Besides OCS, API (or rather the combination of IFS, intermediate water survival and API that makes up every aviator’s first command experience) seems to be the biggest source of anxiety and questions from the sites un-winged members, often to the annoyance of the winged ones. Herse’s my $.02 on the Pensacola process. Maybe someone will even find it helpful if they happen upon the search bar. The training pipeline is constantly changing but my experience seems pretty standard from what I’ve heard throughout most of 2018 and probably all of 2019, that is unless the crowbar strikes again…
Checking in is straight forward. Be on time, have your papers, be in the correct uniform (service V. full dress know the difference) and look sharp from top to bottom, this is an informal inspection that can quickly become a formal one when/if Mr. Billy is unimpressed. Listen to what is being said by both the civilians and other Ensigns working in the office, write things down and ask questions. After that all you have to do for 2-4 weeks is be in the right place at the right time, which is never a secret to those who listen. You will come to learn that Flight Management is.... unique in its operations. Stuff gets confusing and messed up on a not infrequent basis. Cut them some slack, the students in there are for the most part unsure of whether they will even get the opportunity to train or have other unpleasant circumstances going on in their lives, turn over is very high and for some this may be the first thing like a job they've ever had. If that doesn't motivate some compassion and civility, a lesson you may quickly have the opportunity to learn is that even people of the same rank or below can make your life harder or easier depending on how you treat them, especially with admin. Also, buy a printer/copier/scanner at the NEX when you get here they're like $30 and one for a house of a few students is enough and I promise you, you will get your monies worth out of it. As one of my class mates put "I've spent more time printing out NKO's than i have flying", and that's only a fraction of the paperwork/documentation you'll wade through, often needed at short notice the night before. And buy a CAC reader for home while you're at it.
IFS is typically next after a few months wait for SNA’s and only a few weeks for SNFO’s, unless water survival needs bodies to run a full class or stand by as alternates. The only way to prepare for that is to either validate out by having a Private Pilot’s License which exempts you from the whole training, which I can’t see why you’d want to do. Or to take a private pilot ground course online or with a book and maybe even get even hours in a 172 or warrior. The latter is cheap, easy and could be a good way to get exposure to the material and make the ground school slightly less painful. Ground school is about 2 weeks and consists of almost all day every day studying and other required activities. Do all the assigned work and try your best to understand all the concepts you can, but at the end of the day it’s stupid to not use the gouge (as long as its quality) to get the upper hand on a process that would be incredibly difficult without it. But remember, only stage 1, 2&3 is known. The End of Course exam and FAA are random and you may or may not get almost the same questions or a bunch you’ve never seen before. The lesson here is wise use of gouge, and even though the current IFS director disagrees, the ATS director keeps the status quo for a reason. If you brush up with the Sporty’s App you should be fine. As for flying, have fun! Just do what the IP says and actually chair fly.
Also, IFS PINK SHEETS DO NOT COUNT AFTER API. This is what all new check-ins are told upon arriving at a TRAWING. That being said, don’t slack off and fail an exam because that still looks bad and any two failures result in a PRB, but if you get one pink sheet for having an unsat flight it isn’t going to affect you after leaving NASC, just remember the lesson learned. The IFS program is very inconsistent on how pink sheets are handed out in terms of flight activates and depending on the FBO you go to and which Officer you report in to at the IFS office you may or may not be given one for whatever happened during your flight.
Water survival is fun and a nice change of pace especially since it is no longer part of API’s 6 weeks. Whether or not you’re a good swimmer you should practice being in the water before hand and shoring up anything you may not be comfortable with, either the strokes (back, American crawl, sidestroke or breast), treading or prone floating. The pool used for the Class is owned by NASC and is open 4 days a week in the afternoons and evenings for swim lessons with MWR lifeguards. It’s a great way to get comfortable with the environment and get a workout. If you’re worried about the mile, practice laps and see what your time is. You’ve got 82ish minutes to swim the distance. Which all but the least buoyant students should have no problem with. For almost all of the events of the events you’ll be wearing a flight suit, fewer add on the boots and the final tread/float and a 75 yard swim you wear boots, suit harness, helmet, gloves and vest. These add weight and drag making it harder to do everything. If you’re not able to easily tread/float/swim in a swim suit this will be very challenging.
Pro tip: you can wear an undershirt and socks under the flight gear in the pool to prevent chafing. All the flight gear is old, most of it is odd sizes and it is all nasty from years of daily dips in the heavily chlorinated pool. During the mile (flight suit only) and all the boot swims the poorly fitting gear can really mess you up. I still have welts and scars on my ankles from the boots…. Also swim pink sheets are similarly disregarded after API but still can make life hard during API. Pink sheets are awarded for any roll/fail after the initial eval of swimming skills the first day.
And now the main event, API. I’ve heard from plenty of aviators, from Commanders down to JG’s in advanced, with a wide variety of backgrounds, degrees and dispositions. Some say it was the hardest portion of flight school, some say it was easy. And that’s just it, to each person it has its own challenges of varying difficulty. IMO it wasn’t as bad as it was built up to be, however I got my degree in Aviation and have had plenty of challenging study experiences during my education prior to the Navy, which made some of the more overwhelming days a bit more manageable. Then again I don’t think my degree made that much of a difference and by no means made API a cakewalk, I came out of it dead in the middle of the pack in terms of avg. test score. One of the class’s best performers had a degree in exercise physiology and she even claimed to be “bad at studying”, another was an international student from Italy who only learned English before coming to the US for training.
