So, it seems I have been a bit out of circulation as far as the internet goes.
I have completed training with the Marines in North Carolina and am back in The Albuquerque. The Marine Osprey training ended with a bang! Over the course of the training I had started to think I may have gotten myself into a boring piece of equipment... though those thoughts were purely an artifact of the method of training an not at all related to the aircraft herself.
Training of course started of with just flying in circles in the pattern barely able to get the aircraft to do what you want. It is all very benign, slow, and in control just to teach you how to fly the thing. The next phase is Instrument flight. Again very smooth, preplanned, with shallow turns. Don't get me wrong, it is all still interesting, but you all saw the video... my instructor was eating his lunch while we flew! I was starting to think that I had traded in helicopters for a heavy airlift gig... (not that there is anything wrong with that... I just don't like it.) Anyways, one of my last flights was "Low Altitude Tactics." Like I said, I had started to think I had traded in my magic carpet for a smallish boring cargo plane... until that ride!!!!
HOLY SHIT!
In case you need a vehicle to girl or girl to vehicle analogy to understand what I am trying to say; It was like when you are dating some girl, things are nice... but it seems that the sex is destine to be boring forever, but then out of nowhere one night she pulls out handcuffs, a saddle, and custom molded prosthetic fangs! (and she doesn't even pretend like it is the first time she has used them) It was like that!
All through training we had been flying it very conservatively... mostly because as new tilt-rotor pilots, we didn't know what the fuck we were doing. Once we figured that out they could finally show us the real shit this thing could do. I had already been impressed by the climb rate of this thing, but everyone always talks about that. What I hadn't expected was the turn rate of this thing. You take it, turn it sideways and pull! I know what you are thinking, "with those stubby wings... it would be like turning a school bus by sticking bar coasters out the window!" True... the wings are a bit short to be very effective... but the trick is the rotation of the nacelles! You turn it sideways and pull. It does turn you, but mostly it just bleeds off your speed. bringing you right into a beautiful regime to rotate your engines! So instead of pulling yourself around through the turn with your stubby little wings, you pull the turn with pure gorilla-with-a-Thor-hammer thrust from your engines! Not only does this make for a tighter turn than is possible with just wings, you can bleed off so much energy that it sets you up for doing anything you want with the aircraft coming out of the turn. You can land, accelerate out, or climb to the moon!!! What ever you want! There can't be any other aircraft ever made that can be going that fast in one direction and do a complete coarse reversal in that short of time and that small of turn radius. It is fucking insane... Like first firing of a potato cannon maniacal laughter type insane! I hadn't felt the blood swish out of my head like that since T-37's!
The even crazier part is that there are dudes walking around in the back, hanging off the tailgate, with all the doors open. In a fighter, the one or two dudes are strapped into ejection seats facing forward. In this thing you can do all these crazy maneuvers with people walking around and standing out the door!
Ok, so I completed flying with the Marines... Now time to get back to that mythical place called "the real Air Force."
The trip back through across the country was great, the colors were all changing through the whole Appalachians. I didn't get pulled over even once!
Now I am back at KIKR. Time for a new round of Computer Based Training!
In an absurd display of domestication, I have rented a house. (To be honest I just wanted a place with the garage.) Apparently it wasn't made for full size American!
It turns out, i have absolutely no furniture. I knew that academically, but hadn't noticed as violently as after the moving truck left after delivering my house hold goods and I didn't have a place to sit down beside the floor and no convenient place to set my drink! I would like to say that I have acquired furniture, but that is not the case... I am now quite used to sitting on the floor. Problem solved!
Thanks to the truck and skills of C-Mac, I have been able to regroup my troops. A-S, you aren't the only only one that can drop property values!
Some of you may have noticed that I haven't been online quite as much recently. That is because of my new Mistress.
Yes, those are some of her naughty bits dangling out...
Expect more updates more regularly in the short future.
I have completed training with the Marines in North Carolina and am back in The Albuquerque. The Marine Osprey training ended with a bang! Over the course of the training I had started to think I may have gotten myself into a boring piece of equipment... though those thoughts were purely an artifact of the method of training an not at all related to the aircraft herself.
Training of course started of with just flying in circles in the pattern barely able to get the aircraft to do what you want. It is all very benign, slow, and in control just to teach you how to fly the thing. The next phase is Instrument flight. Again very smooth, preplanned, with shallow turns. Don't get me wrong, it is all still interesting, but you all saw the video... my instructor was eating his lunch while we flew! I was starting to think that I had traded in helicopters for a heavy airlift gig... (not that there is anything wrong with that... I just don't like it.) Anyways, one of my last flights was "Low Altitude Tactics." Like I said, I had started to think I had traded in my magic carpet for a smallish boring cargo plane... until that ride!!!!
HOLY SHIT!
In case you need a vehicle to girl or girl to vehicle analogy to understand what I am trying to say; It was like when you are dating some girl, things are nice... but it seems that the sex is destine to be boring forever, but then out of nowhere one night she pulls out handcuffs, a saddle, and custom molded prosthetic fangs! (and she doesn't even pretend like it is the first time she has used them) It was like that!
All through training we had been flying it very conservatively... mostly because as new tilt-rotor pilots, we didn't know what the fuck we were doing. Once we figured that out they could finally show us the real shit this thing could do. I had already been impressed by the climb rate of this thing, but everyone always talks about that. What I hadn't expected was the turn rate of this thing. You take it, turn it sideways and pull! I know what you are thinking, "with those stubby wings... it would be like turning a school bus by sticking bar coasters out the window!" True... the wings are a bit short to be very effective... but the trick is the rotation of the nacelles! You turn it sideways and pull. It does turn you, but mostly it just bleeds off your speed. bringing you right into a beautiful regime to rotate your engines! So instead of pulling yourself around through the turn with your stubby little wings, you pull the turn with pure gorilla-with-a-Thor-hammer thrust from your engines! Not only does this make for a tighter turn than is possible with just wings, you can bleed off so much energy that it sets you up for doing anything you want with the aircraft coming out of the turn. You can land, accelerate out, or climb to the moon!!! What ever you want! There can't be any other aircraft ever made that can be going that fast in one direction and do a complete coarse reversal in that short of time and that small of turn radius. It is fucking insane... Like first firing of a potato cannon maniacal laughter type insane! I hadn't felt the blood swish out of my head like that since T-37's!
The even crazier part is that there are dudes walking around in the back, hanging off the tailgate, with all the doors open. In a fighter, the one or two dudes are strapped into ejection seats facing forward. In this thing you can do all these crazy maneuvers with people walking around and standing out the door!
Ok, so I completed flying with the Marines... Now time to get back to that mythical place called "the real Air Force."
The trip back through across the country was great, the colors were all changing through the whole Appalachians. I didn't get pulled over even once!
Now I am back at KIKR. Time for a new round of Computer Based Training!
In an absurd display of domestication, I have rented a house. (To be honest I just wanted a place with the garage.) Apparently it wasn't made for full size American!
It turns out, i have absolutely no furniture. I knew that academically, but hadn't noticed as violently as after the moving truck left after delivering my house hold goods and I didn't have a place to sit down beside the floor and no convenient place to set my drink! I would like to say that I have acquired furniture, but that is not the case... I am now quite used to sitting on the floor. Problem solved!
Thanks to the truck and skills of C-Mac, I have been able to regroup my troops. A-S, you aren't the only only one that can drop property values!
Some of you may have noticed that I haven't been online quite as much recently. That is because of my new Mistress.
Yes, those are some of her naughty bits dangling out...
Expect more updates more regularly in the short future.
