GreasySideUp

To all the Vetran pilots Disclamer......Standard So there I was protecting the O-club when the silence was broken.... "Viper 2, Break right! Bandit your 6 O'clock 2 miles level!" There is excitement in leads voice, a little from the adrenaline but mostly because that MiG 29's radar is locked firmly on my jet, the energy bubbling my skin, turning my future kids into girls and not his. While those thoughts go through my mind I react quickly, roll up knife edge and pull for all I'm worth. The power comes back and my fingers are working double time, one spitting out flares and two others slewing the radar to the spot I think he might be. 8 g's pile on the jet and I look straight back trying to pick up a tally on the enemy who is up in my chili in the perfect spot to paint a kill on his jet. A vapor cloud forms above the wing and as I look back a fireworks show of flares erupts behind me. As the flares ripple off they get caught in the wake of jet and their smoke trails eddy, swirling earthward as they fall away - under other circumstances it would make a great calendar picture under the clear blue sky but today there is more to worry about. Even though this guy started in a huge position of advantage, he screwed up by attacking two of us. I've been in this position before several times on offense and in defense in 1vs 1. I've spent the last 2 months dogfighting, studying offensive and defensive tactics and employing them in the air. From an offensive position I can kill the opponent 90 percent of the time 100 percent of the time, my defense has similar odds ending up neutral or occasionally to a kill. I'm becoming an ER doc with the Sidewinder and a surgeon with the gun. Today however is different. I am no longer alone and unafraid, I'm a 2 ship --- and unafraid. We are flying ACM, Air Combat Maneuvers, and I have a flight lead taking me to the fight. 2vs1 should make things easier but the workload is tripled trying to keep track of the extra aircraft in the 3 dimensional envelope in which we fly. Morty Feldman is the new technique to Waleye my eyeballs keeping 1 eye boresighted to each aircraft. New rules apply to keep us effective as a 2 ship but more importantly to keep us from swapping paint. The strength of the US Air Force is our ability to work as a team, and even though this guy started out behind us we were still dealt a better hand. A third of the way around the turn I strain my neck and pick up the tally just in time to see a crack of the bandits wings as he turns away from me and goes after lead. "Bandit Switched!" I shout to Viper 1 to let him know he is soon to be in a defensive position. The bandit is in full blower towards lead, who by this time is nose on 1 mile apart with 1000 knots of head on closure. That distance closes in about 3 seconds, the fight progressing incredibly quickly. At these speeds a blink in the wrong direction is enough to get us killed. "Viper 1 Engaged my nose 1 mile, ID HOSTILE!!" Lead spouts the magic words I need to take the shot by declaring him a bad guy. I slam the throttle forward to the stop opening a bloody gash in my ring finger knuckle, smashing it against the spider guard that holds the canopy closed. A bloody glove is the tell tale sign that a B course student had fun today, immediately noticed by the crew chief upon landing. Niagra opens as 50,000 ponies flood out my burner can as I sunder the nose low through the horizon to pick up some knots on my way back into the fight. The wick lights and I'm thrown back as I start to accelerate towards the ensuing furball between lead and the dude that wrecked our day. My fangs are out looking for what should be an easy shot but then the fight takes a turn for the worse. The brawl erupts on top of me as lead gets into a vertical rolling scissors back in my direction. A rolling scissors is a classic duel resembling two snakes battling each other, their bodies entwined and twisted around, both jets canopy to canopy spiraling skyward trying to spit the other out front for a gun shot. Imagine the jets winding up a chain of DNA angled 45 degrees high in my direction, the two strands separated by a 1000 foot bubble, in war that distance would be significantly closer. I don't have a shot and have to bail low to recoup. I was warned not to stick my nose into the fray, screaming past as a high speed cheerleader unable to help at all, so I get a little distance and a few more knots and I pitch back in.... Around the horn and a perfect picture unfolds in front of me - a tail aspect 1.5 mile Aim-9 shot. "Viper 2, Fox 2!" Code for a heater flying off my jet bringing me just 4 kills shy of being an ace. The missile times out and I call the victory. "Viper 2, kill hostile left hand turn 16,000 Egress south." And then the words that shook the world. "Confirm kill left hand turn?" Lead queries, and doubt sets in. "I think you'll be egressing alone, that's a lonely and unfortunate way to go home. Vipers terminate." The problem is the MiG today was simulated by a gray cammo Viper - A Viper that looks exactly the same as mine and more importantly the same as my flight leads. Fratricide is taken seriously around the squadron, and by serious I mean payment with beer. Calling a kill on the hostile when it was invalid and taking a guy out of the fight prematurely costs a six pack and a little ribbing. Killing flight lead - a Keg for the bar, ridicule, and harassment until one of the other studs does something worse. Weeks down the road it will be brought up at random - "Remember that time when you shot me down....." It is horrible but definitely possible and has happened in war. Did I get them mixed up as they spired around each other? Did it happen again? Nooooo.... Last week on a 1v1 I ended up in a vertical stack going straight up, canopy to canopy 1000 feet apart, looking at the knee board of the dude in the other Viper straight out the top of my jet. As we rocketed towards space, screaming skywards better than 40,000 feet per minute, time compression set in and I was witnessing the coolest thing I have seen to date in an aircraft. While thinking about giving him the American peace gesture waiting for him to fall off I got an impossible lock and took the shot, called the kill and terminated the fight. Solo at the time my IP in the other jet was puzzled how I managed to kill him from that position but figured we would wait to analize in the debrief. Playing the tapes back at 1g and zero knots it was clear that I got a spurious lock on Full Bird Colonel in another jet, in another area, 30 miles away. I full up shot him down and he wasn't even in my game. The apology at the desk the next morning got some laughs. "Sir, sorry for shooting you down yesterday." "Did we fly together yesterday?" O-6's are old and have forgotten more knowledge than I will ever have but are sometimes oblivious of everything that happened more than an hour ago. "No Sir, I was in a different flight.... and again I apologize for shooting you down" Everyone at the desk caught on in laughter and it didn't cost me a thing since he was red air that day and I had the global SA to shoot bad guys that weren't in my flight. It was brought up again on Friday for everyone to laugh at. I was thoroughly debriefed on that shot and the importance of Q.C.ing every shot before letting them rip. Turns out today the O-club was saved and my flight lead could join me for a beer. I did shoot the Hostile but mixed up the comm. The hostile was in a right hand turn, not left and that was debriefed in depth as well. I'm no fighter pilot yet, I did however write a big R and L on each glove so I wont make the same mistake again. Later on, [ 09. January 2006, 10:25: Message edited by: GreasySideUp ]

