Today, I got to pretend I was landing on an aircraft carrier. I flew with our squadron CO, and we went to an airport that has an Fresnel Lens Optical Landing System. Commonly reffered to as the lens, the system consists of a series of lights and fresnel lenses mounted to a gyroscopically stabilized platform. The lenses focus the light into narrow beams that are directed into the sky at various angles. The pilot will see different lights depending on the aircraft's angle of approach. If the plane is right on target, the pilot will see and amber light, doubbed the "meatball," in line with a row of green lights. If the amber light apears above the green lights, the plane is coming in too high; if the amber light appears below the green lights, the plane is coming in too low. If the plane is coming in WAY too low, the pilot will see red lights. This system is mainly used by naval aircraft when landing aboard an aircraft carrier. The airport we landed at today had one and an "aircraft carrier" deck painted on the runway. The CO is a Harrier pilot and is well versed in landing aboard ship. We did nine touch-and-go approaches using the meatball for alititude indication and the AOA (Angle-Of-Attack) indicator for airspeed. By the third landing, and after a great deal of coaching from the CO, I was making textbook AOA approaches to the "aircraft carrier" painted on the runway. It was a blast to land the same way jet pilots do when coming aboard ship... and I'm pretty good at it too.

Today marked my 150th landing in the T-34! I've been flying for just over two months so far and am about half-way through Primary training. I have had so much fun thus far. I'm currently in the middle of Precision Aerobatics and still have Formation Flying (Forms) and Radio Instruments (RIs) to look forward to. I've already been assigned my Form partner. He is one of my friends and lives in the same apartment complex as I do. We are starting to hit the books for Forms and have a lot of studying to do before our first flight together (probably next week). I should be done with PA's and Forms before Xmas, and I'll start RIs after the wedding in January. Good times!