CharlieBrown17 said:
Just landed and debriefed my Aircraft Commander checkride.
So now I can take a C-17 anywhere in the world with copilots and run the whole show. Pretty wild thought to be in charge of all that.
Congrats on the OME CB17!
I actually finished mine the week before you. Any good stories from the eval or your first A-Code?
On my first A-code (first trip as an aircraft commander, for the civvies), my departure controller out of Point Mugu acted like they had never heard of a C-17 or Point Mugu and just stopped talking to us after a couple transmissions. Finally got ahold of the correct controller after talking to tower, a couple guard calls and trucking out over the water at 8,000 feet for 40 miles or so.
On the next flight out of Honolulu our fuel indications for our right outboard tank looked like it was leaking passing through about 10,000 feet. The gauge was ticking down 100 lbs every 5-10 seconds. By the time we got turned around and landed back at Honolulu the tank was back to indicating full (a little over 37,000lbs). The fire trucks met us at the end of the runway and confirmed we weren't leaking. MX couldn't find anything wrong, so we fueled back up and flew to Guam. The problem never came back. The 550,000 lb landing on a 9k ft runway was pretty exciting.