week 7 - Mid Phase

I don't know why I've been some lame, but I haven't updated this thing in forever. Its been crazy busy, BUT we're no longer the baby class and are 1/3 of the way through phase II. I'll try to give a recap of some awesome stuff thats been goin on (I'll prolly work backwards) but if you have any questions let me know and I'll elaborate.
I can't tell you where these pics
came from, but this past week I went on my area solo. There

are established blocks of sky that you are assigned and you get to play around and do whatever you want!!! I think the the US military is the most dominating force ever because it is retarded. What makes them think I am capable of taking a high performance 300 knot aircraft, 30 miles away for over an hour. Whats even more retarded: three hours before that they took me up and showed me how to do advanced aerobatics. Ya, they demo'ed it once, let me try it once and signed me off to try it by myself, alone, with nobody else there. It was crazy. When you get to your area you have to report established, and I've heard rumors of people making the call inverted, so of course I had to give it a try. The problem with that is they don't teach you how to fly upside down and the plane definitely acts different inverted so I bout freaked out. I tried it again, and decided it best to call as I rolled inverted and continued rolling, since they have been taught me that. I did a ton of rolls and some loops but kept scaring the crap out of myself so I'd motor around for awhile getting my guts back together before doing it again. This pic didn't turn out as well as I wanted, but it kinda shows what we're doing. The sky was the clearest I've ever seen it, and the leaves are at their max neontisity - it was amazing. When I got back to base the winds were pretty strong and the pattern was packed with other aircraft, I had to break out twice because I didn't have enough spacing to land behind the guy in front of me. Once when I returned to the "starting point" at a high altitude I heard someone else say they were breaking out right below me, meaning he would be climbing to my current position. Surprisingly I didn't freak out, made a call to alert them of my position, they didnt' see me, but I found them and the the controller directed me to follow him in to re-enter. Its not much of a story, but it was exciting and as we made the spiraling decent back into the pattern I started humming the Top Gun attack music and made machine gun noises as I trailed behind him.
That was definitely the highlight of the past couple weeks (except for last weekend) because I hooked my mid-phase checkride a week ago. Its not really a BIG deal but its hard to shake that failure feeling, and if you don't get a hold of it quick things can easily snowball here and before you know it you're in over your head. The general mood in the flight was really low this week, as a lot of people were hooking checkrides and the ride prior to the check. We also had a guy drop out, he decided this wasn't the life he wanted. One of the nicer IPs reassured us that this is one of the ruffest parts of UPT. It is definitely an emotional roller coaster that gets you thinking about where you place your self worth. I've always wished less people would worry about failure, you should go all out and if its not enough, thats ok, there's nothing to be ashamed of. That definitely tastes different saying it to yourself. This week I think 4 of us will be soloing at once, we might have to go to an alternate channel and make rediculous radio calls. Can't wait for thanksgiving.