Following the planning class, we had a class on the computer network in the Station. Like the Shuttle all the laptops are networked together. There are actually two networks - one in the Russian segment and one in the US segment. These two networks are connected together so that you can pretty much be anywhere in the Station and have access to the electronic tools you need to do your job.

Monday afternoon we got the results back from our test last week. It turns out I did not do as well as I had thought. I made a couple of silly mistakes. There were questions that I definitely knew the answer to, but somehow I put down the wrong thing. I apparently had an attack of reading the questions incorrectly. I hate that. But, at least, I did well enough that I do not require remedial training. . . Our last activity for the day was a review of what is going on during a Shuttle entry from an aerodynamics perspective. We have had a lot of classes and simulation sessions that cover bits and pieces of an entry, however, we haven't had the big picture for awhile on what the aerodynamics are and what the software is trying to do. So, we asked the trainers to have a review session for us to help us put it all together. I thought it was definitely good to have this session. Sometimes our training is so spread out it can be hard to keep the needed continuity between classes. Every once in awhile a big picture review is helpful.

Tuesday morning I had a hands-on class dealing with some of the computer tools used on-board the Station. We learned on the ins and outs of clicking around to call up and navigating through procedures. It sounds simple, but there are a lot of "features" in the software tool. Quite often you may be directed from one procedure to another and back again or you might be working your way through the logic flow of a malfunction procedure or you might get interrupted in what you are doing and you need to be able to keep track of what you have done. I am actually quite impressed with the software. There have certainly been a lot of improvements since the last time I dealt with the Station procedures.

After that class I had the second half of my annual physical. I have been pronounced fit as a fiddle. I suspected as such, but it always nice to have someone "in the business" say so. In the afternoon our class had another preparatory class for our geology training field trip. This one was on geomorphology landforms, or rather, the geology associated with they way the land looks; what you can learn by studying the lay of the land. You can see old ocean and lake shores by the way rocks are positioned; you can tell where floods were in the past also by how rocks are situated; and you can tell a lot about what happened in the past by the shape of things. Unfortunately, I did not get to see much of this class. We had a fire drill about thirty minutes into it (we seem to have a lot of those these days). When we were finally allowed back into the building I "had" to leave since I had a T-38 flight scheduled. I'll watch the video tape later.

We flew over to the Acadiana airport in Louisiana. I did most of the flying on this flight. Most of the time it was good, but I still do not have a good feel for how much to move the throttles or how quickly or slowly the planes reacts to throttle changes. So, that can make for some rather entertaining approaches. When we landed in Acadiana, I discovered that my primary flight instructor form Pensacola was there. He was on a training flight with one of his current students. That was neat running into him like that. He is teaching in T-6's now since Pensacola doesn't use the T-34's for training anymore. I challenged him to a race, but for some reason he was not interested. Not even when I promised to not go faster than the speed of sound. . .

We were scheduled to have a science class Wednesday morning on global environmental change. Unfortunately the instructor was not able to make it for some reason, so our class was cancelled to be rescheduled at some future date. So, I spent my morning reviewing for my evaluated single systems training class that I was to have in the afternoon. I was pretty tired last night after all the flying. My plan was to study for my sim session last night, but I fell asleep while I was reading, so I did not get as much studying done as I wanted. Good thing the morning class was cancelled. At any rate, the evaluated simulation was on the procedures associated with malfunctions in the Shuttle's reaction control system, i.e., problems in the small jets that are used for attitude control. I think the sim lesson went well.

Much to my surprise, my Thursday schedule was completely free - no scheduled classes. I am not sure how that happened. I took advantage of all the free time by using it for study. I started my morning at the gym like I seem to do each day these days. After a short detour to mow my lawn, I spent the rest of the day studying the T-38 flight manual. Each year we have to take a written proficiency exam (open book) and a written instrument flight exam on or about our birthday. In addition to the written tests, we have to have a proficiency flight test. Since my birthday is coming up, I used today to go through the T-38 books and work on my tests. It took most of the day and evening, but I got them nearly completed.

Friday was mostly a Station training day. I did have a Russian lesson first thing in the morning. After that, we had a familiarization session of all the Station hardware. This class was taught in one of the Station mock-ups, so we were able to see what the hardware looks like while the instructors were describing it. Immediately after that class we had a lesson on what is termed a Station "plug-in-plan." Believe it or not, there is a lot to plugging in equipment to power them for operations. The last thing you want to do is have a short circuit somewhere and take down a bunch of equipment that is being used. Or, worse, cause a spark and a fire. So, there are many ins and outs to sorting out what you can plug in where. And, to make matters more complicated, the US side of the house has 120 volt DC electricity and the Russian side has 28 volts. The Shuttle is 28 volts. Between the crew and the ground someone has to keep track of what equipment can be plugged in where and how much power is being drawn at each plug. Luckily, most of the plugs are designed such that you can not plug a piece of US equipment into the Russian side or vice a versa. Our last class of the day was a familiarization session in the full up Station simulator. We will be spending a lot of time in there in these coming days.