My takeaway was that all the instructors are doing their best to help you succeed and will stop only at giving the test away in order to get all the students to pass. Study the EO’s and pay attention to what the instructors stress, especially multiple times, and the wording they use to do it. Use this as an opportunity to hone your study habits, don’t be overconfident if you think you have it during class, put in the time and be confident when you sit down to the test and read the question carefully. The test questions can be straight forward to the point of being suspiciously easy or devilishly tricky. But over all else, it is entirely manageable and most everyone gets out of it just fine. It’s just something you have to put in the work for. Take it one day at a time and remember, this is by design an attrition program working to separate the wheat from the chaff and will not hesitate to do so.
As for the last 10 days, called Physio, it’s an even mix of PowerPoint lectures on land survival, and all physiological concerns of aviation and actual training covering parachute landing procedures on land and over water, the hypoxia training (which is no longer a depressurization training, but is simply a mask that gives you oxygen poor air) a mock ejection (read: carnival ride) and the dunker training and lead up evolutions. What gets people here is the initial swim/tread/float and Life preserver unit inflation. All students are required to swim 50 yards in full flight gear (suit, boots, gloves, helmet, G-suit, harness, vest and uninflated LPU) after which there is a 90 second tread and then a 90 second prone float or “drown proofing”. If you’re not a strong swimmer it is easy to become tired after the swim and tread than struggle to float and control you’re breathing. On top of that you must orally inflate your LPU while floating. The best thing to do here is remain calm and follow the training the survival staff gives you. Worst case you get rolled from your API class and undergo a week of remediation practice and then go again with the next weeks API class. As for the dunker, it’s fun. I hate being under water but I had a blast with the training. Everyone in my class passed the helo dunker with minimal difficulty and it was full of laughs and excitement. After that the last day of API is some flare and smoke signal training that takes all of an hour with the physio “test” which is a whole class effort (everyone gets 100) and is being phased out of the curriculum.
The next day you graduate and get sent to whatever TRAWING you belong to. SNA’s to either TW-5 in Milton or TW-4 in Corpus Christi and SNFO’s and Flight Docs to TW-6 Just down the road at Forrest Sherman Field on NAS Pensacola. SNFO’s Start training pretty quick unless a crop of flight docs cuts in front of you. SNA’s have as of this posting, a likely minimum of 4 months to wait in the various pools. This all changes with the tides and whatever CNATRA’s favorite color is this week so just sit back, study a little, don’t get fat and enjoy the money for nothing.
Checking in is straight forward. Be on time, have your papers, be in the correct uniform (service V. full dress know the difference) and look sharp from top to bottom, this is an informal inspection that can quickly become a formal one when/if Mr. Billy is unimpressed. Listen to what is being said by both the civilians and other Ensigns working in the office, write things down and ask questions. After that all you have to do for 2-4 weeks is be in the right place at the right time, which is never a secret to those who listen. You will come to learn that Flight Management is.... unique in its operations. Stuff gets confusing and messed up on a not infrequent basis. Cut them some slack, the students in there are for the most part unsure of whether they will even get the opportunity to train or have other unpleasant circumstances going on in their lives, turn over is very high and for some this may be the first thing like a job they've ever had. If that doesn't motivate some compassion and civility, a lesson you may quickly have the opportunity to learn is that even people of the same rank or below can make your life harder or easier depending on how you treat them, especially with admin. Also, buy a printer/copier/scanner at the NEX when you get here they're like $30 and one for a house of a few students is enough and I promise you, you will get your monies worth out of it. As one of my class mates put "I've spent more time printing out NKO's than i have flying", and that's only a fraction of the paperwork/documentation you'll wade through, often needed at short notice the night before. And buy a CAC reader for home while you're at it.
IFS is typically next after a few months wait for SNA’s and only a few weeks for SNFO’s, unless water survival needs bodies to run a full class or stand by as alternates. The only way to prepare for that is to either validate out by having a Private Pilot’s License which exempts you from the whole training, which I can’t see why you’d want to do. Or to take a private pilot ground course online or with a book and maybe even get even hours in a 172 or warrior. The latter is cheap, easy and could be a good way to get exposure to the material and make the ground school slightly less painful. Ground school is about 2 weeks and consists of almost all day every day studying and other required activities. Do all the assigned work and try your best to understand all the concepts you can, but at the end of the day it’s stupid to not use the gouge (as long as its quality) to get the upper hand on a process that would be incredibly difficult without it. But remember, only stage 1, 2&3 is known. The End of Course exam and FAA are random and you may or may not get almost the same questions or a bunch you’ve never seen before. The lesson here is wise use of gouge, and even though the current IFS director disagrees, the ATS director keeps the status quo for a reason. If you brush up with the Sporty’s App you should be fine. As for flying, have fun! Just do what the IP says and actually chair fly.
