I walked out of headquarters at 6am to only find myself facing the sun peek along the undefined horizon. That shade of periwinkle in the sky was gorgeous, and I have missed it for quite a long time since I have been on the night page, taking off and landing in only darkness. I normally have been asleep by 4am where it is still dark outside.
I went to the outdoor bathroom to brush my teeth and came out to where the sky brought in a brighter blue and orange and pink and an even higher sun. Such a joyous view.
Just prior to all of this, I had my second ever major emergency in the Prowler, this time sitting in the front seat and coincidentally, with the same pilot. Of course these problems just don't happen due to the pilot or navigator, some days jets will experience problems on their own and there is nothing that we can really do about it but to act appropriately and expeditiously to get us all safely on deck. We experienced power surges and electrical arcing at the time we were just about to rendezvous with the tanker. We were 15 miles away from contact with the drogue where we experienced a left generator failure. Just like we briefed, we executed the boldface, cleaned it up by reading through the rest of the checklist items. As calm as I could sound on the radio, we left the tanker orbit and I coordinated us to get home as soon as we could, safely. My heartbeat was anything but calm hearing that the generator has tried to reset four times with no luck. Thankfully, the jet can operate with one generator picking up the load of two. As for the electrical arcing, if that had occurred as we were aerial refueling, it may have not been a pretty thing to mix sparks and fuel near big engines. Our prioritized mission was complete and the timing could not have been more perfect.
On deck at zero knots, found that a wire that had caused the dimming lights had been loose on the left. Confident that we did the right thing by taking it back to home field, my crew and I engaged in a debrief that took place on the HQ roof. With cigars in hand, the buzz helped to calm my heart beat back to normal cadence and we talked about the learning points. Following thereafter, we created queso from blocks of Velveeta cheese and tomatillo cans sent from a care package and watched Shawshank Redemption, a great film.
Which brings me back to this morning. My flight suit smells like smoke and my tummy full of cheese dip, but I am most thankful for the sunrise I was able to witness--even for a brief second transiting to and from the bathroom--and its power... even without a beach below it.
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