Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Check out my Slide Show!

posted by Richard A @ 8:37 AM

Monday, February 05, 2007

Back to California memories

After almost a year sidetracked, I guess it's time to continue on here. This current year (real-time) has brought back memories of earlier California memories. My Aunt Blanche finally passed away this past March (which is about the time my writing hiatus began.) She was almost 98! Too bad my body is built like the squatty, stalwart (Dutch) side of the family -- I might be able to get all my writing done by MY 90th birthday! Guess that means there's no time like the present to get "a round tuit."

I should probably close-out the California chapter of my life with jumbled memories of lots of images I still see in my mind's eye. For some reason, big-bullet-boobed, slender Patty across the street protrudes into my consciousness right now. Raquel & I joined Patty & her husband to see a performance of the musical, "Hair," touring from New York City. Remarkable at THAT time, the players climaxed the show with a lengthy nude musical act venturing out into the audience where I saw only the 4th or 5th real set of female pubic hair I was ever to see! (Playboy & Penthouse magazines notwithstanding -- THEY did not show pubic hair then!)

There was an off-duty, night, cross-country, road rally with directions designed to trip up even a seasoned real-world combat-experienced navigator. "Discover California!" was the first and last road rally I will ever go on -- the only reason we didn't go all the way south to Fresno instead of northeast to Folsom was that my impending sense of doom made me retrace the directions, find my directions-reading error, and drive straightaway to Folsom to find the pizza parlor we knew we were supposed to wind up at!

Next, I'm recalling the image from an official AF photo where I was being awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross & another Air Medal at a ceremony when I first arrived at Mather AFB (Sacramento) after post-Vietnam leave. My auditory memory smiles to hear the tinkling of little bells tied to the shoelaces of my baby, Ivan, which were clearly audible in spite of the simultaneous, loudspeaker reading of the decorations' citations. That is a very, dear memory.

I suppose the way to get out of California is to mention another awards ceremony just before my departure. Many of us who were ready for normal rotation were receiving recognition and thanks at a Commander's Call for all we had done in giving up many overtime hours to put the new nav training program together over the preceding 2 years. I was awarded the Air Training Command's Master Instructor Certificate for many hours & top ratings in teaching all phases of the USAF Undergraduate Navigator Training Program (classroom, simulator, and flight missions.) I still display that certificate many years later decoupaged into a PermaPlaque on my wall! I guess it didn't really matter that I almost was busted on a flight-exam checkride because I couldn't get my squadron to issue me the new, fire-retardant flightsuit all of us were supposed to have received. Anyway, I was not going to be flying for at least 4 more years since I had been selected for an AF-sponsored Master's degree in engineering psychology at a civilian institution, Texas Tech University in Lubbock!

posted by Richard A @ 12:46 PM

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

FYI -- How come this Blog's entries have slowed down!?

When you see this blog's postings have a large time gap between them, something else is obviously interrupting my posts here. I have other things competing for available time like everyone, of course. Trips to the capital city, taking a motorcycle-riding course, doctor's appointments, med refill trips which take all day, AND making entries on my secret blogs. Only ONE of my blogs is really secret -- no one but me knows where it is, so far! But if you stumble across it, you WILL recognize familiar names from THIS blog. The "secret Blog" is where I put all the "touchier" posts I will eventually add to this story in final editing for a publishing house or printer's.

As usual in life, the SECRET stuff is the most volatile! Secrets hold power more when they are kept secret just because they ARE kept secret! But "the Truth will out!" You shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make ME free! But it might liberate you some, too! Good luck -- keep on looking!

posted by Richard A @ 12:41 PM

Monday, January 09, 2006

Instructor at Nav School: Family Life

Working 60 - 80 hour weeks for Uncle Sam meant precious little free time! The only military leave (authorized vacation time) I was able to take for the last 2 years as an Instructor was completely spent doing only take-home midterm and final exams for my Master's program in counseling psychology. I earned A's in 9 out of 10 courses because of the quality of the typed term papers and typed answers to multiple essay-question tests. Exams & papers were much more time consuming compared to the one course with in-class exams from a social worker who insisted all of us students go to his office downtown for class instead of meeting at the base like all the other instructors. Unfortunately, the civilian college didn't issue student course critiques like Nav School did. That instructor is probably still making teaching mistakes & misusing students because of no feedback. He was the only instructor available for that required course or I might have DROPPED it to take later with someone better. I had never dropped a course before -- it was not allowed at the AF Academy! I still did not understand the politics of GPA-building at civilian universities, even after a BA & a year of nav training and advanced school.

