 Launch case, wind recovery, temperature 76 degrees, altimeter 296, 10 to the altitude 1787, personnel non-envolvable, fly out Swiss Nile, leave the flight deck catwalk, summon down the complete and proper flight deck uniform. Helmets and blow coats on, gloves on, sleet is rolled down. Check your pikes for loose gear and fire, check chocks, tie down chains and loose gear about the dex, ensure hot exhaust is not blowing on aircraft, weapons or personnel, stand well clear of all rotors, prop are extended, takes an exhaust, starts to go aircraft, start them up! The spectrum of tests that we've done out here is pretty wide-ranging. You know, the sexy stuff that we get, the aircraft flying around, we did a lot of catapults, did a lot of recovery, approach work, mission flying, looking at J-PALs, ICLS work at the back of the boat, did some stuff at night, but that encompasses only a little bit of what we've done out here. There's a lot of additional work that Logistics Test and Evaluation has done that you can really only do out here at the ship, with the ship's shape, with the ship motion, with the ship's company. So, we've done a lot on the hangar deck with the engine, done a lot with the aircraft, done a lot with the flying program and it's really been multi-faceted. The big thing was the minimum end airspeed test, we did that at both mill and max power at 60,000 pounds and 55,000 pounds gross weight. So, we went out and we found the no-kidding minimum airspeed that you can launch the jet off at those weights in mill and max power. We were testing down to our min plus zero end airspeed points. We tried to get to that lowest min point because we add 15 knots for the safety of our pilots and for the aircraft to safely fly away in any condition. And the reason we try to get the lowest point possible is because that's the lowest energy necessary to safely launch the aircraft. So, it's definitely a little bit different than your normal catapult launch. The biggest thing you feel is you feel the jet kind of squat underneath you with the nose pitch up. You're obviously really looking at altitude to see how low it's actually going to sink, but then the jet flies away and it's a non-event. We did a lot of clean-ups, stuff that we weren't able to finish, so we open up the crosswind envelope so now you have a bigger range of winds of which you can launch the airplane. There's not a lot of times that the aircraft carrier will get into 15 knot crosswinds. They really manage their winds well. Captain of the ship is very conscious and talks to the sailors regularly about this is what our job is to manage the winds, to manage the sea space to recover aircraft, but there are times when you're in an operational environment where you may be constrained by the sea space that you have, other traffic, and in that case you may have to accept greater crosswinds. This time we got out to 15 knots both on the bow and on the waist catapults and had good results for the aircraft launching and flying away in all the crosswinds that we looked at. I did have the opportunity to do the Gen 2 night test last time around and this time I flew the Gen 3 helmet. So the primary differences are the alignment quality of the helmet was a lot better so that means the pitch ladder and its representation of the real world matched better. It also had better image quality, better night vision camera, and overall better display of the symbology. So a lot of our problems that we saw in the Gen 2 helmet, we didn't really see as much in the Gen 3 so it was a great opportunity to see how the technology has improved from one generation to the next one and what we can give the fleet once we finally figure out the final solution. It's an aircraft landing system and it's basically just a tool, an instrument tool that we're going to use to do precision landings at the ship. It's actually got a really nice feature that none of our other landing aids have. It's dentaling the final bearing of the ship and that displays on our tactical situation display at all times when you have it up. So it's kind of nice. It gives you a situation where it's not only where the ship is at but where it's pointed and where you need to go to line up with centerline for landing. The next version of the software will have a full precision landing capability. That's what we'll test at DT-3. However, the Catbird does have that software in it already. So we actually had the Catbird out here flying approaches to the ship. So you have a 737 aircraft flying approaches coming down on final to the carrier and then waving it off obviously prior to touchdown. But they were testing that precision landing capability in the Catbird. We didn't leave anything on the table. We accomplished everything we set out to do. We performed. It's a lot like what we've come to expect as our standard. The teams work well efficiently, almost autonomously. It's not what the aircraft do that makes you proud anymore. It's how the team works. It's how the team adapts and overcomes. It's neat to watch the aircraft do what they do. You know, it's watching the end speed and the aircraft sink off the bow was always going to be a memorable thing. But what is more memorable than that is watching the team make it happen. Watching the team work together, support each other to put that pilot in a dangerous situation but to do it smartly and with the proper mitigation. So if something goes wrong, we know we're not going to hurt somebody. And that to me is the special nature of all of this work is the teaming the people and watching them overcome and adapt.