fsxnp asked about FCLP (I'll get some more info on that later) here is a story about Goshawk T-45C carrier quals:
First trap: All alone March 19th, 2010 | Photography | Posted by Erik Hildebrandt
http://militarytimes.com/blogs/navygold/?s=catapult"The biggest events of our lives are celebrated and shared with friends and family.
For most of us, having a child, getting married or graduating from school ranks among our top achievements. For young ensigns, the day of days is universally etched into your psyche the first time you look down over the nose and see the outline of the carrier you are about to land on. And so it was a few weeks ago, off the coast of Florida, for the latest students from Training Wing Two, based at Kingsville, Texas, and Training Wing One in Meridian, Miss.
On a spectacular Sunday morning, I rode along in the back seat of a nearly new Boeing T-45C with Cmdr. Gerald “Sticky” Murphy, skipper of VT-22. He was leading a division (4-ship) formation made up of three students who were going to the boat for the first time in hopes of earning their initial CQ (carrier qualification). Besides leading the students out to the carrier 80 miles off the Jacksonville coast, Sticky would serve as safety lead, orbiting overhead to make sure students kept safe intervals and hit the proper pattern landmarks around the boat. As flight lead, we were the first plane that Boss cleared down for a “trap,” so that we could get a full bag of gas and launch right away to cover the students.
As a photographer, I was trying to capture the decisive “moments” that would illustrate the magnitude of such an accomplishment by these “kids,” but what I ended up realizing is that this entire evolution is one of the loneliest tests of individual skill I have ever observed. Each student is flying solo. After three touch-and-go passes at the carrier, they lower the hook and start the process of making 10 arrested landings, each trap followed by their first catapult launch back into the pattern. Even by the standards of seasoned carrier pilots, the concentration of sensory, physical and mental requirements is borderline overwhelming. For these first-timers, the stressors and demands are unprecedented.
As Sticky and I orbited overhead watching the students struggle with the “ball,” the pitching deck, the “burble” and the comms, it became more and more obvious to me just how alone it must feel for these students flying by themselves around the carrier with less than 200 hours total time as pilots. After almost an hour overhead, we hit our Bingo fuel state and headed back to the beach, alone, just like the students would as their own fuel was spent in the pattern. We entered the break back at Cecil Field, alone, and taxied back to the line, shut down and then walked back to the ready room, alone.
One by one, the students from our flight and the multitude of other flights that day trickled back to the field. Some had done well, others did not do well at all.
Regardless of how they did at the boat, none of them was met by friends or family, or even by instructors or fellow students. They simply came back to the field and logged their flight time and number of traps with the duty desk as if it were just another day. But as everyone who has been to the boat, entered the break and slammed onto the deck in the controlled crash that is an arrested landing knows, it is not just a normal day.
These students are no longer just normal pilots, they are Tailhookers in the U.S. Navy."
http://militarytimes.com/blogs/navygold/files/2010/03/EHS0737.jpg
