Trip 013, Summer 2013, Wright Patterson OH
275 – Mount up! We got training to go do.
276 – “This is how we fix things on the Russian Space Station...” The vertical adjustment cable snapped, so I repaired it.
277 – Short flight over to the Medivac school house in Ohio.
278 - Going to fly in circles for four simultaneous final exam check ride evaluations. Run by hardcore instructors and examiners for the soon to graduate students.
279 – I don’t know if the dummies are going to make it.
280-1 – One of the particularly evil examiners came up and found me on the flight deck.
“Hey chief, what are you doing?”
“Not much Cap’n. How can I help you?”
“Go to the back of the jet like you are doing something important, drink some water, take this Alka-Seltzer, drop to the floor, and fake a seizure between the two sets of evaluations.”
“I can do that.”
I just wish someone had it on video. Having never used Alka-Seltzer before, I did not expect the violent amount of foam it spewed forth. Still, I pulled off a performance that had two groupings of students abandoning their dummies to try to save this dummy. The second surprise was how quickly they flipped me on my side, push an artificial airway down my nose, unzip flight suit, cut open my shirt, had an EKG hooked up, flashlight beams in my eyes, and a few other things. Finally, one of them realized the evaluators were just standing taking notes and asked, “Wait is this real or part of the test?” It was tough to smile, but I said, “I think you all might pass…”
280/283 – Recovering from my performance in the back, I chilled up behind the copilot as we flew in more circles chasing our shadow while the students were kept in the meat grinder for hours downstairs. The skills they showcased that day would be the difference between life and death on future missions.
284 – Final exam for myself as well. It isn’t every day that the job title changes. Today it went from, what I absolutely loved doing, a C-17 Aircraft Maintenance Flightline Avionics Craftsman, to what I know I want to do as a full time C-17 Flying Crew Chief. The last two years with these 13 trips was a part time position to get the feel, learn new tricks, go to the school house down at Charleston, sit through a stump the dummy knowledge board, be recommended by the operations group, and the behind the scenes help from everyone that wore a flight suit before me, to say I can make the jump to the varsity team. I am quite thankful for it on this Thanksgiving weekend. Now it is time to pull them belts up tight and boogity boogity boogity lets go flyin’ full time boys!
