Later they would tell me, they thought this was the result of the pilot allowing me to take control. I told Steve this and he said, “Oh, let’s give em a wing wave then.” He rocked the wings. I looked down at our own ramp area and could see several friends waving. I looked at the familiar, dull tan hangers and buildings from this different perspective. The plane is then rolled over to right side up again and continues on in the opposite direction two miles above where it was mere seconds before. At the top of the climb the plane pulls back so that it is going the opposite direction, now inverted. At the end of the runway the plane pulls straight up and climbs like a rocket until it is but a mere speck, about ten thousand feet high in practically no time. The plane lifts off early, and remains right above the runway flying level in full afterburner and gaining speed. I have watched many of these takeoffs and still am awed when I see one today. With the two huge auxiliary wing tanks installed, Steve had decided not to do the max-performance takeoff. I was forced back in my seat from the acceleration, but not nearly so much as I had envisioned. The throttles moved all the way forward, the plane rumbled, and Steve called out increasing “stages” of afterburner as they lit unseen in the daylight behind our jet. This way I could see what otherwise would have been blocked by the pilot’s helmet and his seat. The gun camera was very small, about the size of an AA battery, and was mounted so as to have a constant view through the HUD in the front cockpit. The front seat had a HUD or “Head’s Up Display” top center that shows pertinent information from main flight instruments on a glass panel right where you’re looking out the canopy as you fly.) The rear-seat REO was different in that it had a switch, which converted it from the radar screen to a monitor of the gun camera. It was a small TV screen that was in the lower-right portion of the instrument panel in the front cockpit of an F-16, but in the rear cockpit of this two-seater it was right at top center. He showed me a little bit more about the REO (Radar/Electro-Optical Display). He blew them off with a light chuckle, and climbed up behind me on the back ladder to help me strap in. They promised him a case of beer if he could do it. I multiplied this scene times four considering the other three squadrons on base and thought, Man, I could afford to get my pilot’s license, own my own plane and fly twice a week if I had the money this base spends on maps!Īs we walked out to the flightline, a crowd of my peers was forming and they challenged my pilot to get me sick. How wasteful, I thought, but then again, when you’re burning ten gallons of fuel a minute, what’s a four- or five-dollar map? I looked at the Plexiglas sheet that covered the table and the countless cuts scored into its surface. He tossed the excess, more than two-thirds of each one, into a large trash can, nearly full with many other cut-up map discards. He unfolded them and took a razor knife to each, cutting out the sections he wanted. He grabbed a couple of maps from different bins, then searched for awhile before securing the third, and final one. Steve stepped up to a large, angled table with many partitioned slots underneath. I planned out a little cross-country trip, have you seen the Grand Canyon from the air?” I told him I hadn’t and that the combination of sightseeing and then aerobatics over the range would be perfect. He laid out his prescribed solution to the dilemma: “We’re going to have an hour and a half to kill and a bunch of fuel to burn out of the auxiliary wing tanks so we can pull max G-forces. He told me we had a block of range time allocated, for “aerobatics,” but it wasn’t until the last half-hour of our two-hour flight. “We’ll be taking off in two hours, right after your partner returns, so we better get moving,” he told me. He told me to call him Steve, as long as his boss, the squadron commander wasn’t around. I went over to the squadron ops building and was introduced to my pilot, who was – as are all fighter pilots in the Air Force – a commissioned officer, 1st Lieutenant in his case, still pretty young. Having been submitted to a rigorous physical examination and ejection-seat training, the day finally came for a 20-year-old Airman First Class to get the flight of his life.
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