Advance Flight Training Complete

Eric has officially finished all his flights for this phase of training! He finished his last flight on Friday, March 9th at about 1pm! It's a tradition in the jet community to get sprayed down with a fire hose after their last flight. The awesome part was they let me control the fire hose (with help) and spray him down.

The other tradition is called the soft winging; it's where the senior Marine typically pulls off their old patch and puts on their new name patch with a set of wings. Unfortunately this happened directly after the flight at the jet and we weren't out there for it, so no pictures!

All the pictures are posted on Facebook and you can log into my page at http://facebook.com/laura.galloway9 to see all those pictures. (not loading on here successfully)

Now for the next stage. As everyone knows we can't stay in Mississippi forever (*darn*) so we'll be moving soon. The next step in flight school is to go to the FRS (Fleet Replacement Squadron). This is where he'll learn to fly the actual jet he'll be flying for his career. It's basically the "Grad School" for jet training. The options for where we'll move next for the FRS is the following:

F/A-18's Hornets-- Virginia Beach, VA  OR  Miramar, CA

V-8B Harriers -- Cherry Point, NC

EA-6B -- Whidbey Island, WA

It's rumored that we may find out where we're going around March 19th (which is earlier than I was expecting). There's no guarantee that we'll find out that soon, and I'm not getting my hopes up. Typically you find out the week of the actual winging (around the 27th).

We'll only be at the FRS for about a year. Just enough time for Eric to basically do all the same blocks of training but in the new (big boy) jet.

After the FRS he'll be assigned to a squadron and our choices for where we'll be living; and what we've put down on his dream sheet are the following.

1) F/A-18's East @ Beaufort, SC

2) F/A-18's Japan @ Iwakuni

3) F/A-18's West @ Miramar, CA

4) Harriers East @ Cherry Point, NC

5) Harriers West @ Yuma, AZ

6) Prowlers (which I don't even know where because I'm praying it doesn't happen)

As you can see Eric's going for Hornets (F-18's) first and then East coast as a priority as well.

Well...as of now we're both just spending our days doing planning for the winging (with family and the total winging party). Eric has tons of paperwork that's filling his days. He has to make sure all the paperwork is complete before he wings and his ATJ (Aviation Training Jacket) which contains all his grades and reports are successfully in order before the next step. The ATJ is their lifeline and it's a big part of making sure training runs smoothly.

Well until we know more on where we're going next....We love you all and can't wait to see everyone!