Trevor, case by case basis means you have a shot. Throw in an app, get a pilot slot, and then if you are denied or dq'd go from there. Don't dq yourself just yet. Rage is great about these things and will probably look further for you, if nothing is found about anyone ever flying then be the one to set the precident, finish UPT and educate the others in your situation. Good luck, and hope it works out favorably for you. Wait until you get 10 doctors telling you no way, and even then be skeptical while pursuing your dream. You found a great site to start looking a little deeper into your situation, give it a couple of days to work for you. -j

Whats up fellas. Another long post in story book fashion emailed to my family who know nothing about aviation, if you are currently qualified might be a boring read. Might want to check out my other posts about the 38 as a prequil for those not following my saga. I fully expect an update on the Pentagon to follow suit as well.... Enjoy.... "You are going to be some of the best fighter pilots in the world less than a year from now. You are about to fly a 4th generation, single seat, all weather day or night fighter that has never been beaten in Air to Air combat. It is the most versatile aircraft in the US inventory - in every country's inventory. By the end of this course you will be able to sort and track multiple bogies - kill them from up close or beyond visual range. You will be trained to fight your way into a target from any altitude and drop multiple bombs through the window of your choice. You will be versed in the latest in GPS and laser guided aerial artillery and be able to deliver it from your targeting pod or from one of our own rangers sitting on a camel with a laser pointer into bad guy land. The last war has been one of real time information requiring immediate action response and real time targeting solutions. You will be trained in close air support and have a chance to strafe with that 20mm cannon sitting on your left hip. During your training we'll bring some F-15 Eagles out for some target practice, I mean dissimilar air combat training. You will learn tactics to crush every other airframe out there in the air to air arena- less maybe the F-22 - but we're working out ways around those guys too. Shortly after leaving here, some will be HARM shooters, others will have the latest in helmet mounted sight technology - all of you will be top notch wingmen equipped with the tools needed to employ as an effective strike package. You will be incredibly busy while you are here. This is an extremely demanding course and history has shown that some of you will not make it. There is no shame in that at all, just the facts. For the next nine months we need your total attention. You need to find your wives a new husband, your girlfriends a new boyfriend and your kids a new dad to play with - apologize now because you will not have time for them after today. Your education extends beyond the classroom, into the bar room, and into your homes. You are not expected to drink but you are expected to socialize. During every war more tactics are learned in the bar than ever were in a classroom. Listening to your lead tell a story of how he avoided 3 SAMs that night, and more importantly why he was shot at in the first place will save your life. Help each other out. The nine gentleman next to you will become your best friends over the same many months. Learn from each other, and help one another out because I guarantee you will struggle at some point and will not make it alone. You are about to become fighter pilots and fly the sexiest jet ever built. A pilots airplane. The F-16. Kids will look up to you, men will want to be you and women will want to be with you. You are embarking on the best job in the world. Gentlemen, Welcome to the B course." The 10 of us new studs sat in a amazement at the speech we just received. Several very high time pilots in the room gave a few more words of encouragement - these guys absolutely loved what they were doing. They have thousands of hours of experience in the F-16 and a slew of other aircraft prior. They have dropped tons of iron, in peace time and in anger. They are masters of their craft and I can only dream of one day being the fighter pilot these guys currently are. And before I can daydream too long.... "Take a 5 minute break, Academics are upstairs." And we were off. We have a cubicle set up for each of us with 11 four inch binders full of everything we need to know about the airplane and how it works. Over the next 4 weeks we went through them all. Some of our academic instructors have 4000 hours of fighter experience, with cutbacks an amount unheard of today. They have flown in multiple wars, been weapons school and Top Gun commanders, a few even helped design and test fly the original F-16. A wealth of knowledge was at our disposal. We spent countless hours in the simulator going through every possible emergency scenario resulting in bringing a crippled aircraft home or ejection. We had a test after the first two classes and a test about every other day after. We were in the classroom 8 hours a day covering 1 major system each lecture and at night we were in the vault learning local procedures, ops limits and general operating rules. In the next month I would have earned 60 PHD level credits had I been attending Harvard - we were learning at a fire hose pace trying desperately to keep up. And then out of nowhere, not nearly ready we hit the flight line. Walking to the jet today was an experience I will never forget. I've been dreaming of this moment for more than 20 years. I was about to meet the lady I had a pre arranged marriage to and we were about on embark on a journey of emotional and physical highs and lows that will most likely last 20 more. I didn't sleep a wink last night, nervous as a kid on Christmas Eve with the expectations of what our first meeting would be like. A huge step that every kid dreams about but very very few live out. Today I'm going to become a fighter pilot. The Viper looks like it is moving five bills even when it is sitting still. From every angle it is truely an incredible looking machine. From the front, a huge bubble canopy sits atop an enormous intake. From the aft it is all engine. The burner can is probably 4 feet wide, large enough for a grown man to sit in. It is well worn from the fire it throws out, at night a ten foot flame bellows out, rocketing the jet twice the speed of sound. The wings are razor thin and on the tip hang 2 missiles. Today I'll be flying with a heater on my left and a Radar guided 120 on my right. I have no idea how to employ them yet and barely know what that means but man do they look cool! Underneath sits a 300 gallon drop tank. That should be enough to get me out to the practice area and that's about it. The gas mileage of Uncle Toms suburban with the legroom of a Porsche. I love it. I've got new gear on as well because we all know it's more about how you look than how you fly. I ditched the 40 pound chute in favor of a lightweight harness that buckles me into the ACES II ejection seat. The F-16 fits like a backpack. It is said that you strap the jet on rather than strapping