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What was/is your light at the end of the tunnel?

johnboyA6E

Well-Known Member
None
There's a couple things in life that will drive me to setup in a book suppository building with a high-powered rifle like Ned Flanders. Oscar patterns is one of those things...in any airframe.

 

Sonog

Well-Known Member
pilot
Summary: it's ok to be uncomfortable and not loving it. You have to figure out how to handle that. Those coping skills will serve you well in many other areas of life outside of the cockpit.

Great advice.

Reminds me of a pet peeve of mine from a NATOPS brief where someone gets to comfort level/safety line of the NVD portion and they say something to the extent of "we'll fly to the highest safety and adjust to the lowest comfort level of the crew". Well no shit on safety, but mother fucker its goggles, we're all uncomfortable. Or what are we going to do? not land because someone doesn't feel comfortable? I get the intent, but an absolute butchery of brevity.
 

Pags

N/A
pilot
Great advice.

Reminds me of a pet peeve of mine from a NATOPS brief where someone gets to comfort level/safety line of the NVD portion and they say something to the extent of "we'll fly to the highest safety and adjust to the lowest comfort level of the crew". Well no shit on safety, but mother fucker its goggles, we're all uncomfortable. Or what are we going to do? not land because someone doesn't feel comfortable? I get the intent, but an absolute butchery of brevity.
Agreed with that "briefing-ism." I eventually changed mine to address that FNGs are going to be uncomfortable* and the whole point of training is to make them more comfortable with being uncomfortable.

*Or worse, they won't be uncomfortable because they're too inexperienced to know to be scared. In my best Yoda voice, "you will be!"
 

Griz882

Frightening children with the Griz-O-Copter!
pilot
Contributor
All the advice here is quite good. More importantly, those writing about collective experience have it spot on. I returned to flying (as a civilian) after a very long break. My first flight back (my first takeoff actually) I was convinced I had forgotten everything and that I was speeding toward an early grave. But it all came back really fast. Indeed, I completed my Flight Review after four hours of flight time. My first real cross-country after that was less than a week later and I flew over 750 miles...in the right direction!

What you are feeling now is the development of collective experience. Once you learn it...it is always in there and each lesson reinforces the next.
 

Griz882

Frightening children with the Griz-O-Copter!
pilot
Contributor
As your flights progress, strive to fly in cardinal directions or headings. Or just mix it up and try left
Pretty much my weekly flight routine...typically ends with - “Who knew that was down there?” or “Who says this airspace is restricted...It seems open to me?”
 

Jim123

DD-214 in hand and I'm gonna party like it's 1998
pilot
Johnboy got the reference.
Ouch... when a squid makes a FMJ reference and one jarhead has to link the movie quote for another one to get it. Gotta have a thick skin around here!! :p

OP, as you can see there is some variety in naval aviation- even if it might feel like your peers eat, breathe, and sleep flying there are a surprising number out there who don't quite do that but are quite successful. Regardless, you're not alone with that ebb and flow of stress vs enjoyment and feeling like stress might be winning on some days. Think of it like when you have a good coach then practice is always challenging and rarely or never very easy.

Stick it out for at least a while longer. Seek out instructors who enjoy teaching instruments (they exist...) because that's the foundation of getting your future weapons system to where it needs to be day/night/in bad weather, and formation too (not hard to find IPs who love forms). Forms are fun for a few good reasons, they're a lot like riding horses, but most importantly your flight leadership and teamwork will spell success for both you and your form partner- which is actually pretty cool about primary forms.
 

Treetop Flyer

Well-Known Member
pilot
Ouch... when a squid makes a FMJ reference and one jarhead has to link the movie quote for another one to get it. Gotta have a thick skin around here!! :p

OP, as you can see there is some variety in naval aviation- even if it might feel like your peers eat, breathe, and sleep flying there are a surprising number out there who don't quite do that but are quite successful. Regardless, you're not alone with that ebb and flow of stress vs enjoyment and feeling like stress might be winning on some days. Think of it like when you have a good coach then practice is always challenging and rarely or never very easy.

Stick it out for at least a while longer. Seek out instructors who enjoy teaching instruments (they exist...) because that's the foundation of getting your future weapons system to where it needs to be day/night/in bad weather, and formation too (not hard to find IPs who love forms). Forms are fun for a few good reasons, they're a lot like riding horses, but most importantly your flight leadership and teamwork will spell success for both you and your form partner- which is actually pretty cool about primary forms.
I’ll go ahead and say it: besides a few minutes of Ermey, FMJ was a dumb movie
 

Jim123

DD-214 in hand and I'm gonna party like it's 1998
pilot
True... the first half is Ermey doing some pretty good character acting. The second half is a Kubrick movie—the artistic, political Kubrick that you either like or you don't—or a war epic that happens to be a Kubrick movie, or...

Kinda like how flight school and everything after flight school are connected yet they're distinct, like two movies in one.

Could it be that when @Gatordev slipped that movie reference into this thread he was playing four dimensional chess with us and we didn't realize it??


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