Hawgsmoke.com
Hawgsmoke 2010
13-16 October 2010
Boise, Idaho
First Flight
Greetings from the ROK,
Today sucked. Let me tell you why.
First, it’s about forty degrees outside, as it has been for the past four days, and the air conditioner is still on… another reason to let South Korea become communist.
Second, today was the worst attempted sortie of my career. I started out real excited to fly for the first time in 4 and a half months. The situation however quickly degraded from there. I apologize many of you who do not fly... you may not understand a lot of what I am about to say.
I put on my life support gear, and it doesn't fit all that well. Here we fly with more than I have in the past. Well the Hawg isn't real roomy to begin with. Now I have even less room making me all the happier. I can't even turn my head, and I swear they moved the stuff in back further back so I can't reach it.
To fly a jet, you have to go through a checklist. Let's just say today I didn't use it so well. The first thing I forgot to do, which is the second line on the checklist, was turn on the inverter. When you try to start the engines, they won't work, along with a lot of other things. I was really happy to call a red ball in and have the specialist turn that on.
The next thing was the radio. For some reason, I couldn't here the UHF. Well there are only about 8 different volume controls for this damn thing and I missed about 5 of them. Again, I was really happy to call a red ball in and have a different specialist come out and turn the volume up for me.
The radio again, none of the presets were in the radio. I never figured it out, but I probably messed that up too. At any rate, I was now having to manually dial in the frequencies. This makes for a really good situation when it is your first ride in an unfamiliar area with a lack of proficiency when you have to change a manual freq every few minutes. Again, really happy.
The radio again. I couldn't get the Havequick (Satan’s tool) to work four times. Enough said for those of you who know.
Did I mention the radio. Couldn't get the FM secure to work either. Little thing called a power switch. Happy to see a specialist again.
Radar alitimeter in wrong position. Couldn't get targeting computer to work. My man the specialist.
At this point I was getting a bit frustrated. Since I haven't qualified on the M-9 (pistol), I can't carry one. So I transmitted to my flight lead, "Gabby 1, Gabby2, if you have your gun with you, could you bring it down here so I can shoot myself in the head?" He was a rather unmerciful fellow and declined. Curse his soul.
Finally we get to taxi. Get down to the arming area. On the way there, I’m informed my whole profile is changed due to the fact I taxied almost an hour late. At this point, flight leads hydraulics start leaking, and the mission is scrapped. Get to do it all again tomorrow after some remedial checklist training in a simulator.
I pray tomorrow will be better.