Writing young adult book - need some CQ questions answered, please?

[Lougideon]

Hi. Thank you in advance for your help with my book! But most of all, thank you for your service to our country.

I'm a female writer who knows only what she's researched online as well as talking to a couple of very helpful pilots so far regarding flight training, carrier qualification and the Blue Angels. One pilot helpfully suggested I join this forum to ask any further questions, so here goes...

In my book, Jake, a 22 year old who is stationed at NAS Kingsville, is about to test for his carrier qualification. I have four questions:

1. If he's already at Kingsville and is about to test for carrier qualification, what would his present rank be? Fighter pilot?

2. I read online that to get CQ'd a pilot must make 6 successful passes (are passes take-offs and landings? Is that 6 of each?) And that 3 of these must be at night. Is that currently the protocol?

3. Jake gets psyched out when he observes another "trainee" (is trainee the correct word?) boltering and going off the edge of the ship. The guy who boltered is killed. Is this feasible?

4. And finally, when Jake is telling his Dad about this and how nervous it's made him for his own upcoming testing (his father was a mechanic for the Blue Angels) he uses phrases like "being psyched out" and "doing a head trip on himself." Are there any other such terms that pilots use that are better pilot-lingo for being "freaked out?"

5. Woops. I just thought of another one. Is there a difference between furlough and Christmas leave? Or are they just pretty much different words for the same thing - time off?

Thank you again for your time. It is much appreciated.

Lou Gideon

 

[MIDNJAC]

In my book, Jake, a 22 year old who is stationed at NAS Kingsville, is about to test for his carrier qualification. I have four questions:

1. If he's already at Kingsville and is about to test for carrier qualification, what would his present rank be? Fighter pilot?

"Fighter pilot" is not a rank, but rather a description of what it is that one does. Most student pilots (Student Naval Aviators) in advanced jet school (ie Krock) are in the ENS to LTJG range (or 2nd/1st Lt's for Marine types). Notably, not all guys who go through Kingsville or Meridian end up being fighter pilots. Some go to AV-8B's, some to EA-6B's, some to EA-18G's, some to E2's or C-2's......though you could say that most do go on to fly the Hornet or Super Hornet. Generally speaking, the guys who are in jet school are in their first couple of years of military service, though there are some random exceptions that are probably beyond the scope of what you are asking.

2. I read online that to get CQ'd a pilot must make 6 successful passes (are passes take-offs and landings? Is that 6 of each?) And that 3 of these must be at night. Is that currently the protocol?

6 day traps (hook down, taking an arrested landing), and 4 hook-up touch and goes for the training command qual. It normally takes 2 days, and a stud gets about half the requirement done each day. When I did mine, I spent the night on the boat, and then finished it up early the next day. No night landings/traps until after you get your wings and head off to more advanced training in your fleet aircraft at the FRS (Fleet Replacement Squadron).

3. Jake gets psyched out when he observes another "trainee" (is trainee the correct word?) boltering and going off the edge of the ship. The guy who boltered is killed. Is this feasible?

It is possible, but there are very few students out there who don't bolter at all, and a bolter in of itself is not a big deal. When you touch down, you immediately jam the throttle up to full power, and because of this, if you miss the wires and bolter, you just do a touch and go and end up flying another trip around the pattern to try it again. Guys who get in trouble on a bolter get there because they didn't add full power like they were supposed to. Stuff like that can (and generally will) get you sent home immediately.

4. And finally, when Jake is telling his Dad about this and how nervous it's made him for his own upcoming testing (his father was a mechanic for the Blue Angels) he uses phrases like "being psyched out" and "doing a head trip on himself." Are there any other such terms that pilots use that are better pilot-lingo for being "freaked out?"

We talk like normal people.....no strange phrase for being nervous about something.

5. Woops. I just thought of another one. Is there a difference between furlough and Christmas leave? Or are they just pretty much different words for the same thing - time off?

Furlough is a term related to airline pilots, and not applicable to military flying. It means something different than leave however...