into it. I'll find out in about 3 more minutes. Out of the MX hanger Jeremy by Pearl Jam is blasting on the speakers. A little theme music for todays flight. My heart is racing by this point. I've also got the latest in Combat Edge anti-g equipment. Under G it forces air into my legs, my vest and also down my throat to keep me conscious during the 9 g's well soon be pulling. Yep. 9 g's on my first flight. Strapping the jet on is different than the sim - it always has been. The jet is always different than what you have practiced. The switches are all in the same spot, the cockpit layout is exactly the same but sitting in a new aircraft for the first time is always a surreal experience. I've played this moment out in the sim over the last few weeks dozens of times, I've had hydraulic failures, gear malfunctions, I've even been on fire, flamed out with multiple system failures and landed successfully - without a hitch. I can dead stick this thing in from 30 miles away in the sim but today its for real and I have no idea which switch to flip first. Absolutely no idea where to start. It has been that way in every aircraft I've flown and I can't say why. A quick flip to the checklist and I'm off. Main power, that makes sense. 20 moves later and she fires up. The Viper growls to life on start. First an engine the size of the T-37's fires up which begins to rotate the massive General Electric. As it lights a rumble shakes the jet and you can hear the roar of the fire behind you. As it springs to life the thrust pushes against the chalks and compresses the nose strut. Soon after, the jet is put through a self test that violently moves the controls through their entire range. From the outside it is impressive seeing the movement. From the inside it is awesome. The massive ailerons and slabs rapidly move through their ranges snapping back and forth with incredible power. The whole jet tenses like a cheetah before the kill, it wants to fly today and on its own it shakes and twitches to let me know. 15 minutes later we taxi and even that is different. At idle there is enough thrust to propel the 29,000 pound jet over 30 knots. An inch forward on the throttle triples that thrust and can cause serious damage to equipment and can be fatal to crew chiefs and ground personnel. I once knew a guy callsign Ass Smasher for doing just that. Sent a Chief somersaulting across the pavement, luckily only leaving a bruised elbow on the chief and a bruised ego on the pilot. Won't be me today. 5 days have passed since I stopped writing, since then I had one more single ship and today I soloed. As cool as the first ride was, the only thing better than one Viper at the end of the runway is 2. For the rest of my career I will have very very few single ship rides. The rest of the story will reflect that. Out in the EOR we park for the arming crew to pull the rest of the pins and give a last look over the plane. I still can't believe where I'm sitting and I'm just waiting for someone to pinch me. We get the clearance to go, I taxi to the right, lead takes the left and we and run up to 90%. The jet shakes and strains against the brakes. It wants to go right now but I've got to make sure everything is right. Any more throttle and the brakes would hold the rims but the rubber would spin right off the wheel. Everything looks good, I give a nod and lead pulls away. Today we are doing an afterburner takeoff - a truly eye watering event. Lead lights the wick and a 4 foot diameter fireball erupts in his engine. There is a fuel line the size of my arm pouring gas into the tail. It is burning 50,000 pounds of fuel an hour belting out 29,000 pounds of thrust. If the plane was standing straight up it could take off vertically and accelerate. His jet was off the ground faster than I have ever seen anything leave the runway. Unbelievable and now it's my turn. Brake release and into burner and I am pinned to the back of the seat. I hit 150 knots in about 1500 feet accelerating as fast as a top fuel drag car. The massive jet lifted off the runway and hurled skyward in 6-9 seconds, it was an absolute blur. Gear up as quick as I can before I overspeed. Half way down the runway I am at 350 knots and accelerating. Un real. From this point I could pull 60 degrees up and hit 30,000 feet in a minute but today our clearance is only to 3. Bummer. I've got probably 15 hours in the sim by now but the feeling on the stick is truly remarkable. The sidestick is incredibly comfortable, human factors and ergonomics were a part of designing this aircraft. I'm chilling back at a 30 degree angle with my feet up flying almost by thought, my lazyboy back home is less comfortable. Breathing on the stick causes a lightning quick roll. I over control at first, the plane jerks back and forth faster than my brain can react to my own inputs. Quickly my head catches up and things smooth out. Unfortunately they don't slow down. We are at 3000 in no time and quickly cleared up to Flight level 230 and out to the area. The VVI is pegged at 6000 feet per minute and the green stuff has me climbing out at 15 nose high at 350 knots. I've never flown with a hud (Heads up Display) before the Viper and I am already falling in love. It is a flat screen directly in my field of view displaying everything about where I am and where I'm going. Later on it will display other aircraft and what they are doing without me ever looking inside the cockpit. It is all controlled with the 16 buttons at my fingertips on the stick and throttle. Hands on throttle and stick, HOTAS for short was designed so you never have to hunt for switches while you are fighting under G. Some of those buttons spin, a few are cursors and others 4 position switches. Combined they have 600 functions and subsets controlling my radar, stores, and displays. A piano is less complicated. Right now I can play the equivalence of Chopsticks - I only know what a few of the switches do. In a month my fingers will work in symphony together as if I was playing the Baby Grand in concert slewing missiles, tracking with the radar and sorting targets. Right now I can trim and turn the nose wheel steering on and off and quite frankly that is a bit over whelming. The Viper has the best visibility of any aircraft ever built. Skydivers don't have a better view. I am sitting on the tip of a spear with a huge bubble canopy over me. I can look almost straight down and out to the sides ---- and out to the sides sit my livelihood. I have to take a second glance to make sure but I do have missiles on the wings. I am sitting in the picture that has been on my wall since I was a kid. I don't know how to use them yet but they are definitely there and it is a spectacular sight. I'm quickly catching up to lead and can't believe I am rejoining on another F-16. From the air the Viper is even more beautiful. With the gear up and the nozzle puckered closed it is stunning up close. In close formation the other F16 is alive. With no stick inputs the computers are constantly twitching and tweaking the flight controls to maintain steady flight. The front of the wing is alive with movement as it constantly adjusts for the optimum camber in the climb. I've never flown an aircraft capable of thinking - this was very evident from 3 feet away as we zoomed out to our airspace. Formation is surprisingly easy. Lead walks me up and down doing light wingovers, crossunders and echelon turns. Unlike the T-38 my jet automatically trims itself - speed changes and maneuvering in fingertip is effortless. I'm now using the fins of the missile for my correct formation position, another indication of the plane I'm now commanding. We are in the area in no time. Today we have a 50 square mile chunk of airspace 40,000 feet thick with our own controller to tell us if any stray traffic enters. The G warm-up is a 4-5 then 6-7g turn to make sure my tolerance is good. On the first ride this was followed by an acceleration to .95 mach rack to 90 degrees and pull to the limiter. Full aft stick produced 8.8 g's - the computer won't let you pull the wings off this jet, it limits us to 9, it will however let you pull more than your body can handle. 