Frost Times

For my third flight last Monday the 28th of November was a night flight. The way this whole flying business works is I get this nifty little thing called crew rest, which excuses me from all duties 12 hours before I am to show up for my flight which in turn is three hours before Take Off. The 12 hours off are designed to ensure that we as aircrew members are not operating $50,000,000 equipment in an unsafe manner due to lack of sleep or time to prepare. This comes in handy when you are tired and need to take the afternoon to sleep prior to a night flight. Flying during the day in Oklahoma is nothing to write home about (or on the internet in a silly little blog) However, flying from Oklahoma up through the middle of this nation during nighttime really is quite fun. Seeing the spider web of farm towns stretching for miles as the lights look much like massive snow flakes on a black background glimmering in the darkness. During my night flight we left at sunset and I was able to see a beautiful sunset from the cockpit of my KC-135 which was a pretty fantastic view. I was flying with two pilots training to become instructor pilots and they were practicing assault approaches which is a bit more intense than it sounds. Imagine flying along in an airliner and then all of a sudden having your right wing pointed to the sky and only being able to see ground through the front of the cockpit as you spiral down trying to lose as much altitude as possible while trying to line up with the runway that seems to be getting much larger by the blink of an eye. Holding down my dinner was the least of my concerns as I was trying to back up the pilots with our direction, pitch (angle to the earth) and speed. My job is to ensure that the landing gear, flaps and airspeed are where they should be during our final approach to the runway as well as verifying that the runway is clear of anything that might cause harm to our aircraft. We ended up doing 16 touch and goes, this is where pilots land the aircraft on the runway and besides slamming on the breaks and cutting the engines like we have all felt so often in a normal airliner landing, they land it on the runway, wait a few dozen seconds and then slam on the gas and pull up causing us to blast into the night sky. During my night refueling I had the opportunity to witness a lights demonstration where we turned all of our lights out as out receiver did the same thing. It was freaky seeing this massive football field sized aircraft disappear and turn into a winged black shadow blocking out what little light was reflected from the earth from the moon and stars. Shivers ran down my entire body as the last light went out and I knew there was something so large and powerful so close but yet you couldn’t see it. This flight was by far my best flight. All of my contacts went really well and my situational awareness was 10 times better than what it was my first few flights. Everything went very well and the receiver pilots applauded our work as they left the Air Refueling track. On our way back from near South Dakota where we were refueling, I got the chance to manually extend our landing gear which is a pretty unique thing to do, you think of landing gear as these huge contraptions the size of a small SUV that can withstand so much of a beating as we land on them, and yet I was able to drop them myself just by turning a handle a few times in a series of clockwise and counter clockwise turns. It was really a cool experience. Overall my flights have been awesome so far, I have actually been on Duties Not to Include Flying (DNIF) statues for a few days now with an ear infection, but I did get to participate in a emergencies procedures simulator with some new pilots and in the end they let me fly this simulator which costs $40,000,000 and is extremely realistic. That was the highlight of my week thus far, and hopefully as soon as my ear is better I’ll be able to top that one with another great story of  the magic of inflight refueling. Until then, be safe, be blessed and don’t forget who created the earth I see while flying, or the stars that light up the night, and who thought of the idea of flight when He created birds to roam the sky. We are truly lucky to have such a great creator. Love you all!

Dan