The F-35C and the USS Nimitz

Well, I hope everyone's Thanksgiving holiday went well. It's been fairly busy for me since September and I've really appreciated it all, after going several months with barely any activity. I got quite the surprised when the US Navy invited me to witness their testing of the new F-35C Lightning II fighter. The plane was testing the launching and landing capabilities onboard the USS Nimitz.

It was extremely exciting/stressful for me, as this would be my first time landing and taking off on an aircraft carrier. I meet the Naval Air Forces PAO at NAS North Island, and we drove over to the passenger terminal. We boarded the C-2A Greyhound of the VRC-30, the Providers,  and took off over the Pacific for our flight of roughly 1 hr. The Nimitz was approximately 100 miles off of San Diego. They had been conducting the training for well over  a week, by the time we arrived.

The one thing I will say about the C-2A is that the passengers sit backwards, and there's only two small windows in the plane, so when we came into land, it was kind of like a roller coaster effect. Here we are going well over 100 mph, and then suddenly coming to a violent stop and being thrown back into your seat, and you are not seeing anything.

We landed safely onboard the Nimitz and were escorted to the Ready room, where we met several of the Lockheed Martin folks, the PAO of the boat and several other people. back up to the flight deck for a tour and an interview with one of the Test Pilots, and then back down to the officers galley, where we were able to conduct interviews with the Strike Groups admiral, the C.O. of the Nimitz, the Test Pilots again and the people from Lockheed Martin. We then broke for a short lunch.

It was then time for us to see and photograph the F-35C launch and recover, so it was up many, many flights of ladders (Navy speak for stairs), and we finally found ourselves on Vulture's Row. Here we were able to see 2 different launches and 1 recovery before we headed back down to the ready room and got ready to head back to NAS North Island.

 

 

 

 

The launching of an aircraft off of an Aircraft Carrier is a very violent action. You go from a dead stop to well over 120 miles per hour and upwards at an extreme angle. In the C-2A, you again are violently thrown forwards and it seems to last forever, but then suddenly your airborne and leveling out. The rest of the flight was uneventful and we landed safely back on base. The crew of the Providers gave me a patch recognizing my first time experience with the Carrier.

 

 

 

I'm scheduled to be back onboard one of the carriers in January, 2015 to stay for a few days to cover the flight operations out to sea. I can't wait!