9 g's is an incredible feeling. My body weighs 1800 pounds and the blood in my head is proportionally heavy. I strain and thanks to my new mask 40 psi of O2 is slammed into my lungs to help keep me conscious. The G suit swells with air and compresses my legs to keep the blood in my abdomen from pooling in my feet. This is my new world. Every time I break into a bandit is going to be this moment. I love it. After a few tactical turns my lead clears himself to chase. Today I am solo and this is how I am being evaluated - from another aircraft from 500 to 3000 feet away. I pull into a loop followed by 2 point roll inverted and split S down to the deck. This morning the area is perfect for BFM against the clouds. From 6500 feet there is a perfect sheet of clouds with random puffies pluming up to 15,000 with a hundred miles of visibility and I'm going to take every opportunity to see just how quick this thing turns and how fast she goes. At altitude, mach 1 feels just like 200 knots - there is no real sense of speed so far from the earth but at the deck..... I level out 10 feet above the clouds cooking at 520 knots, the sense of speed is unreal. I roll inverted and pause as the clouds scream past my nugget close enough to touch. I might as well be in a convertible with the top down with nothing obstructing the view. A puffy is off my left, a slight pull on the stick yields 7.5 g's and I wrap around the edge spiraling around and away. I am having more fun in this moment than I ever have had in an aircraft. A huge barrel roll brings me back down just above the clouds when over the radio comes my instructor. "Enough fun, let's head back" I was 100 pounds above my bingo and we still had more training to do. Back to the pattern we do a few instrument approaches, a few touch and goes and the incredible SFO. If there is any weakness to the F-16 it is the single engine. Not often, but every now and then something happens, the engine takes a nap and you turn into a glider. In the T-37 and T-38 a dual engine failure led to an ejection and a ride home under a silk parachute. Apparently the government is not so eager to return the Viper to the tax payers so they teach us the Simulated Flame Out pattern. To practice these, on the go you accelerate to 350 and immelmann up to 8000 feet directly over the center of the runway. The feeling is surreal as I look back over my left shoulder at the earth disappearing below. It makes me laugh and a stripping of my mask would reveal a grin slightly larger than Texas. An aircraft should not be able to do this. An astronaut has a similar ride but the view is nothing like mine. With the huge bubble canopy it feels like a flying a rocket powered lazyboy half inverted over the city with absolutely nothing impeding my vision. It takes all of 10 seconds to reach that altitude and I am still cooking along at 350. Absolutely Unbelievable. I've still got enough juice to pull another loop over the top to 20,000 feet and all this is without the burner. Again - Absolutely Unbelievable. The power is pulled to idle and then you dead stick the thing back to earth. At this point it is all finesse, skill, judgment and practice to nurse the jet back to the runway. Unfortunately at this point I have none of those and I rely solely on luck and a little magic to persuade the old girl back to terra firma. Miraculously I bring her down at about the 2500 foot point on the runway, not perfect but we both would have lived. At 5 feet I push the power up, accelerate and repeat. Back up to 8000 - this is awesome. The whole patten takes a little over a minute and after a little practice and a few more flights I 'll be able to glide from over 40 miles out and touch down in the first 1000 feet of the runway. A few more touch and goes and I'm out of gas. In the last hour I burned 9000 pounds of JP8, flown 95% the speed of sound, Came within a few feet of another aircraft on purpose, pulled 9 gs, dogfought against those elusive clouds, did 5 touch and goes, 2 approaches and a deadsticked a few SFO's. I have not even scratched the surface of what this aircraft can do. Back to the debrief I cue up the tapes and we analyze every detail of the flight. Although it was an incredible time there was a lot of work leading up to it and a lot of mistakes to go over. Even though the flight was only an hour, I've been at work 7 hours already and I was looking at another few for the post flight. My landings were scrutinized for being 5 knots fast, my heading was 2 degrees off on the recovery and my altitude dropped 10 feet low on the Tacan approach. I can no longer hide my mistakes from the instructors since it is all on video and able to be analyzed 1 frame at a time. There is no argument against the VCR, the cameras don't lie. Scrutiny is the pinnacle of a fighter pilots life and to be honest I am my own worst critic. Mistakes are going to happen but it is how you recover and learn from them that differentiates the average from the best. Over all it was a pretty good flight but at the end my flight lead asks "So what are the cloud clearances in the airspace" "Sir?" My heart sank and I immediately knew where this was going. He followed up with "Why do we fly in the clouds? What do we teach you instrument procedures for?" "Umm, so we can take off and land when the weather is bad...." He interrupted "So we can kill bad people. We fly in the clouds to reload and put ordinance on the Taliban. We penetrate weather for air superiority and to help the grunts on the ground who are getting shelled by our enemies. It is a means to put bombs on target and save American lives. Good flight, Any questions?" I had none. He was absolutely right. I did have an incredible time on that flight, in all the flying I ever do it will be one of the ones I will remember forever but there are bigger things on the horizon. In a week I'll be checked out in the jet and we'll begin dogfighting and learning the art of aerial combat. I've done countless simulators and endured 100's of hours of lectures and ground school and I've even flown a 30 million dollar jet on my own, an F16 Fighter Attack aircraft but I'm no fighter pilot yet, I do however know what one looks like. Take care guys, [ 05. November 2005, 13:59: Message edited by: GreasySideUp ]

