✈️ The First Takeoff: Stepping Into USAF Undergraduate Pilot Training

There’s a feeling you never forget as a new pilot — the first time your wheels leave the ground and you watch the ground fade away, suspended between earth and sky.

That feeling — pure, raw, electric — is how my journey through Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT) at Columbus Air Force Base, Mississippi, truly began. It wasn’t just a location; it became the proving ground where I learned what it really meant to be an Air Force pilot. It was the backdrop to what I now call my personal story of clear skies and wild rides — an adventure through some of the most intense, unpredictable flying experiences imaginable.

I showed up to Columbus wide-eyed, fueled by a stubborn mixture of excitement and nerves. UPT is where the Air Force transforms civilians into combat aviators, and it hits you right away: this isn’t a casual course. You’re assigned a class — a tight-knit group of strangers who, in just a few weeks, would become your wingmen through it all. Before even touching a real aircraft, we were deep into academics, simulators, 4AM show times, and grueling morning stand-ups.

And just when you think you’re ready, Mississippi weather throws you a curveball.

During my 21 months at Columbus, we faced some of the worst weather in the base’s history. Tornado sirens blaring, hail bouncing off the hood of your truck, and running into the kitchen at your favorite pizza place to take cover. Ice storms coating the entire fleet in a persistent layer of ice. Dense fog grounded flights for days. Snow shutting down operations because it rarely ever happens. It always felt like an episode of extreme weather.

They say you train like you fight, and Columbus made sure of it. No excuses, no easy days. We learned to fly not just when conditions were perfect, but when they were brutal. And we learned something even more important: resilience.

One day that stood out in particular was the day I strapped into the T-6 Texan II for the first time.

1,100 horsepower under the hood. Flight suit checked, harness on, G-Suit zipped up, and a helmet snugly on the nugget. The Mississippi heat bringing a healthy sweat. A narrow runway stretching out in front of me. An adrenaline spike that made everything hyper-clear.

We took off. And right after wheels up, it was game on. Navigating to a military operating area (MOA) happened in an instant, the next thing you know, it was time to take this aerobatic aircraft for a spin.

There’s no way to explain it unless you’ve lived it. The Earth spun wildly through the canopy. G-forces punched into my chest — 3, 4, 5, maybe 6 Gs. The sky became the ground and the ground the sky. In that moment, it hit me: this wasn’t a dream anymore. This was happening.

Every flight after that built more “Lego blocks” of skill. Basic aerobatics became an orchestra of maneuvers. Contact flying gave way to instrument navigation. Low-level VFR flights ripping across the treetops at 500 feet. We weren’t just checking boxes — we were being molded into pilots who could handle chaos and think under pressure.

Of course, not every day was cinematic. Some days were 12-hour slogs through bad weather and tougher debriefs. Some flights ended in frustration, wondering if you were good enough to make it. There were failures, missed radio calls, unstable patterns, and long walks back to the squadron trying to figure out where you went wrong.

But that’s UPT. It’s not designed to make flying easy — it’s designed to make pilots unbreakable.

The people made it bearable.
The classmates who helped you chair-fly when you were dead tired.
The instructors who pushed you harder because they believed you could be more.
The small victories — a clean landing, a strong formation rejoin — that made you believe it too.

Undergraduate Pilot Training isn’t just a course. It’s a forge. It burns away fear, excuses, and self-doubt, and it leaves behind something sharper and stronger.

Flying became more than just an action — it became a trust, a calling, and a privilege.

As I share more in this series, Clear Skies and Wild Rides: My Life in USAF Pilot Training, I’ll take you deeper into the cockpit — from those first heart-pounding sorties in the T-6, through the stormy skies of Mississippi, into the world of multi-engine flying in the T-1 Jayhawk, and finally to the day I pinned on the silver wings that changed my life.

Next up: “Throttle Up: My First Flight in the T-6 Texan II” — buckle in, because it’s about to get wild.