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.
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| 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!)
