When He Tells You to Stay Under the Bag…

After a year or so as a T-38 IP, I happened into the squadron snack bar one morning after a flight. It just so happened that a student from the other section, “K Flight,” came in about the same time. His classmate was manning the cash register. So, the conversation went something like this:

“Hey, how did your Bag (Instrument) ride go?” asked the cashier.

“Oh, it went fine,” the student replied, “but when Capt. Masuda tells you to stay under the bag, you damned well stay under the bag!”

I didn’t think much about it until I saw Dale a couple of days later. I told him of the exchange in the snack bar, and he grinned as he told me about it.

They were on an early ‘bag’ ride where the student flies under the hood and practices basic instrument maneuvers: turns, climbs, descents, etc. After 20 or 30 minutes, Dale told the kid to come out from under the bag, to take a break. He asked the kid if there was anything particular he would like to see, to which the student replied that he would like to experience zero-G. Dale said no worries and set up for a ‘push over’ maneuver.

When Dale got the nose to the climb angle he wanted, he began to push one to zero G. As they topped out, a spring came loose from his knee pad and began floating in the cockpit. Dale tried a couple of times to grab it, but had no luck. Then, as he put ‘g’ on the aircraft to recover from his dive, “Zing!” The spring shot back behind him. Now he was concerned about the spring as foreign object damage (FOD) in the cockpit.

So, he told the student to go back under the bag and execute a 30-degree turn while maintaining level flight, which the student complied with. Dale then unstrapped, turned around, and began looking for that damned spring. No luck. However, what he didn’t notice was that his comm cord had disconnected.

After a couple of turns, at 30 degrees of bank and level flight, the student asked Dale over the intercom, “Capt. Masuda sir?” Hearing no answer, he again inquired, “Sir, Captain Masuda?” Now he was concerned. He lifted the front of the bag, and much to his surprise, was Captain Masuda staring right at him! Dale, in turn, took his gloved finger and pointed it at him, impressing upon the student knew he shouldn’t have lifted the bag! The kid then slammed the bag back into position, and nothing more was mentioned about it. Not during the remainder of the flight, or in the debrief.

To the best of my knowledge, the ‘word’ got around, and Dale never had an issue with a kid coming out from under the bag ever again.