stress off--weekend on

Small victories are nice. Even though I had been certified as a day flight lead, I still had to accomplish a specific flight at night to become night "blessed." This was the night 4 v 2 Opposed Surface Attack sortie. This is generally the flight that you accomplish on your day cert. ride, but the night specific one poses a few more challenges. I wasn't worried about the flight itself, but since there are so many more contingencies with flying at night I knew it would be more difficult to brief and fly.
Basically, an opposed SAT flight is this: you take off as a 4 ship...you go to a holding or "marshalling" point out of the simulated war zone. You "push" at a specific time so you can make a TOT "time over target" with your weapons in the target area. On the way in the red air (at least 2 other f-16's acting as the enemy jets) press in your direction and you have to react by shooting them w/missiles, etc. This part can be very tricky since you have to weigh going to merges and "mixing it up" versus continuing to the target and getting your bombs off. After you defeat the air threat you continue to the target and drop your bombs--which could be a variety of different weapons depending on what the flight lead weaponeered and what the target type was. Oh, I forgot to mention that as you cross into enemy territory there are multiple SAMS (surface to air missiles) that can take shots at you. We simulate this and execute threat reactions to defeat the missiles.
Once you are off target the objective is to get out of the threat area and back to good guy land. Now, the Red air adversaries prosecute you again as you attempt to leave. The goal is to get home, so you kill the air threat and leave.
At night, this is all a bit more difficult. You're flying with Night Vision Goggles and flying tactics and formations may be altered by the flight lead. Weather and adverse NVG conditions can sometimes make it very difficult to see where everybody in the formation is. Sometimes somebody in your formation will go "blind" (losing the visual on their element mate) and this can take alot of time to get back together and may alter your attack tactics.
Well, I didn't want to bore you. I'm just glad that flight is over and now I can fly for a while without being evaluated constantly. I have today off. So my stress level dropped back to normal levels---and I'm going to enjoy this one.
I'm also enjoying the fact that my friend "Artie" aka, Alex is just starting the FLUG at his base in Japan. Now I just get to sit back and tell him stories about how I was the big clown at certain points in the FLUG. This will just stress him out more since he knows he'll be putting on his own big red shoes and big red nose too....
Pilots always say that when you screw up you are a "clown."
Artie, my only advice to you: "BANZAI!!"