Congrats man!! I was an alternate a few years ago, Finished UPT a few months ago, now in the B course. Keep interviewing but also keep in touch with the unit and try and get all the paperwork done so you can go to AMS in a moments notice if need be. Showing that motivation will help out as well. -j

Preface. All you older dudes might think its lame, for the others it's pretty long... "Snipe check" "2" "Snipe Go Channel 3 Crank" "2" It's been a long time since I've been solo. An hour long brief on maintaining offensive advantage, gaining turning room, maneuvering to the WEZ and taking every available shot during the fight was overshadowed by one simple rule of engagement - Don't hit lead. He never said it but he knows in 30 minutes he'll have a cocky 2LT on his 6, fangs out, gun blazing oblivious to the fact that 200 knots of closure equates to a heartbeat from disaster at close range. He signs me off anyways knowing that a handshake and a bottle of Whiskey will be the reward for a safe solo. We step off the bus and head our separate ways on the ramp only this time no one is tagging along behind me. I have a little swagger in my step now, the wings on my chest still wet they are so new yet I still can't help but think I'm a BadAss. The cockpit of the AT38 is exactly the same but it is always different somehow when you are on your own - especially for the first time dogfighting solo. No noise in the headset, no confirmation checks, no one secondguessing your decisions - the jet just plain feels like it has better performance while taxing without that dead weight in the back. Fighter pilots even taxi differently than everyone else. His right main is 3 feet right of the centerline, so I make sure mine is 3 feet to the left. Not 4, I got chewed out for that the other day so that is how it will be from now on. We take our places at the end of the runway for one final look over. He has no weapons on board yet but in a few months I'll be looking for streamers hanging from his AIM-9's and LGB's. A thumbs up from me and a head nod from him and we're off. "Snipe check" "2" "Tower, Snipe 1 flight of two, number 1, 33 Center interval." "Snipe cleared interval takeoff 33 Center" About the only thing I'll say this entire fight is "2" That and let him know if he is on fire, otherwise my sole function is to shut up, back him up and be in position. We line up together. I flash a nod, we run the engines up, he gives a sharp salute and then he's off. I watch his burners light and wait my 10 seconds. I press harder on the brakes holding back the jet now shaking from Mil thrust. She wants to go - NOW. I count off the seconds thinking this is the longest time I'll have to relax until we are back in the chalks. I was right. I rejoin to tactical position off his left side. This formation is a few thousand feet apart and allows me to clear all around myself and more importantly around him and his 6 for traffic now and later bandits threatening from behind. Tactical formation is the culmination of my last year at UPT and a million dollars in training and it is now just a means to get from point A to B. The rest of my military career will be spent learning to fight. We get to the area quickly and waste no time getting started. More so than the guy I'm going to fight, fuel consumption is my biggest enemy. If I'm not in place when I need to be, I'm wasting gas and that equals less engagements and more importantly less training for me. A few G turns to test my tolerance and equipment and we are set. I turn on the gun sight, and the camera and set the Master Arm switch to simulate guns and missiles. "Next setup will be 6K bandit, Do for # two." "2" I'll be fighting a bandit starting from a six thousand foot perch and have to maneuver to a few thousand feet to employ my simulated ordinance - Today I'm loaded with 4 Aim 9 missiles, 7.5 seconds worth of gatlin gun, a HUD, a little knowledge of how to employ my ordinence and a video camera to verify when I was right or wrong. I take a mile and a half separation and push it up to 400 knots. I can feel my heart starting to race as the adreneline starts to kick in. I turn towards my flight lead and pull him into the top of the Heads UP Display, decreasing the distance back to a mile. "Fights On!" I call and immediately see him drop the nose and pull back into me. I roll wings level knowing if I try to get him right now I'll get a quick shot but a lot of aspect and multiple problems later on. Patience. A long 2 seconds of level go by and I check where I'm at. 400 knots and 18000 feet. The Floor today is 11000, if either of us go below we are considered a floor mort and a valid kill for the Top Gun award later on. His jet seems to stop turning and begins a Bee Line across my canopy. Thats my cue Big breath - Roll and WHAM! - 100 degrees of bank full afterburner and straight to 5.5g's. I weigh a little over a thousand pounds knowing I need to pull to 6g if I want to smoke him. I pull a little more and he slides towards the pipper when his plane violently rolls and pitches downwards. A Jink! He is trying to get his jet out of plane to keep me out of his chili. I check inside and see 420 knots and increasing, 20 knots faster than I thought I was and