An F-14 Tomcat Ride!

BTE

Extra Ordinary
Article by Rick Reilly of SI - Very Funny!!!!

Below is an article written by Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated. He details his experiences when given the opportunity to fly in a F-14 Tomcat.

Now this message is for America's most famous athletes:

Someday you may be invited to fly in the back-seat of one of your country's most powerful fighter jets. Many of you already have ... John Elway, John Stockton, Tiger Woods to name a few. If you get this opportunity, let me urge you, with the greatest sincerity...

Move to Guam.
Change your name.
Fake your own death!
Whatever you do .
Do Not Go!!!

I know. The U.S. Navy invited me to try it. I was thrilled. I was pumped. I was toast! I should've known when they told me my pilot would be Chip (Biff) King of Fighter Squadron 213 at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach.

Whatever you're thinking a Top Gun named Chip (Biff) King looks like, triple it. He's about six-feet, tan, ice-blue eyes, wavy surfer hair, finger-crippling handshake -- the kind of man who wrestles dyspeptic alligators in his leisure time. If you see this man, run the other way. Fast.

Biff King was born to fly. His father, Jack King, was for years the voice of NASA missions. ("T-minus 15 seconds and counting ....." Remember?) Chip would charge neighborhood kids a quarter each to hear his dad. Jack would wake up from naps surrounded by nine-year-olds waiting for him to say, "We have a liftoff."

Biff was to fly me in an F-14D Tomcat, a ridiculously powerful $60 million weapon with nearly as much thrust as weight, not unlike Colin Montgomerie. I was worried about getting airsick, so the night before the flight I asked Biff if there was something I should eat the next morning.

"Bananas," he said.

"For the potassium?" I asked.

"No," Biff said, "because they taste about the same coming up as they do going down."

The next morning, out on the tarmac, I had on my flight suit with my name sewn over the left breast. (No call sign -- like Crash or Sticky or Leadfoot . but, still, very cool.) I carried my helmet in the crook of my arm, as Biff had instructed. If ever in my life I had a chance to nail Nicole Kidman, this was it.

A fighter pilot named Psycho gave me a safety briefing and then fastened me into my ejection seat, which, when employed, would "egress" me out of the plane at such a velocity that I would be immediately knocked unconscious.

Just as I was thinking about aborting the flight, the canopy closed over me, and Biff gave the ground crew a thumbs-up. In minutes we were firing nose up at 600 mph. We leveled out and then canopy-rolled over another F-14.

Those 20 minutes were the rush of my life. Unfortunately, the ride lasted 80. It was like being on the roller coaster at Six Flags Over Hell. Only without rails. We did barrel rolls, sap rolls, loops, yanks and banks. We dived, rose and dived again, sometimes with a vertical velocity of 10,000 feet per minute. We chased another F-14, and it chased us.

We broke the speed of sound. Sea was sky and sky was sea. Flying at 200 feet we did 90-degree turns at 550 mph, creating a G force of 6.5, which is to say I felt as if 6.5 times my body weight was smashing against me, thereby approximating life as Mrs. Colin Montgomerie.

And I egressed the bananas. I egressed the pizza from the night before.

And the lunch before that. I egressed a box of Milk Duds from the sixth grade. I made Linda Blair look polite. Because of the G's, I was egressing stuff that did not even want to be egressed. I went through not one airsick bag, but two.

Biff said I passed out. Twice. I was coated in sweat.

At one point, as we were coming in upside down in a banked curve on a mock bombing target and the G's were flattening me like a tortilla and I was in and out of consciousness, I realized I was the first person in history to throw down.

I used to know cool. Cool was Elway throwing a touchdown pass, or Norman making a five-iron bite. But now I really know cool. Cool is guys like Biff, men with cast-iron stomachs and freon nerves. I wouldn't go up there again for Derek Jeter's black book, but I'm glad Biff does every day, and for less a year than a rookie reliever makes in a home stand.

A week later, when the spins finally stopped, Biff called. He said he and the fighters had the perfect call sign for me. Said he'd send it on a patch for my flight suit.