Many activities that others would have seen as routine or normal had to be turned into our family's "special outings." Going to a big parade downtown, driving all around Sacramento in a road rally that the Instructor Sq'dn sponsored ending in a Folsom eatery, other squadron-sponsored activities like student vs instructor soccer games and dress-uniform dinings-in or dinings-out, visiting Aunt Blanche & Uncle Ken in North Sacramento, driving to nearby Davis to Grandma Affonso's nursing home til she was 94, etc. Ivan was not yet in preschool so Raquel was well-occupied most of the time taking care of him which she said she wanted anyway, not to work outside the home.

If Raquel had not gotten herself pregnant before I went to Vietnam (she did not consult me), it would not have bothered me at all for her to have finished her college degree or found a job. I counseled her in a debrief for one of my Master's classes in career counseling that she was well inclined to a career in nursing, child care administration, or elementary school teaching. She said she preferred staying at home, instead. In our on-base housing neighborhood, there were a few other faculty & staff officers' wives with whom she formed fast friendships. At that time, she clearly preferred the domestic life which did not put many demands on her. I found out later that she had NOT stopped watching soap operas ("novelas" in Mexican parlance) as she had promised. The physiologist's wife next door seemed to like her afternoon wine a little too much & I wonder now about Raquel's frequent chats with her. (Raquel just never mentioned anything she didn't want discussed--I also found out later.) Another friend was the sexy blonde wife of the pilot across the street. She had the biggest bullet-shaped boobs of any slender woman on-base -- Raquel might have thought they would rub off on her, somehow. I wish we'd have thought about breast implants -- it might have made a difference for Raquel's psyche. But they were not openly available or talked about back then -- like so many other things.

Thankfully, weekends were our own as instructors at Nav School! We had time to spend together then with little interruption. We made the mistake of seldom having private time going out without our new little son, though. We had been forced to get married before ever having spent any significant amount of time as a couple. We fell into the common-sense mistake of viewing family life as something excluding a separate couple life (except for the bedroom). We DID see each other at least once a day -- because all flights took off and landed at the same base we lived on. Even if I was flying early or late, I saw Raquel at least when she was sleeping. (She never got up with me to fix us breakfast during my work-week; this established a pattern that lasted for 20 years.) But all things seemed pretty normal for an AF couple whose husband was working very hard to advance in his professional career at the same time he maintained and guided his family of adulthood through a new environment.

posted by Richard A @ 11:40 AM

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Teaching Nav School, Part 2
[Sorry for current posting delays -- I'm still involved in a total move of furniture & household goods to a new town and new home. By myself.]

The last half of my Nav Instructor teaching tour assigned me to the Course Development and Instructional Systems Development Branches of the Undergraduate Navigational Training school. I wound up becoming one of the best-trained young officers on-base schooled in SAT (Systems Approach to Training) and ISD (Instructional Systems Development). We were just beginning to rewrite the complete nav training program using the principles and procedures of those cutting-edge education-development systems! Long story short, the job at the squadron level turned into a Wing Staff-level job for 3 of us very young Captains. We were becoming the 3 key project managers of the development of a complete rewrite of the 9-month long (6-15 hours per day) USAF Navigation Training program. We were to use the Systems Approach to develop ALL the instruction for a 9-month training program to include much academic (classroom "platform") instruction, simulator training mission scenarios, part-task trainer & learning center (multimedia) missions, and 40 inflight training missions and instruction.

This was the only place in the world where USAF navigators were taught how to navigate aircraft. We also trained air navigation students from many foreign countries (I had Vietnamese, Danish, and German AF students.) Air navigation is more difficult & dangerous than surface or sea navigation because an airplane travels much faster (200 - 600+ MPH) than water or ground vehicles! Life-or-death decisions to keep aircraft in safe areas/routes/altitudes are part of every military flight. Correct navigation is certainly a critically-important part of every flight -- the life or death of MANY people (not just the aircrew members) depend on it.

By being in a Wing Staff position, we still performed one or two days' flight duties per week and ratio instructor duties for trainers. But all our other time was so filled with re-writing and revising and coordinating other re-writers of instructional materials, we had no time to do "platform teaching" anymore, and were relieved of those duties which were the responsibilities of squadron-level instructors. The whole Nav Training program was under a very, tight suspense to get all the new training materials developed in conjunction with each other and with the Systems Approach and off to printing presses all over the country in order to be able to produce all the instructor manuals, student study guides and other printed materials for each course needed for student use in about 18 months (when the new jet navigation-trainer aircraft would arrive to start training students.)

