which is exactly what it sounds like. Helicopters (two of them) flying in formation together. The last was a low level formation flight at 200 feet. He has just finished this block of training and now he's moving on to Search and Rescue flights. This is just one flight and it gives him exposure to search and rescue, which includes running search patterns.
Following those will be his last block of training, NVGs (night vision goggles). It sounds pretty basic (and fun) but apparently it's more complicated and exhausted than one would expect.
After that, he's flight school complete!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I hope all of that made sense. Nick tries to explains things to me in terms I understand and therefore I tried to do the same for our friends and family. I probably know a little more than the average person since my husband is in this field and talks aviation all the time, so I apologize if I still used phrases or words that didn't make sense to a non-aviation follower. I tried to remember things Nick said that provoked a "uhhh huh?" look from me so if I didn't explain something well enough, shoot me an email or comment under this and I'll try to furhter explain. I know you all back home love these updates so I tried to be as thorough as I could to let you peek into what Nick's life has been like (and why you rarely see him on our Skype sessions, hear him in the background of our phone conversations, or why he himself doesn't communicate often with you all. I promise, he loves you all, he's just busy. I live with him and barely see or speak to him! Give him a week and he's all yours!!!!)
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