Also, IFS PINK SHEETS DO NOT COUNT AFTER API. This is what all new check-ins are told upon arriving at a TRAWING. That being said, don’t slack off and fail an exam because that still looks bad and any two failures result in a PRB, but if you get one pink sheet for having an unsat flight it isn’t going to affect you after leaving NASC, just remember the lesson learned. The IFS program is very inconsistent on how pink sheets are handed out in terms of flight activates and depending on the FBO you go to and which Officer you report in to at the IFS office you may or may not be given one for whatever happened during your flight.
Water survival is fun and a nice change of pace especially since it is no longer part of API’s 6 weeks. Whether or not you’re a good swimmer you should practice being in the water before hand and shoring up anything you may not be comfortable with, either the strokes (back, American crawl, sidestroke or breast), treading or prone floating. The pool used for the Class is owned by NASC and is open 4 days a week in the afternoons and evenings for swim lessons with MWR lifeguards. It’s a great way to get comfortable with the environment and get a workout. If you’re worried about the mile, practice laps and see what your time is. You’ve got 82ish minutes to swim the distance. Which all but the least buoyant students should have no problem with. For almost all of the events of the events you’ll be wearing a flight suit, fewer add on the boots and the final tread/float and a 75 yard swim you wear boots, suit harness, helmet, gloves and vest. These add weight and drag making it harder to do everything. If you’re not able to easily tread/float/swim in a swim suit this will be very challenging.
Pro tip: you can wear an undershirt and socks under the flight gear in the pool to prevent chafing. All the flight gear is old, most of it is odd sizes and it is all nasty from years of daily dips in the heavily chlorinated pool. During the mile (flight suit only) and all the boot swims the poorly fitting gear can really mess you up. I still have welts and scars on my ankles from the boots…. Also swim pink sheets are similarly disregarded after API but still can make life hard during API. Pink sheets are awarded for any roll/fail after the initial eval of swimming skills the first day.
And now the main event, API. I’ve heard from plenty of aviators, from Commanders down to JG’s in advanced, with a wide variety of backgrounds, degrees and dispositions. Some say it was the hardest portion of flight school, some say it was easy. And that’s just it, to each person it has its own challenges of varying difficulty. IMO it wasn’t as bad as it was built up to be, however I got my degree in Aviation and have had plenty of challenging study experiences during my education prior to the Navy, which made some of the more overwhelming days a bit more manageable. Then again I don’t think my degree made that much of a difference and by no means made API a cakewalk, I came out of it dead in the middle of the pack in terms of avg. test score. One of the class’s best performers had a degree in exercise physiology and she even claimed to be “bad at studying”, another was an international student from Italy who only learned English before coming to the US for training.
My takeaway was that all the instructors are doing their best to help you succeed and will stop only at giving the test away in order to get all the students to pass. Study the EO’s and pay attention to what the instructors stress, especially multiple times, and the wording they use to do it. Use this as an opportunity to hone your study habits, don’t be overconfident if you think you have it during class, put in the time and be confident when you sit down to the test and read the question carefully. The test questions can be straight forward to the point of being suspiciously easy or devilishly tricky. But over all else, it is entirely manageable and most everyone gets out of it just fine. It’s just something you have to put in the work for. Take it one day at a time and remember, this is by design an attrition program working to separate the wheat from the chaff and will not hesitate to do so.
As for the last 10 days, called Physio, it’s an even mix of PowerPoint lectures on land survival, and all physiological concerns of aviation and actual training covering parachute landing procedures on land and over water, the hypoxia training (which is no longer a depressurization training, but is simply a mask that gives you oxygen poor air) a mock ejection (read: carnival ride) and the dunker training and lead up evolutions. What gets people here is the initial swim/tread/float and Life preserver unit inflation. All students are required to swim 50 yards in full flight gear (suit, boots, gloves, helmet, G-suit, harness, vest and uninflated LPU) after which there is a 90 second tread and then a 90 second prone float or “drown proofing”. If you’re not a strong swimmer it is easy to become tired after the swim and tread than struggle to float and control you’re breathing. On top of that you must orally inflate your LPU while floating. The best thing to do here is remain calm and follow the training the survival staff gives you. Worst case you get rolled from your API class and undergo a week of remediation practice and then go again with the next weeks API class. As for the dunker, it’s fun. I hate being under water but I had a blast with the training. Everyone in my class passed the helo dunker with minimal difficulty and it was full of laughs and excitement. After that the last day of API is some flare and smoke signal training that takes all of an hour with the physio “test” which is a whole class effort (everyone gets 100) and is being phased out of the curriculum.
The next day you graduate and get sent to whatever TRAWING you belong to. SNA’s to either TW-5 in Milton or TW-4 in Corpus Christi and SNFO’s and Flight Docs to TW-6 Just down the road at Forrest Sherman Field on NAS Pensacola. SNFO’s Start training pretty quick unless a crop of flight docs cuts in front of you. SNA’s have as of this posting, a likely minimum of 4 months to wait in the various pools. This all changes with the tides and whatever CNATRA’s favorite color is this week so just sit back, study a little, don’t get fat and enjoy the money for nothing.