Mother's Worry List

We regularly check on line to see what our son's daily training schedule will be, or what he has been doing the past few days. Last night my wife text me, "Do you know what Tim did today[?]" A colleague of mine finished his service as a flight instructor at NAS Corpus Christi after he returned from Vietnam. He happened to have been in the same training squadron as my son - only forty-five years earlier. He said his dad would have given anything at that time to have been able to follow his training progress on the Internet, like we do today. Now that our son is at NAS Kingsville, seeing whether the type of activity[ies] for the day will be an exercise in the simulators (Sim C) or time flying (Flight),  is usually enough to meet our curiosity. But once-in-a-while, I will cut-and-paste the Event code into the Web browser and look up the PowerPoint briefing for that event. This next Monday's 1.3 hour event is titled: 

MPTS IJET FRM2101 

Mission 

FORMATION EP SIMULATOR

   
All of this jargon has to do with preparing several students for flying close to one another in formation (1). Below is the Recommended Flight Conduct for the event from the brief, shown with my interpretation of what a mother of a naval jet pilot in-training would see when read: 

start Malfunctions

ground Emergencies

interval Abort

interval take off with Emergency

parade visual flight rules

instrument flight rule

engine Emergencies

flight control Emergencies

electrical Emergencies

environmental control system Emergencies

fuel system Emergencies

turns 

echelon

Precautionary approach

section approach 

Missed approach with Emergency

visual flight rules Recovery and pattern Emergencies

visual flight rules landing pattern  

landing 

touch-and-go 

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(1) Just as my son was taking the freeway exit into Kingsville last autumn when we helped him move from Corpus Christi, several T-45's in formation were doing their break away pattern to land. It was pretty exciting to see. Tim is now preparing to do the same - a bit of a scary thought - several inexperienced ensigns learning to flying in formation together.

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Postscript, April 6, 2012: The F/A-18 crash in Virginia Beach yesterday, made this blog posting about emergency procedure training sobering. A news video clip can be viewed clicking here.