Let's start with the basics...for those who don't know carrier ops or naval aviation, the airplan is the tool the ship uses to schedule the airplanes. The airwing staff and I work together to produce the airplan...it takes a lot of information and people working together every day to produce, and a lot of attention to details to make it work.
Here's how it works:
On the front of the airplan are the "lines". Each squadron has a row for their events, and the columns generally denote periods for the flying. Here is a sample airplan that we used for training. As you can see...there is a lot going on...
Each line has symbols and notations on it to describe a variety of things that an aircraft can do. Circles denote that they are tankers. Diamonds tell the flight deck when the airplanes are getting more fuel or swapping out crews, a V says that an aircraft is landing on another ship (or coming here).
Obviously, we can put a LOT of info into a small space...
On the back of the airplan is more information-- stuff like: Briefing times or area assignments, or general notes. But the most important part of the back page is the cartoon. The first things people look when they get the airplan every night is the cartoon...I have to come up with the cartoon every night. Fortunately, there are lots of people around to provide suggestions...and most of the time there is plenty of material to use for comedy...but oftentimes, coming up with a cartoon is the hardest part of my job!
Here is the first cartoon from our current deployment. I made this the day before we left-- as I was on duty...I got to see a LOT of people bringing WAY too much stuff onboard, so I used a picture of the XO, cut him out and put him with an image from the inter-web and added the caption...
Maybe not the funniest cartoon ever, but each cartoon is sometimes funny in the context of the day...
I'll post some more of our cartoons on here as we go along...some will be good, some will not make sense, some are just plain dumb.
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