Well, I did it! Flew a genuine Marchetti SF260 fighter plane in aerial combat against an opponent in another airplane a couple of weeks ago. Check out some pics that Amanda took by
clicking here. Amanda drove up from Miami and spent the weekend with me in Kissimmee, FL.
I know, this is crazy. But what a thrill! After an hour of "ground school" briefings from an instructor (retired TWA pilot and Viet Nam fighter pilot), I climbed into the cockpit of this marvelous, fully aerobatic aircraft. I got to do 90% of the flying. Even taxied the plane out onto the runway. Almost as soon as we took off, I was given complete control of the plane. We flew in formation with the other plane only about 20 feet away from us!
Then we started practicing some maneuvers and basic aerobatics, taking turns chasing each other through the sky while keeping the opponent's plane in the gunsight.
After that, we started the aerial dog fights. The only rules were that we had to stay at least 500 feet apart and not descend below 2500 feet. Most of the time, we were around 5000-7000 feet above the ground. My average airspeed was 260 MPH. As we set up for each dog fight, we came straight at each other and then passed each other to the left. After that, the object was to quickly turn the plane over and find the other plane to "shoot it out of the sky." Experiencing 4-5 G-forces was incredible. Draws the blood out of your head to the point where you can't hardly see. I had to keep tightening all my muscles to force blood back into my head during steep climbs and turns.
We did six dog fights. I won three and the other novice pilot in the other plane won three. They videotaped the whole flight (one hour) from three different cameras mounted in the plane. Just watching the video will make you airsick when you see the ground spinning!
I have to admit that even though I got a bit airsick by the last dogfight (which was a particularly aggressive one), the experience was fantastic! Once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing. It is still hard to believe that they trusted me to fly this airplane without any hands-on from the instructor except during take-off and landing. I just followed his verbal instructions.
I hope to compress the video and put a link to it on here so you can see what I actually experienced. If you ever get the opportunity to do this, I highly recommend it. My flight was out of the Kissimmee Municipal Airport in Florida, but they travel around the country offering this experience in different cities each weekend. Check out
Air Combat USA's Web site. They rock!
Thanks, Nancy, for giving me this wonderful gift!
In the meantime, hope everyone is doing well. I have been too busy to post anything on here lately. Please keep in touch!
Amanda comes home Thursday for the summer after finishing her first year at the Univ. of Miami! Can't wait to see her again!
Jeff