All in all, it sounds like you have a lot of research left to do before your book is anywhere near the level of accuracy that someone would want to read. Not sure where you are going with the Blue Angels thing, but guys don't go straight from flight school to the Blues. All the Blues are experienced aviators who have completed fleet/operational tours, and have made it through a pretty rigorous selection process.

 

[Random Task]

You really have a LONG way to go as far as research. I would suggest you read some non-fiction books on the subject, I know of many that will come up just by typing in "Naval aviation" as a key word when shopping for books or at the library. There are a number of shows from PBS, Discovery, etc that are very informative as well

I would also suggest that you take a trip down to Kingsville and see what jet school is all about. The navy does in some cases offer backseat rides to authors, journalists, etc. when their work would be deemed beneficial towards educating / informing the public on what we do.

On a side note...

6 day traps (hook down, taking an arrested landing), and 4 hook-up touch and goes for the training command qual.

How did you get away with only 6 traps?

 

[ProwlerPilot]

Actually I thought it was 10 traps

 

[porw0004]

22, while theoretically possible, is unheard of these days. 24 would be an appropriate age for those who started training strait away after 4 years of college, immediately following high school.

1) Fighter pilot isn't a rank, it's really just an informal job description that could mean a few slightly different things nowadays. His rank would depend on a few things. If he's Navy, he would most likely be a Lieutenant Junior Grade (LTJG), or possibly still an Ensign (ENS) in some semi-rare cases. If he is a Marine, almost defiantely a First Lieutenant (1stLt).

2) Initial CQ consists of a minimum of 10 arrested landings and 4 touch-and-go's None of them are done at night. To address your question about what defines a pass: I would say it's just an attempted approach to the carrier landing area. It could end in an arrested landing, bolter, touch-and-go, wave-off, or a few other things. In order to land, typically you have to take-off first, but when referring to a pass at the carrier, how you got there is moot.

3) Student Naval Aviator (SNA), or Student Military Aviator (SMA) to a lesser degree, would be a more contextually appropriate synonym for trainee. Boltering and dying has happened, so I guess it's feasible. But, there's really nothing dangerous about a run-of-the-mill bolter, unless you're flying the pass wrong. It could make more sense if the student's aircraft was experiencing some sort of emergency, however there are extremely few situations where they'd allow an intial CQ training aircraft to attempt an arrested landing in an emergency. The guy would have just been diverted back to the home airfield, or told to execute a controlled ejection a safe distance from the ship.

4) You could have him say "I'm holding on too tight." or "I've lost the edge." Yeah... that'd be perfect.

5) Only time I've heard the word "furlough" was in reference to people being laid off, and never in a military context. Although, dictionary.com seems to agree with you. I've got no advice for you there.



Holy crap, apparently took me longer to write this than I thought.

 

[nittany03]

Lou-

Welcome to AW. We've got plenty of expertise here that can help answer your questions. Please feel free to PM me if I can help out with any detailed questions you've got. Let me see if I can point some things out.

Here's a link to the Navy rank structure. Most people in the CQ phase of Jet Advanced or Tailhook are Lieutenants (Junior Grade); "Lieutenant JGs" or just "JGs" for short. There are usually a few NFO-to-pilot transitions running around the student body as full Lieutenants, and very occasionally, there is an Ensign who has managed to skip all the student pools and fly through training. This doesn't necessarily mean he/she is God's gift to aviation; it's just a dumb luck thing. Jake is probably a JG.

The CQ evolution starts the first time you strap on a T-45 in the front seat. Meridian and Kingsville fly the carrier pattern as standard procedure, and every landing you make with your instructor is evaluated. There is a FLOLS (the "meatball" landing aid) and a carrier landing area painted on each runway. Every flight is planned to save gas for four-eight trips around the landing pattern for touch-and-goes, aka "bouncing." There are also dedicated pattern hops in the syllabus where you just go out and fly 10 or more passes; some of these are at night. I went through a slightly different syllabus than the current one, so I won't go into too much detail, but the CQ phase starts a few weeks before "hook down." A class is put together. It's generally the same class students are grouped in from the day they began training, but depending on student flow through the syllabus, it may be an amalgamation of everyone that's eligible. Unless stuff has changed, you get pulled out of the flow for the rest of the syllabus and only do CQ.

