Shooter 23 Cleared Hot

If you look carefully, you can actually see my name written on the front of the helmet... so even though you can't see my face, you'll know it's actually me...

I had my first ride in a jet ever, the F/A-18D, a jet so powerful, sleek and agile that some would call it the finest machine man ever created.

All I know is that I got to fly it from the rear cockpit for about 10-15 minutes out of a 70 minute flight while we were in holding and it, without a doubt, the hardest thing I've ever flown. It may have been trying to fly from the rear, looking at gauges in weird positions, it could've been the confusing navigational display or that I was flying at 300kts but my air work was pretty off from what I can do in the T-34C, I felt like I was trying to balance a pencil on the tip of my finger, the second you take your eyes off of it, it falls down.

All I wanted to do was push it into full afterburner and launch that plane into the sky, but we were in holding, about to do something pretty darn cool. We were flying a Close Air Support mission with another plane acting as the Forward Air Controller. They cleared us in "hot" and we dropped like a rock from our holding orbit, accelerated to very high speed (at which point the jet starts to vibrate like my grandmother's Saturn when you take it on the highway over 70mph, it's called "speed buzz" apparently they think it's cool). We flew at this velocity at a very low altitude for not more than a minute and then with little warning popped up, flipped over dropped bombs and pulled out all using maneuvers ranging from 4.5 to 6+Gs.

It was fun, it was powerful, it went so fast that I'm surprised I still remember it, it pulled enough Gs that I'm surprised I stayed conscious and still remember it and it made me hugely glad I've been through Centrifuge and ejection seat training before I had the idea to come out here.

We ended the day with a couple of strafing runs which make the whole plane shake a lot like my grandmother's Saturn when you take it over 80 mph on the highway (I swear it's just hyperbole Mom, don't worry).

It was a good day and I can't wait until I (hopefully) get the chance to do it from the front seat.

I have another T-34C flight tomorrow and in case you all were wondering, thanks to my name sounding very similar to disgraced Televangelist, Jimmy Swaggart, my call-sign has become "Preacher."

Oh, this is kind of hilarious, I lost my cover (hat) from my ankle pocket today (I had a checklist book in there too and it knocked it out) so somebody found it, turned it over to somebody who put it in a cup of water which then went into the freezer (at about the time I was driving to the exchange to buy a new cover) which, when solid, was then left on the duty officer's desk with my name written on the cup.