The T-43 was a completely new aircraft coming into the AF inventory and it didn't even have a "Dash-1" technical order in existence for reference to write the instructional materials when we first started writing the new program. The plane was being built as we were writing the program so there were constant rewrites dictated by revisions to and further development of the airplane. Granted, the T-43's basic superstructure and flying systems were those of a Boeing 737 so, at first glance, a pilot writing the Request For Proposals to acquire the new aircraft might think it would be easy to use as a training aircraft. Yes, easy to train the 2 rated pilots who had to fly 12 navigation students and their nav instructors because the PILOTS' systems were primarily identical to commercial airlines' Boeing-737 flight & aircraft systems.

However, the MISSION of the aircraft was to train 12+ nonrated navigation students on each flight so they could BECOME rated navigators, awarded their wings certifying competency to fly and navigate safely without supervision. The location and appearance of each piece of new modern navigation equipment for each student nav position was only a flat drawing on a lifesize blueprint when we started writing this program. We started at least a year behind where we needed to be because there were no operating manuals on any of the the new navigation equipment which filled the mission-relevant portion of the new aircraft. For months, there were no written operating procedures for us to turn into training materials for even how to turn each piece of student nav equipment on. I am omitting many details here. The only way the new nav program got completed on time I attribute to endless extra hours throughout TWO YEARS OF UNPAID OVERTIME BY MANY DEDICATED YOUNG OFFICERS WHO WERE INSTRUCTOR NAVS WRITING THE PROGRAM. I'm talking 60 - 80 hours per week regularly worked by many young officers who had wives and families whose lives were also sacrificed to put this program into operation on time.

If you haven't been in the military in the last 40 years, you probably don't realize how much of their "spare time" U.S. military people have to voluntarily sacrifice to do the best possible job to keep your country's defense robust for your protection. The military doesn't pay anyone for overtime work, and I didn't get any medal out of 4 years of long, hard work. But I am proud to have put an excellent 9-month training program into being "from scratch." I learned so much about putting an education & training program together, I know I could do a great job as a University Dean or CEO anywhere. But, I will have to be satisfied with just remembering my students and other friends. I have always cared warmly about my students and I loved teaching them. I think they probably remember me fondly, too.

posted by Richard A @ 4:19 PM

Sunday, November 20, 2005

4 Years Teaching Nav School, Part I

Well, we made it to Sacramento! Think singing: "California, here we come -- Right back where I started from!" Yes -- Richard's birthplace! Regular visits to Aunt Blanche & Uncle Ken who lived there. Occasional visits from Babe, MY mother, who lived in Ventura, down south -- she was the baby of her family of origin causing her nickname and a feeling of entitlement to self-indulgence that never helped her in the adult world. (Too bad -- That self-centeredness also alienated me. Very different than how I was raised after age 8 by my father and stepmother who probably should have indulged me a little, at least.)

Reconnecting with my young-childhood "hometown" (a rare treat for a military "brat"), my new family of adulthood would go to Mass in the downtown Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament where I was baptized and confirmed. We toured through the Capitol building's detailed county window displays -- and seated Ivan on top of the lifesize California grizzlies that used to guard the western exterior steps to the Capitol. Whatever happened to those earthbound Ursa that inspired my later love-poem, "Zodiac Emigres"?

Part I of this instructor assignment was the first two years after returning from Vietnam. Part II was the last two years. The first two years, I was a Nav Instructor in one of the 3 Nav Training Squadrons for brand new students commissioned into the Air Force. The "Undergraduate Navigator Training" (UNT) consisted of classroom lessons (mostly lecture-style), simulators and part-task trainers, and actual flight missions. Air Training Command instructor navs personally instructed & checked the work of 2-3 students on each of 40 separate flight missions in the syllabus. Most were practice missions perfecting new skills using different navigation techniques and equipment; a few were "check rides," inflight practical examinations to show proficiency with that phase of navigation. We also monitored and gave one-to-one instruction in the simulators/trainers.

Flight mission days were longer days for the navs than for the pilots who were truly just airborn "bus drivers" for those missions. We all flew together on one plane with 2 pilots, 3 instructors, and up to 9 students tracing a giant, horizontal "L" in the sky known as "Overland South." The route went toward Los Angeles but turned east over the Tehachapi Mtns heading east over the desert to Kingman, Arizona; then, we turned the old T-29 twin-engine, prop-plane around to retrace the route back to Sacramento!

Nav students took turns being "Lead Student" giving the new heading directions to the pilots once they figured out where the aircraft was and which direction they needed to have the plane turned to get back on the course's centerline. The first missions in the program emphasized DR (dead reckoning) and map reading from the air. Then they learned to "fix" (identify their aircraft's precise known location on a map) using other sources of navigation: radarscope interpretation, day celestial with the sun and moon, night celestial with the stars, combined low-level map reading and radar fixing, and finally out over the Pacific far, far away from the apparent security of being able to land if there were engine trouble. Overwater navigation combined multiple navigation aids & techniques to get precise fix positions: LORAN, pressure-pattern, day & night celestial, and even radar.