You'll get paired up with two Landing Signal Officers (LSOs or "Paddles"). LSOs are experienced pilots whose job is to be experts on the carrier landing. They train throughout their fleet tour to evaluate and grade their fellow pilots as they land on the boat. (you'll notice this post never calls it a "ship"). They can generally tell by calibrated eyeball what's going on with your jet before you do. Those LSOs who teach at the training command have learned to "wave" every aircraft in the carrier air wing and then recieved a "training" qual to go teach students. Jake will fly about 10-12 passes a day in two 45-minute periods for 2-3 weeks before seeing the back end of the boat. This is all done solo; by the point in the syllabus where you CQ, you will be through at least some air combat, low-level, and bombing flights, and flying solo has become almost routine. LSOs are looking for three main things here: safety of flight, predictability, and responsiveness to their instructions.

Undergraduate studs CQ in the day only; you don't see the boat at night until you are at the Fleet Replacement Squadron (a la the "RAG," long history lesson there). The passes, or traps, required to CQ are actual arrested landings on board Mom. Bolters don't count, but they do lower your boarding rate, which is another essential element of your qual. You must trap on a minimum percentage of passes (can't remember without looking it up) to qual. You also must have a minimum grade point average on those times when you do trap. I think it's 2.5 last I heard, but it's on a scale of 0-4 (yes, 5 technically, but it's the rare stud who would get an an _OK_ ) If you look on our LSO questions thread, I think it goes into detail on the grading scheme, but we can go down that rabbit hole some other time. LSO shorthand makes aviator-speak look like plain English.

With regard to number three, a stud dying in CQ would be a HUGE deal. Circumstances depending, probably career-threatening if not -ending for many people. The Commodore who commands the Training Air Wing, the CO of the squadron, the LSOs who trained him, the LSOs who waved that pass, and the Captain and Air Officer ("Air Boss") of the carrier would be facing some hard questions in the investigation. There would be at least two independent investigations. Again, we could go down the rabbit hole of JAGMAN versus Aviation Safety Center investigations, but onward. That said, fatalities in training are very rare, but not unknown.

I think you're also getting some suspect gouge (aviator-speak for info specific to your next event or test) regarding the meaning of a "bolter." A "bolter" is any landing where the hook does not engage a wire and you have to go around to try again. Generally caused by anything from a pitching deck, to poor attitude control, to trying to salvage poor throttle management with more poor attitude control, to a plain-old hookskip. Minutiae of the carrier approach; yet another rabbit hole. If you had to ask me, a fatality like you describe during CQ would likely be a result of pilot error (it's happened, and there's a video of a fatal T-2 crash that everyone in the business has seen and discussed) or a parted arresting wire coupled with seat malfunction or delayed ejection decision. If the arresting gear wire snaps after it's slowed you down, you eject IMMEDIATELY. You don't have enough airspeed to get airborne again, and you're usually too fast to stop on the flight deck. This is usually fairly well drilled into students' heads, though.

With regard to number 4, generally, we talk like normal people when work isn't involved. Aviator-speak makes our relatives and in-laws look at us funny and ask us to explain. Please ignore the gratuitous Top Gun reference of the snarky poster above.

Christmas leave is Christmas leave.

As has been said, you've got a LOT of research to do, as you're writing about a character who has a very technical job, and who has reams of procedures, rules, and regulations more or less committed to memory and instinct. You at least need to learn the language so that your characters' dialogue and your narration will pass the smell test. Best of luck with your writing.

