Dustin Barbour

Today is Track Select for my class. We’re T-6 Complete as mentioned in a previous post and tonight we will be finding out which track we’ll be headed down… T-1s for heavies, T-38s for fighters/bombers, et cetera. I put T-1s first so it is something of a foregone conclusion that I will be flying that plane instead of the others. I didn’t fly well enough to put myself into a -38, but that’s alright. Those guys are getting shafted on assignments right now. So it’s probably for the best.

In an effort to give back to the parents/wives of students, the Air Force has Family Day on the same day as Track Select. The day begins in the morning with a breakfast social followed by formal brief. The families get to see what we go through every morning… shotgun questions, stand-up and the formal brief itself. Following that we had a brief with LtCol Hamilton who simply talked about our accomplishments and then handed the floor to Capt John Ryan who briefed us on the CAFB mission and the base’s history. Following that we got on a bus and headed out to a static display of the base’s aircraft and a short tour of the RSU. Mom enjoyed it a lot and was all smiles. It’s unfortunate that Dad couldn’t make it. He would have loved it. The highlight of the day was probably watching mom in the sim trying to stay centered on the runway during takeoff and subsequently trying to do loops and such. She was all over the place, but she had a blast. I got into the sim after her and showed her how it was supposed to look. Mr. Herring printed out the groundtracks of both flights… mine was naturally better. Mom kept both.

Later:
Track Select was at 5:00pm. It was a pretty spectacular night for a lot of people. Capt Nick Krajicek, the Doolittle flight commander, really went to bat for his flight and got three helos and three T-44s. That’s unheard of! The best part of the night was seeing the joy on Mitch Clapp’s face when he was given his first choice, a UH-1 to Fort Rucker, AL. He was something of a long-shot for it as he didn’t perform all that well in the T-6, but it happened and he was ecstatic. It was really heart-warming and I was truly happy for him. It made my night. I got my first choice, but that was something of a given. Not because I flew awesomely (haha), but rather because the T-1 Jayhawk is the easiest one to get into. I’m pretty excited for it. It is a really capable aircraft and will get me into some cool flying in the future… hopefully a C-17, KC-10, et cetera. There are a lot of options out of this track and time will tell what will be available. Either way, I’m excited to be going to the 48th FTS. Class starts tomorrow!