Well, that was Part I for 2 years! I kept very, very busy with work trying to do an excellent job as one of the very few 1st-Lieutenant instructor navs on the UNT faculty! (Nav School officials seemed to want some of us assigned "hot from the war zone" so it turned out to be an involuntary assignment which set my life's attachment to teaching and academia!) I did notice after the first year that the squadron had started to schedule me to fly exclusively as a Night Celestial flight instructor -- like on the flying schedule 4 nights a week for 3 months in a row! (14 - 16 hour duty days.)

I finally asked the scheduler and flight commander how come I was flying at night so much? The answer was that most of the other instructors were taking night courses on-base to earn their Master's degrees in management from Golden Gate College. Since AF supported officers' wishes to continue into higher degree education, the squadron had chosen that way to help, and scheduled those instructor navs seeking off-duty Master's degrees for only the day schedule flights! (That left their evenings open to take graduate degree courses in base classrooms available for that purpose.)

I went to the Base Education Office the very next day I was not flying at night to see what was available. Turned out, Chapman College (now Chapman University) was just starting a Master's program in counseling psychology, and I had been a psych major at the University of Denver! There was no guarantee that their program would actually gain enough students at Mather AFB in Sacramento to ever graduate students, but there was a chance (and it would get me off the night-flying schedule able to develop myself in an area of academic studies I loved). Besides, Chapman was fully accredited, and I could always transfer any coursework elsewhere if the program didn't continue on-base. SIGN ME UP, PROFESSOR!

In fact, that did get me off the night-flying schedule to accommodate taking my classes. I began to fly more overwater daytime or day-night flights, and I became the Course Director for the academic Overwater Navigation course. I worked well over 40 hours a week for the AF, you can be sure (more like 60+). But I still got straight A's in my off-duty courses until a TDY (temporary duty) interrupted 2 required courses I had been commuting to Beale AFB in Marysville, CA to complete (2 hours driving each way).

A communication glitch led the civilian instructor to file B's for me instead of Incompletes as would have been proper. I finished the course requirements by mail from San Antonio during off-duty hours but was never able to make contact to get my B's turned back into the A's I had really earned. I'm still unhappy about that because I had really earned a 3.9 GPA instead of a 3.7 but was not given credit for it. Please pardon me for giving myself such credit here; having flunked 2 courses in one 25-semester-hour Spring term as a Cadet at the Air Force Academy led to my being academically dismissed & stills weighs heavy on me. My Chapman instructor was a civilian who was still finishing his doctoral degree somewhere else and I lost track of how to contact him because of the intense workload at Mather which was to increase in Part II of that tour of duty. (See the next post.)

posted by Richard A @ 6:48 AM 2 comments

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Laredo to Yosemite in a jam-packed VW Bug!

Well, I got 15 more days added to my 45-day leave! Everyone built up LOTS of extra leave time since we couldn't take 30 days' worth during our year's tour-of-duty. With Raquel in the front seat and Baby Ivan in the back seat bassinette surrounded by lots of "stuff," I hunkered down in my VW's cockpit for about the sixth of many married-to-the-military, cross-country drives. My six-year-old, German-import, 4-banger did not have the pickup of the occasional AF truck I drove for off-duty volunteer work in Vietnam. Later, this little VW was to slow waaay down into 2nd & 1st gears as we climbed the long, upgrades into the back door of California -- Mono Lake was still a cold, high, isolated entry into the Yosemite descent. No border checks, either! Granted, I might have been thinking a little like I was still in Southeast Asia.

Why THAT route? Well, we didn't have the Internet in those days so I couldn't research the entry rules for the State of California like now. In addition to our first suitcases ever packed together & lots of 1970-era disposable diapers, we had the VW packed with many, unopened liter bottles (only $2.40 each) of Bacardi passed from Mexico into Texas over the previous 50 days! We needn't have worried -- California was not going to add CA tax onto the 50-cent Texas stamp already paid for. California, the land of fruit & nuts, only wanted to check their borders to prevent the smuggling of fresh fruit from without to within. Hell, we were only "rum-runners" to them. (Not really, but I had heard sheriffs in the "dry" counties of TX and GA used to arrest people driving through for "bootlegging" doing the same thing! I didn't know about California and I didn't want any bottles broken on the spot of an arrest!)

posted by Richard A @ 6:59 AM 3 comments