probably 70 more than I need right now. So thats what the dude in the back is for. I slam the throttles back to the idle stop, roll opposite him and pull up. Assess!! This is a chance for him to capitalize on my mistake in airspeed and reverse into me, possibly putting me on the defensive. Luckly my counter move worked and he starts to again move forward on the canopy. Back to Full Blower and try to turn back on him. At 5 gs he continues in a right hand turn and dives towards the floor trying to get away. He wasted a lot of energy on that jink. That extra airspeed is helping now and I'm quickly approaching the Aim9 WEZ - an imaginary cone 45 degrees wide from 2000 to 9000 feet deep where a heat seeking missile can lock onto his exhaust and send him home in a silk parachute. There it is. I hit the pickle with my right thumb and simultaneously call "Fox 2" over the radio, the call that says a Sidewinder missile just came spiraling off my rail at supersonic speeds. He's not dead yet, our Rules of Engagement say I need 2 valid missiles or 1/2 a second of gun track for a valid kill. 2 seconds go by and he is still at the top of my sight so I fire another heater in his direction. He's awfully close, that missile might not have had time to arm so I continue to pull him towards the pipper. I squeeze the trigger before he gets there knowing that the bullets take time to fly. I can imagine the plane begin to shake and the smell of chordite as that gun spits 30 mm shells at 6000 rounds a minute his direction. It will appear as though a water hose is streaming out the nose of my jet, curling and twisting with every small move I make on the stick. The point of impact is a tiny dot on my HUD the width of a pencil lead that I need to center over his ever moving aircraft. Way harder than it seems. He slides through the pipper for an instant but seeing my gun on him he jinks a second time. I poke my nose at him again trying to get a few more rounds and again he jinks. He cashes in all he's got puts the stick in his lap, and pulls away from me. His plane ceases to fly and cruises right out the side of my pipper. A reverse!!! I'm slower this time so theres little chance it will work unless I screw up. The problem is I'm new to this whole thing and screwups are my speciality. I roll almost level and pull the stick as hard as I can towards his six oclock trying to keep from getting out in front of his guns. I still have some extra knots so I unload and pull two more times forcing the jet to fly belly first through the air. The race now is to see who can get the slowest the quickest and force the other out in the lead. The turtle wins the slow speed fight every time. I caught it in time and ever so slowly I begin to climb upwards and behind him. As he maneuvers left and right I mimic his moves and our motion scribes a pair of scissors sclicing in the sky. The G's are off now so I can take some deep breaths and try to regain some composure as I try to get far enough away to bring the hurt on him some more. The whole battle thus far was only about a 540 degree turn lasting a total of maybe 30 seconds but I feel like I went a few rounds with Tyson - The old Tyson when he knocked people out with intimidation. The spacing looks about right now for me to go get him, in fact it looks like he is a little to far below to just aim at him. If I did, the speed I would gain in the descent might put him behind me so I decide to try something I read about but have never been shown. I'm solo so it seems like the perfect opportunity to me. I throw out the boards, select idle and G up the jet in a lag roll figuring the extra drag shoud put me right behind him. I flip upsidedown and right side up again screaming downhill with very little forward motion gained and I end up smack dab at his 6 o'clock at 4000 feet. He is at the bottom of the airspace, in a shallow turn, out of speed and out of options. "Fox Two" wait two seconds "Fox Two" Holy cow I just shot down lead. "Kill one T38 12000ft, left turn" I'm breathing hard but it feels good to say. "Snipe Terminate" A welcome sound from his radio. We climb back up to altitude and have a few more engagements. I shoot him sometimes and other times he gets away. In the debrief we watch the HUD footage and spend a few hours talking about the engagements. We discuss every possible detail of the flight down to the fact that I am clipping my "2" radio call and one time it came out as just "oow" without the T. All the tiny mistakes I made and thought I got away with were caught by him, rightfully so, so I can learn and do better next time. I am not at all amazed by his thoroughness - that is what I have come to expect from this community. The attention is in the details is the motto of the fighter pilot. "You know the beginning of the first engagement when you had too much airspeed I could have reversed and smoked you - Right?" He was absolutely right. I was dead and barely knew it but he gave me a break. I'm not a badass yet but I have a pretty good idea what one looks like. I learned a lot today and we didn't scrape paint so tommorow he'll have a bottle of Tennessee's finest on his desk. later on, [ 07. June 2005, 22:45: Message edited by: GreasySideUp ]