What is it? I asked.

"Two Bags."

:lmao:
 

ylexot

Super Genius
My buddy got the callsign "glove". They secretly made sure he didn't have any bags and had the patch made before he went for his low-level flight in a TAV-8B. He had the choice of using his glove or cleaning the cockpit later. :killingme

Luckliy, I never got stuck with a callsign as a result of my rides. :biggrin:
 

Tonio

Asperger's Poster Child
A friend of mine once had a ride on one of the Blue Angels' F/A-18s, with the same results. I wonder what training the pilots go through to strengthen their stomachs.
 

BTE

Extra Ordinary
I know how queasy I get, just spinning around on a merry go round...I cannot even began to imagine a jet ride. The thought is very cool though...and an F-14.....HOLY MOLY...the military's coolest jet EVER....too bad they are almost gone. :sad:
 

ylexot

Super Genius
Tonio said:
A friend of mine once had a ride on one of the Blue Angels' F/A-18s, with the same results. I wonder what training the pilots go through to strengthen their stomachs.
Just lots of flying. You eventually get used to it. I didn't have a problem with all the g's and rolls, etc. The problem was when they stopped. Then I started to feel nauseous.
 

Vince

......
Used to love flying in turbulence, thunderstorms, etc. Bounce all over the sky. Believe it or not it would put me right to sleep. :snooze:
 

Mikeinsmd

New Member
Vince said:
Used to love flying in turbulence, thunderstorms, etc. Bounce all over the sky. Believe it or not it would put me right to sleep. :snooze:
After you landed we hope........... :lmao:
 

Ponytail

New Member
Geezus. I went flying once with my brother...in a Cesna 152. The plane was rented for 2 hours. We landed in 20 minutes. I was green and thankfully had nothing in my stomach to "egress". I still tried. During my egress from the airplane it was two easy steps. Open the door, and flop to the ground.

I had been flying lots of times before that in planes about the same size as that with no trouble. It sems though that my brother made an extra effort to get me sick. It worked. :dead:

Ride in a F14 though...I couldn't imagine. It doesn't sound like those pilots are as "nice" and willing to land though when you get sick, even on a pleasure ride. That's hysterical! :lmao:
 

Penn

Dancing Up A Storm
For my retirement "present", my Director of Ops(Air Force) took me up with him in an F-16B(2 seater), out of Jacksonville NAS. The Air Force had a contingency of F-16s there for Air Defense Alert Activities, and it was my Col's time to renew his quals for the quarter.
We went up as a flight of 4, then split off into 2 separate flights, one flight holding at a block 18,000 to 23,000ft(us) and another flight blocking from 25,000 to 29,000ft, as I recall.
We were up against a Lear Jet, our target who could be at any altitude from 9,000 up to 33,000ft, as long as he stayed out of the airspace blocks that the flights were assigned to.
We were paired against him twice, at first, locked up and shot him once with a captive AIM-9 Sidewinder, but we never saw him the second go. We searched that sky, all over the place off Jacksonville and never did get a radar lock on him.
Then we were hooked up on a KC-10 tanker for Air Refueling(awesome being under the belly of an airplane that huge, taking on fuel through a tube going behind your canopy!)
Then, disengaging we had 3 more opportunities to intercept that Lear Jet again, scoring 2 out of the 3 times he headed in our direction.

Coolest thing I'll never forget was when my pilot couldn't find the Lear, he was just about past us, when I spotted him visually about 6,000ft below us, heading away at our southeast, and I yelled:

"Tally Ho", Lear Jet, right 5 o'clock, heading away to our right rear quarter!"

My pilot never missed a beat, bent that F-16 around at one heck of an angle of bank, nose down and lit off the afterburner! Holy Sh!t!!

He rolled her over at about 8,000ft, came out of burner and lined up on the Lear, with the buzz of the AIM-9 acquiring the exhaust of the Lears' engines droning in my helmet. "FOX 2", my pilot called; splash one Lear Jet!

