Two Team Vance members share a T-38 cockpit again 25 years later

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Frank Casciotta
  • 71st Flying Training Wing Public Affairs
VANCE AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. --  Twenty-five years ago last month, when Thom Bushman was a student pilot at Williams Air Force Base, Ariz., he received his "dollar ride" in a T-38 Talon. On Sept. 27, he received another T-38 orientation flight from that same instructor pilot here.

Lt. Col. Jack Stuart, the instructor pilot, is assigned to the 25th Flying Training Squadron here. Bushman is a T-38 simulation instructor with Vance's 71st Operations Support Squadron.

"It was like I had done it yesterday" said Bushman. "He (Stuart) did get on me about being off altitude the same way he did while I was a student."

Orientation rides for simulation instructors aren't just for fun, they are for training.

"The whole idea is for the sim instructors to come up so they can make sure things actually jive with what we are teaching them on the flight line," said Stuart.

"We aren't just up there busting clouds," said Bushman. "We call it continuation training, IP to IP, we are up there discussing some of the pitfalls students run into."

"What really got to me was the pacing," said Bushman. "Thing are much faster today."

The dollar ride is a tradition where students will decorate a dollar and give it to their instructors. In return, the instructor will take the student for a flight and let them sit in the front seat while the IP does all the flying.

After Bushman graduated pilot training 25 years ago, he became an instructor pilot and spent about a year as Stuart's peer. Then he flew B-1B Lancers bombers until he separated from the U.S. Air Force at his five-year mark.

"It was right around when the Cold War was ending," said Bushman. "They didn't have a need for as many pilots as they had, so I got out and became a high school teacher."

In 1997 Bushman joined Team Vance and has been training student pilots in flight simulators ever since.

Stuart has flown F-4 Phantom II and F-117A Nighthawk fighter aircraft and joined the Air Force Reserve in 1999. While a Reservist, he flew for a commercial airline and later became an attorney. He was recalled to active duty two years ago.