Posts tagged ‘Cessna 172’
WALT TRIZNA: PILOT TRAINING, PART II
I thought I would use the next series of posts to relate my experience while a member of the United States Air Force (1969-1973). I found my experience in the military to be rewarding. We will begin with my entering pilot training. For those who find these posts interesting you might want to read a past post about my time in college posted on 10/17/2025. This post leads into my time in the air force.
PILOT TRAINING, PART II
Every day we went to a classroom. We were tested on emergency procedures and then waited for out turn to fly. When not flying we also spent hours sitting in the cockpit of a T37 on the ground. The purpose was to facilitate ourselves with the location of all the instruments. This was so, that in a glance, we could see what was happening with the plane.
Along with classroom training on the ground there was a host of other training activities. One task was learning how to release yourself from a parachute harness when landing on a windy day. I think the enlisted men loved this training because they got to drag an office all over the ground. This training was done wearing an empty parachute harness with a rope attached. The other end of the rope was attached to a jeep being driven by an enlisted man the jeep began moving and off you went. The jeep did not go very fast but bumping along. The uneven ground was not much fun and did not make the release easy.
There was training conducted in an altitude chamber. They let us experience rapid decompression. They then let us become hypoxic. We teamed up with both of us wearing oxygen at an altitude where they would be required. One guy would take off his mask while the other kept an eye on him. After he passed out he would put his partner’s mask back on. This was so you got a feeling for what it was like when you were about to pass out from lack of oxygen.
Another bit of training was jumping into a swimming pool wearing your flight suit and swim to the edge of the pool and get out. Thankfully you were allowed to wear sneakers instead of the combat boots you would normally wear while flying.
Then there was the ejection seat experience. There was an ejection seat mounted on a vertical rail. Now in the T37 there was something like a large shotgun shell to get you out of the plane. The next trainer was the T38, a supersonic jet and this plane had a rocket attached to the ejection seat. You could eject on the ground if you had enough forward speed.
There was another difference between the two trainers. The T38 stood taller than the T37. There was a set of cables at the end of the runway because in the event you could not stop the plane the cable would stop you. This was only for the T38. You see the T37 was a lot shorter than the T38. If you were headed for the cables in a T37 you were instructed to run the plane off the runway. You see, because the T37 was much shorter than the T38 the cables would not stop the plane. Rather, they would roll over the nose of the plane and shear off the canopy, along with the head who was unfortunate enough to be sitting in the cockpit.
Then there was parachute training. The first step was learning how to fall. This was done using a platform about three feet off the ground into a pit which looked like a mixture of sawdust and mulch. You stood on the platform and jump, falling the way you had been instructed. I think in this training I used neck muscles I had never used before because when I woke up the next morning I could not raise my head.
Next came a touch of reality in parachute training.
WALT TRIZNA: PILOT TRAINING, PART I
I thought I would use the next series of posts to relate my experience while a member of the United States Air Force (1969-1973). I found my experience in the military to be rewarding. We will begin with my entering pilot training. For those who find these posts interesting you might want to read a past post about my time in college posted on 10/17/2025. This post leads into my time in the air force.
PILOT TRAINING, PART I
Not many days after graduation from Oklahoma State University I was instructed to report for pilot training at Craig AFB outside Selma, Alabama.
The class was made up of twenty to twenty-five, and the number steadily decreased as time went on. Most were air force second lieutenants with one Marine first lieutenant and three Iranian officers.
This was 1969 and this country was training Iranian pilots. There was one thing different with their future than with the Americans. They entered pilot training as officers with a career commitment. If they washed-out they still had a career commitment but as enlisted men.
The leader of the class was Captain Rotella. He had been a navigator and now wanted to be a pilot. I heard that after he graduated from pilot training he was assigned to C130 training. He was on an orientation ride on a C130 when an engine fell off the plane. The plane crashed and all aboard were killed.
The first plane we flew in pilot training was the T41 which was a Cessna 172. A four-seat plane slightly larger than the two-seat Cessna 150 on which I learned to fly. Interestingly, we went to a civilian airport where the planes were kept and were taught by civilian instructors. This makes a lot of sense because you wouldn’t want students flying prop planes while there were jets, also being flown by students, zooming around.
Since most of us already knew how to fly we were soloing in no time.
There is one incident I recall while flying solo in the T41 that was rather unusual. I was flying in the traffic pattern on the downwind leg when I received a radio call to exit the traffic pattern. Turns out there was an Iranian student also in the traffic pattern who was radioed to leave the pattern a couple of time and did not respond. They told me where he was, and I looked behind me to my left and a little below and there he was. We were flying in formation in the traffic pattern. With, of course, no knowledge of how to fly in formation. Things would have gotten very interesting when it came time to bank and enter the base leg. I exited the traffic pattern immediately.
Once we completed our T41 training it was on to the T37. This was a small twin engine straight-winged jet and flight training was now at the base. I found that flying a jet was much different than flying a propeller plane. More on that latter.
Walttriznastories's Blog 