This was a review, flying, and qualification sort of week. After the standard Monday morning staff meeting, I was in the single systems trainer going over the ascent and entry procedures associated with the maneuvering jets on the Shuttle during the launch phase of a flight. This was a review class in preparation for the upcoming qualification exam. Holy, moly was it a lot to take in. I swear I did not recall half of the procedures that we reviewed. Hmmm, it should be a "fun" qual. . .

In the afternoon I had a T-38 flight. We zipped over to Beaumont and back. We would have gone farther away, but we wanted to get back before the bad weather hit. The trick-or-treaters are not going to have fun tonight.

On Tuesday I had a fun simulation in the full up Shuttle simulator. This was entitled "Deorbit Prep Back Out." Our crew of four ran through all the procedures that are done to reconfigure the Shuttle should there be a wave-off just before landing. Well, a wave-off just before you do the deorbit burn for landing. . .   You might wave-off because of bad weather at the landing site, or you might have systems problems that need an extra day or two in space to sort out. At any rate, you re-power some equipment because you need it and you power down other equipment to save the cryogenics as you are likely getting quite low at this point. Once again, I went flying the afternoon. This time the weather was great and we went up to the northwest corner of Arkansas. They have good BBQ sandwiches there. It was a nice and quiet flight. My evening, like Monday night, was spent studying in preparation for the exams.

My first and only qualification test this week was on Wednesday. This one covered the computer systems. Interestingly enough, it was an oral exam rather than a practical test in one of the simulators. I did fine. Not great, but well enough. Just three more Shuttle qualifications to go. Following that test I was supposed to go to a debrief of the geology results from our training this summer, but had an opportunity for a lot of T-38 flight time, so I took it. I went with a couple of the pilots out to Edwards Air Force Base in California. They were going out there to do some Shuttle Training Aircraft training Thursday morning. It was a neat trip. We arrived in the late afternoon and spent the night in the Officers Quarters. I was put up in a room that was normally used for high ranking officers. We all were. The price was great and it was definitely a step above a Motel 6. Because the pilots were going out there for work related duties, they were "on orders" and their meals and hotel were paid for. I was just a backseater, so I had to foot my own bill, but it was worth it.

We flew back on Thursday. It took most of the day. A lot of the flying was in the clouds, which is tiring for me. We flew in formation most of the time. I tried my hand at it for awhile. It was really hard. I felt like I was caught in an expanding loop - each time I got behind the lead plane, I seemed to be farther behind, so it was harder to catch up and stay close. After awhile, the pilot was gracious enough to give me a break from flying (or, I could just have been making him sea-sick. . . ). I am definitely going to make my flight time for the quarter after all the flying I got this week.

Alas, no flying on Friday. I had a class in the morning on photography skills. I determined that I do not have any. For this class we used one of the fancy digital cameras in Shuttle mock-ups to get some practical skills. We covered things such as how to adjust your flash and how to take close up shots cleanly, as well as how to use some of the software on the laptops to download and/or manipulate the pictures. After that it was back to the single systems trainer to do some more review on the maneuvering jets. There is so much material we actually did not get finished in our review session on Monday. So, we worked in another session with the instructor.

Lastly for the week, I had a class on some Station hardware that is call the "common attach system." These are latches that certain bits and pieces of the station together. This class was held in one of the Station simulators and we covered the manual and automatic operations of said attach system.

And, that was my week.