I hardly remembered the rest of the flight and the ride back to Jacksonville NAS.
 

ylexot

Super Genius
One of my flights was a similar training exercise, but it was just two hornets. At the "fight's on" call, my pilot pulled and we climbed vertically for about 7k ft. Then he rolled 180 and pulled so we were upside-down and rolled back over. That was fun.

Overall, I got 6 rides...2 low-levels, 1 that was supposed to be a low-level, but it was too cloudy, the training flight, a "day trainer" (do whatever you want), and a catapult flight test...0-200 in 4 seconds...they call it the "spine breaker" :biggrin:

Oh yeah, at the hornet is more aglile than the Tomcat, but the Tomcat has more thrust and can go faster...a lot faster. I think the hornet's probably a better/more fun ride.
 
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Pete

Repete
I remember this time in a P-3. I was standing back by the coffee pot while we were screaming up through 23K, the engines and props droning.......oh nevermind.
 
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Penn

Dancing Up A Storm
BTE said:
Do you have to do the "hike hike hike" chanting to try and keep from passing out? :lmao:
I'm not sure why, but it appears that some people aren't affected as much by vertigo, sea-sickness, that kind of stuff. I 've never gotten seasick on a boat of any kind, whether on a lake or on the ocean.

When I was up in the F-16B with my DO, we did some rolls, outside loops(your fricken head wants to separate from your body- not fun) and some high angle-of-bank turns, somewhere around 60 to 70 degrees, and that is the exact opposite. I saw some gray during some high-speed turns at high bank angles.

But going downhill, upside down, as we did when chasing that Lear Jet below us was a rush. We went supersonic very quick, and when he rolled the F-16B over, we were still in a descent, and that is tough on your stomach. I guess I was too darn excited to become sick, or something.

Earlier in my service career, I'd been up in a T-33, an F-106 and an F-4.
 

Ken King

A little rusty but not crusty
PREMO Member
Penn said:
I'm not sure why, but it appears that some people aren't affected as much by vertigo, sea-sickness, that kind of stuff. I 've never gotten seasick on a boat of any kind, whether on a lake or on the ocean.

When I was up in the F-16B with my DO, we did some rolls, outside loops(your fricken head wants to separate from your body- not fun) and some high angle-of-bank turns, somewhere around 60 to 70 degrees, and that is the exact opposite. I saw some gray during some high-speed turns at high bank angles.

But going downhill, upside down, as we did when chasing that Lear Jet below us was a rush. We went supersonic very quick, and when he rolled the F-16B over, we were still in a descent, and that is tough on your stomach. I guess I was too darn excited to become sick, or something.

Earlier in my service career, I'd been up in a T-33, an F-106 and an F-4.
I believe that BTE was referring to the "L" manuever for countering "G-forces". Didn't you have to go through physiological training before the flight?
 

Petter Solberg

New Member
I've been up in a Pitts S2 and a Vans RV-6 . We by no means were in awesome machines as compared to a Hornet or Tomcat, but we were pulling 6 G's. I blacked out a few times on these rides, not having the help of a suit. I was surprised that I didn't become nauseous on any of the flights. The only time I have ever felt nausious in an airplane was in the back of a C-2 headed to the ship.
Rob
 

Penn

Dancing Up A Storm
Ken King said:
I believe that BTE was referring to the "L" manuever for countering "G-forces". Didn't you have to go through physiological training before the flight?
There was a whole set of briefings I had to sit through; ejection seat training, emergency ejection terms(when we were in the F-16) G-suit and helmet fitting, helmet/oxygen testing.

I think that is what they called it, you were advised to tighten up your stomach, and I think rectal muscles, "grunting", if you will, to lessen the effects of G-forces on you as you were going through tightly banked turns and maneuvers. I suppose that was the physiological training aspect of it, be cause the training officer was grunting like he was taking a dump or something. :lmao:

I asked the Colonel about how many "G"s we encountered, and he said somewhere around 4 to 4.5. Maybe that's why I didn't feel the effects so bad, just a gray-out period for a few seconds.
 
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