Read my signature block below. For every one that applies there are probably a thousand that eliminate themselves. Not one of the latter is in the cockpit today. Don't ask your recruiter if you should apply, give him a completed package and tell him to hurry up. Do the BAT tommorow and worry about the AFOQT when you have extra time. Good luck, but a little work on your part should take some of the luck out of it. -j

Tragic Loss ERAU and NAC alum ENS Steve Elledge was killed yesterday in a plane crash near NAS Meridian. There is a memorial on the Navy Club homepage: http://www.db.erau.edu/campus/student/clubs/nac/ Steve was a loving husband, an awsome dude and a great friend who would do anything for his bros. He died doing what he absolutely loved. GodSpeed -j Attached Thumbnails

If your PCSM blows and you have no connections you will not get an interview with a guard unit. There are a hundred other dudes that look as good as you do on paper and the PCSM is just one more way to weed people out. -j

Dumais, I'm not sure about meeting the standards and then having the surgery but if it were me I would absolutely not let anyone touch my eyes if it wasn't necessary to get into, or stay in the cockpit. With the people I've met that haven't made it through brooks post op I think the risks outweigh any benifits of wearing contacts or glasses. I couldn't imagine getting wings only to have them taken away by a doc and a reg when it was an elective surgery. Now that is just me speaking on my own behalf dealing with the mountains of paperwork and years of talking and waiting - you'll have to make a decision on your own carefully weighing the risks and rewards. The good news is that you have a while until you can make that decision and by that time new procedures may have come out and or be approved by the AF. -j

