The Fine Art of Multi-Tasking

So say you’re in med school and just as you’re finishing up your challenging anatomy class, preparing for the final, your professors decide to throw you into a surgical residency – something you’ve never done before, and is potentially dangerous – and expect you to complete a solo surgery after, say, 6 lessons. Are you feeling the pressure? Welcome to the last two weeks or so of UPT. While the example above would likely never happen in real life (plus, I know absolutely nothing about med school, so my examples were probably totally inaccurate, but you get the gist), pilot training is on the fast-track and certainly testing my poor husband’s ability to multi-task with the best of them.

As he was fully immersed in finishing up his last few instrument flights and pending checkride, he also began flying formation flights. H calls formation flying “the planes holding hands”, which is totally adorable, but also pretty accurate. To demonstrate, C and H modeled approximately how far apart the planes might be in the air:

Planes fly in formation in order to provide mutual support, flying about 10 feet apart in fingertip formation, and using both voice and hand signals for communication.

Photo: rides.webshots.com

C did, indeed, finish instruments with a stellar checkride, and also completed enough flights for his formation solo (yes, there is a solo in every phase, but the initial solo is the “big one”). Though formation flying was like a hard shove out of his comfort zone – as a former airline pilot, he had been trained NOT to get close to other planes – he’s getting the hang of it and feeling more comfortable. And the good news is, after today, C officially has 9 flights left until he has completed his training in the T-6 (that means we’re almost at the halfway point!). Coming up next? Track select at the end of April, but more on that to come…(Gotta create a little suspense!) 

Cohabitating with the Invisible Man

My husband still lives with me…I think. You see, these days it’s hard to tell. Sometimes I’ll catch a glimpse of him as he inhales his dinner or brushes his teeth. Otherwise, he’s mostly invisible.

The Invisible Man

To make up for the inclement weather last month, the students are working non-stop this month. This means long hours and weekend flying. They are double- and triple-turning (flights and sims back to back) most days, leading to late nights studying and overwhelming exhaustion.

The good news is, as of this Monday, C’s flight is on “informal release”. As previously mentioned, “formal release” means that they didn’t get to leave the flight room during the day. Now, if they are not scheduled for an event (flight, sim, class, etc.), they have the freedom to leave, as long as they are in the flight room at the beginning of each “step” (each round of flights – 3 per day, typically) and for the formal brief in the morning. While the jam-packed schedule doesn’t leave a lot of time to pursue that freedom at present, it’s nice to know that sometime soon we might get to have lunch together or he can study at home instead of in the flight room, putting us at least in the same room together.

Of course, all this hard work means that C is progressing through pilot training at lightning speed. In the past two weeks he has had (and passed) his final contact checkride, gotten about 90% of the way through instrument training (checkride next week), and completed his cross country flight and night flight requirements.

 

C’s cross country flight was this past weekend. It’s typically one of the highlights of the T-6 program, 1) because it’s something different, and 2) because usually they go some place fun. C and his instructor, along with a small group of other students and instructors, flew to Phoenix for the first night and Denver for the second. The flights went well, minus a small electrical problem, and C came home to begin another busy week.

I’d love to report that calmer waters are on the horizon, but with spring weather taking hold, it looks like our winter reprieve is over for now.