I had some really cool news the other day. They want me to train to be a tacco (tactical command, or possibly control, or something...) with the Air Patrol and move up to the wildly coveted front seat of the plane. This isn't based on any particular personal attributes of mine, except the fact that I have a radio operator's license, and they're short on people with those. Still, it made me feel really great that they would consider me for it.

At the moment I'm an observer. My role is to be the person doing the actual looking, when we're out looking for somebody or something. Also I write down everything that happens, if anything does, with times and such, and do the navigation if the tacco is busy. Oh yeah, and I clean the windows before we take off. Big thrill ;-)

The tacco is in charge of the whole flight, apart from the safety and handling of the aircraft, which is the pilot's responsibility. They do all the radio communications, mission planning and conduct, crew brief and debrief, navigation, plotting search patterns or whatever, dropping flares or dye markers, and all that kind of thing, plus doing all the paperwork before and after each flight.

The main problem I have with this, though, is that I don't want to do this unless I can also learn at least partially how to fly the plane. (A Cessna 172. It has dual controls.) Every time I've flown, it's been me in the back seat, and a pilot and a tacco in the front seat, and all the taccos seem to have at least some flying time themselves. Most of them are guys in their 40s or more. Maybe I'm a control freak or something, but I can't stand the thought of sitting in the front seat without knowing how to fly the plane myself if the pilot suddenly fell over dead or something. OK, *not* very likely, but that's the way I feel about it :-)

Anyway, I'm finding out more about it the weekend after this one, so I'll just have to wait and see what it involves.

Brunnen-"trying not to get wild visions of training as a *pilot*, since that will probably lead to disappointment"G