Experience
Reightler was designated a Naval Aviator in August 1974 at Corpus Christi, Texas. After replacement pilot training in the P-3C airplane, he reported to Patrol Squadron 16 (VP-16) in Jacksonville, Florida, serving as both a mission commander and patrol plane commander. He made deployments to Keflavík, Iceland, and to Sigonella, Sicily. Following jet transition training, Reightler attended the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland.
Upon graduation in 1978, he remained at the Naval Air Test Center where he served as test pilot and project officer for a variety of flight test programs involving the P-3, S-3, and T-39 airplanes. He later returned to the Test Pilot School, serving as a flight test instructor and safety officer flying the P-3, T-2, OV-1, T-39, and TA-7 airplanes. In June 1981 Reightler was assigned to the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower as communications officer and carrier on-board delivery pilot, making two deployments to the Mediterranean Sea.
Selected for postgraduate education, he attended the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Redesignated an Aerospace Engineering Duty Officer (AEDO), he was sent to transition training for the F/A-18 airplane with Strike Fighter Squadron 125 (VFA-125) at NAS Lemoore, California. He then reported for duty at the Test Pilot School in March 1985, serving as the chief flight instructor until his selection for the astronaut program.
He has logged over 5,000 hours flying time in over 60 different types of aircraft.
Read more about this topic: Kenneth S. Reightler, Jr.
Famous quotes containing the word experience:
“When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss. It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“For, the experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The family environment in which your children are growing up is different from that in which you grew up. The decisions our parents made and the strategies they used were developed in a different context from what we face today, even if the “content” of the problem is the same. It is a mistake to think that our own experience as children and adolescents will give us all we need to help our children. The rules of the game have changed.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)