Read 2 or 3 paragraphs of me high fiving myself.....NOW!!!
So I once again took to the sea in the never ending quest to train pilots. I won't get into details but I will say this, for being comissioned into service in 2001, the USS Reagan CVN 76, is the shittiest rattiest boat I have yet to be on, with the worst mannered crew I have ever met. And half of the time shit kept breaking down on the flight deck making it very hard to do my job.
But speaking of my job, I was able to be in charge of my squadrons flight operations for the first time ever(not full time, the guy in charge of me did it most of the time). This is both cool and sucky in tandem. It's cool because it means somebody somewhere trusts me enough to do it(and it is no small undertaking), and sucky because there are not many people who can do that job and I'm now a prime candidate to be sent to the boat more often than not.
Pretty much what it entails is mediating between my squadrons controllers who sit inside with a "plan"(not really a plan since it always falls to shit and is up to whoever is doing the job that I did to make their whims a reality) and flight deck control who manages everything on the flightdeck who says yes or no to anything you are trying to do. It can get pretty crazy, but it's an ego boost to know that I can do it. The craziest part is when I had 2 jets sitting there with a pilot in each one(we'll call them jet 1 and 2). Jet 2 broke but the pilot inside still had some flying to do for the day, and the guy in jet 1 was done for the day in a working jet. But my squadrons controllers wanted a pilot that had yet to fly to get into the broken one until it was fixed then fly. Only problem is that they took forever getting the pilot up there to jet 2. All the while Flightdeck control was telling me to shut down jet 2 so it could be moved, after about 30 seconds it became yelling at me to shut down jet 2. But I was able to stall them long enough for the new pilot to get out there and do musical jets and on there way. Risky since FD control are all really high ranking people, but I came through in the end.
So yeah, thats about it.
But speaking of my job, I was able to be in charge of my squadrons flight operations for the first time ever(not full time, the guy in charge of me did it most of the time). This is both cool and sucky in tandem. It's cool because it means somebody somewhere trusts me enough to do it(and it is no small undertaking), and sucky because there are not many people who can do that job and I'm now a prime candidate to be sent to the boat more often than not.
Pretty much what it entails is mediating between my squadrons controllers who sit inside with a "plan"(not really a plan since it always falls to shit and is up to whoever is doing the job that I did to make their whims a reality) and flight deck control who manages everything on the flightdeck who says yes or no to anything you are trying to do. It can get pretty crazy, but it's an ego boost to know that I can do it. The craziest part is when I had 2 jets sitting there with a pilot in each one(we'll call them jet 1 and 2). Jet 2 broke but the pilot inside still had some flying to do for the day, and the guy in jet 1 was done for the day in a working jet. But my squadrons controllers wanted a pilot that had yet to fly to get into the broken one until it was fixed then fly. Only problem is that they took forever getting the pilot up there to jet 2. All the while Flightdeck control was telling me to shut down jet 2 so it could be moved, after about 30 seconds it became yelling at me to shut down jet 2. But I was able to stall them long enough for the new pilot to get out there and do musical jets and on there way. Risky since FD control are all really high ranking people, but I came through in the end.
So yeah, thats about it.