Tristar
Pattern Altitude
One of our customers was a retired guardsman at the Air National Guard. He told us a few months ago that each year the ANG picks a certain number of people who are active in the aviation community to fly along on a practice in-flight refueling mission. We couldn't turn down this opportunity!! So he gave us the applications and turned them in. Another CFI and I were selected! So yesterday, we climbed in the KC-135 and took off towards omaha to dock with an E-4 (747). For you Nebraska locals, thats the white E-4 out of offutt, AFB we continuously see practicing approaches. There were 11 of us total so as soon as we were told to take off seatbelts, we had full range view from the cockpit to the boom operator! I was shocked at how much time we could watch. In the beginning, we were all cycled through the boom operators area. After we all had a chance, anyone could climb down at any time which I thought was pretty cool. They told us during the briefing that the boom was 37 ft long. So that E-4 was about 37ft away from us! My gosh...that was a big boy!!! The E-4 docked and redocked numerous times so it was neat to see how smoothly the process was done. It has to be a challenge to maneuver that large of an aircraft in such precision. Cudos to the pilots. This was a very cool and unique experience!