Everyone be VERY VERY CAREFUL. DO NOT GET LASIK DONE IF YOU ARE NOT ALREADY A PILOT IN THE AF. read on. An awsome step in the right direction but unfortunately right now still a little too good to be true. What I got from reading the waiver is that to be eligable you must already be a rated military pilot and it is only acceptable for AC that don't exceed 14000ft cabin altitude. It specifically disqualifies you from flying ALL FIGHTERS, C130, B52,C17,T37, T38,T6 and U2's. Since you cant fly the trainers it disqualifies ALL UPT STUDENTS AND APPLICANTS. I think Lasik is just around the corner for all AC and those that haven't become pilots yet but as of now they are just not at that point yet. Another year or so of testing and monitoring those that get the procedure done to fly heavies and we should see some more changes. For now sit tight and before you get anything done to your eyes make sure you and your doc fully understand the regs inside and out. I hate to hear it but people are still getting burned because of simple things being left out, or guidelines not being followed to the T. -j

My wife and I are not together while I am at UPT and it sucks big time. She is military also so we have no choice. I suggest to rent your house out, have her enquire about working out of the house since she deals with computers at a big company or have her sacrifice her job for a year while you are at training. It will be way better for your marriage to live poor than to make a large income that you can't blow together. I have a ton of extra expendable cash right now but I would trade it in a minute if my wife could be here. In the married flight your buds will all bring in leftover chicken parm for lunch while you have the same turkey sandwich every single day. While they are out on date night, you'll be doing your laundry. Not to mention having someone to give support on your bad days. It is a much better decision to put your marriage ahead of your career, especially in your first few years. She will have a great time while you are working if that is an issue- all the wives get together and figure out how to spend your bucks on hair dos and manicures and the like. Can she live in a different state and have it all work? Sure, but it is miserable if you guys get along at all. You cannot develop a relationship over the phone no matter how good a talker you are and many days you are only going to have a few minutes to talk vs sitting down and having dinner. Plane tickets are expensive day of and unfortunately you can't plan the week you have the checkride - often it will be the same weekend she comes down. If she works on Friday and monday then she will really only be here for a full day - getting in late friday night and leaving Sunday afternoon. You guys will see each other 12 -20 full days in a 365 day year - good times. Take all that for what you will but I would absolutely not recommend leaving your wife behind if money is the only issue driving you to do so. Understand the sacrifices she is making and then buy her some nice diamond earrings to make up for it . Good luck what ever you decide. -j

Q: Whats the difference between a Hornet and a Naval Aviator? A: A Hornet quits whining after the engines are shut down. A Viper and a Buff were going across the pond to drop some bombs on the bad guys when after 6 hours the Viper pilot got a little bored and decided to do a couple of big barrel rolls around the buff. After the airshow he caled the buff and said "OK now lets see what you have got!" After a few minutes of straight and level the Viper pilot called back and asked "Well are you going to do anything or what?" The buff pilot came back over the radios "Yeah I just shut down 2 engines, got a cup of coffee and took a dump. Anything else?" -j

I had pain for a while after surgery. Every now and then my eye would "stick" to my eye lid in the morning. If I thought it was going to happen I put saleen drops in before I opened that eye and waited a few minutes, that usually did the trick. They will get better in a few weeks but until then carry around some drops and use generousouly in addition to the steroids whenever they feel a little dry. I would still go see the doc if you are at all concerned but don't worry too much about it. Hang in there -j

Talk to the finance guys and the security people at your unit, they will help you analize the situation and take proper action. Those guys have probably seen most of these situations before and now that you have a slot they are going to help you keep it. You can get a lot of advice on this board from people that think they know what is right but you could still lose your slot if you don't talk to your people and do things properly. Give them a call or if you live there stop by with a bag of candy and see what happens. At the very least they will point you in the right direction. I can tell you for sure if you do declare bankruptcy on your own without consulting them and it comes back as a problem the first thing they will say is "why didn't you talk to us" and then you'll have a lot of splanin to do in addition to the work now needed to keep your spot. You are part of the family now and it makes them feel good to help a brotha out. Good luck -j [ 08. August 2004, 11:20: Message edited by: GreasySideUp ]

Absolutely not true. I doubt you'll find a recruiter right now in the guard that knows it is legal and you'll even have a pretty tough time finding an ANG optometrist that knows it is legal as well. Don't let them tell you otherwise, but be very tactful about it by bringing them a copy of the waiver after you've educated yourself. Hit PRK in that search button at the top of the screen and you'll find most of your answers, if you still have questions I'll be glad to try and help out. -j

Just found out the numbers this weekend if you didn't have them. SH is 34-40in, BK length is less than 27in. Sit with your back to the wall on a chair or table and have someone measure from the wall to the front of your knee. If you're within an inch or so you'll probably be fine. I'm 6'4 too and was a little worried but I have a friend who is 6'6 and out of almost every measurement who got a waiver to fly 16's. Hope that helps. -j

Play a bunch of X-box this week, games like HALO where you use both sticks to do different things. If you don't own HALO you will fail the test miserably. There is still time though to go buy an xbox so all is not lost. Wal-Mart is now 24-7 so there is no excuse. -j