 

[BigIron]

These books give an insight into Navy flight training:

http://www.amazon.com/Bogeys-Bandits-Making-Fighter-Pilot/dp/0670867217/ref=pd_sim_b_1

http://www.amazon.com/Air-Warriors-...5316/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306451916&sr=8-1

 

[MIDNJAC]

Actually I thought it was 10 traps

Yeah, my bad. 10 traps, 4 T&G's

And to add to what nittany posted, CQ really isn't that scary of an evolution. My class (as well as some other oddballs that went with us) spent basically an entire month ahead of time out at the local OLF (outlying Field....Joe Williams for Meridian guys like me) and back at Meridian doing FCLP's, as well as a few simulator events. You are VERY prepared by the time you ever see the boat for real. I never saw anything scary, and never scared myself, and all in all it was a pretty relaxed month away from the rest of the advanced strike syllabus (which comparatively was much more challenging). It was probably the most fun I ever had in flight school....far from being scary or nerve racking.

 

[FlyBoyd]

Furlough is a term related to airline pilots, and not applicable to military flying. It means something different than leave however...

5) Only time I've heard the word "furlough" was in reference to people being laid off, and never in a military context. Although, dictionary.com seems to agree with you. I've got no advice for you there.

I remember the term furlough from old military movies but it isn't in use today. We just call it leave. Surprisingly, it is still the first definition of the word.

fur·lough (fûr

l

) n.
1. a. A leave of absence or vacation, especially one granted to a member of the armed forces.b. A usually temporary layoff from work.
c. A leave of absence from prison granted to a prisoner.

2. The papers or documents authorizing a leave: The soldiers had their furloughs in their breast pockets.

 

[Reconjoe]

End of the day, are you trying to be as accurate as possible, or entertaining with some but not complete accuracy? When they made Top Gun the same thing happened, apparently you can't do both without excluding "Mom and Pop in Oklahoma". If the latter is the case, it's your book and you're the writer so don't get discouraged if the responses you get seem too critical of the details. I would venture to guess you know what your audience wants to hear/read better than we do.

 

[Random Task]

Highly recommend these books, in fact, I have them sitting on my book shelf. These were the first to books that came to mind. Funny story, I re-read them as I went through flight school and come to find out I have actually met some of the characters in the book. One was even my skipper at VT-6.

These books give an insight into Navy flight training:

http://www.amazon.com/Bogeys-Bandits-Making-Fighter-Pilot/dp/0670867217/ref=pd_sim_b_1


http://www.amazon.com/Air-Warriors-...5316/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306451916&sr=8-1

 

[nittany03]

End of the day, are you trying to be as accurate as possible, or entertaining with some but not complete accuracy? When they made Top Gun the same thing happened, apparently you can't do both without excluding "Mom and Pop in Oklahoma". If the latter is the case, it's your book and you're the writer so don't get discouraged if the responses you get seem too critical of the details. I would venture to guess you know what your audience wants to hear/read better than we do.

I disagree. If you do the job right, you don't need to be inaccurate to exclude "Mom and Pop from Oklahoma." The writer of a book has a much easier time fitting the little details into their work which make it sound authentic. Bruckheimer just copped out because accuracy didn't jibe with the summer blockbuster he wanted to make.

Our inquisitive author just needs to get as much detail as she can, and then build the story around that. If you know enough about the subject, you know what you need to include and what to leave out. Then you have a story which sounds authentic enough, and is still worth reading. The bad author just makes it up and then gets laughed at by everyone who knows anything about whatever slice of life he/she is writing about. A little dramatic license never hurt anyone, but you don't need to insult real aviators to write a good story. Stephen King spent a good bit of time with the PA Highway Patrol before he wrote "From a Buick 8" just to get the little things right.

 

[Python]

22, while theoretically possible, is unheard of these days. 24 would be an appropriate age for those who started training strait away after 4 years of college, immediately following high school.

I started in Meridian at 22 and I did four years of ROTC right before flight school. I will wing at age 23 and still have a season left before turning 24. I'm comparatively young but it's not unheard of.

 

[CumminsPilot]

If he is a Marine, almost defiantely a First Lieutenant (1stLt).

Should I start acting differently?

 

[MIDNJAC]

I started in Meridian at 22 and I did four years of ROTC right before flight school. I will wing at age 23 and still have a season left before turning 24. I'm comparatively young but it's not unheard of.

Yeah there was a guy in my class who was 20 when he flew the T-45 for the first time. Winged at 21....he's 22 now and nearly done with the Rhino RAG.