‘Mac’ suggested I reverse my turn, and I made it worse by hesitating in level flight for two seconds. C’mon Mav, do some of that pilot sh*t!”Īfter three mind-blackening vertical turns it was clear that Paolo had gained the edge, pulling tighter and flirting more daringly with the stall buffet. “He’s still coming, he’s still back there. Paolo kicked off a miraculous recovery by wrenching his Marchetti into another high-G vertical egg, squeezing every bit of performance from his airplane. I pulled a 4.5G split-S, my body weighed four and a half times normal and my Marchetti nibbled at the stall buffet as I tried to pull my targeting reticle onto him and light him up with my guns. He rounded the top of the shuddering loop and dove. We flashed past each other head on, left-to-left, then Paolo daringly went vertical, pulling straight up into the sky. The video is worth watching just for this one dogfight. “ Well if you were directly above him, how could you see him?” Dogfights #3 and #4 were easy kills for me, since Paolo was focused on keeping his breakfast down. Paolo and I shot each other down in the first two practice dogfights, then we went at it tooth and nail. The barrel roll attack tutorial is interesting. There would be no arguments about who won. If you hit him, his laser sensors would ignite a smoke trail. When you triggered the Marchetti’s guns, a laser beam fired at the target airplane. After a formation take off we tested our guns on the way to the range. My IP, an ex-Marine F-18 pilot, call sign ‘Mac,’ cycled our boost pump and the Lycoming O-540 fired. The trash talk was personal and unforgiving. ‘TOPGUN’ dialogue lines were abused again and again. We hammed TOP GUN poses beside the airplanes. We slipped into our parachute harnesses, then swaggered out on deck. “The trophy for the alternates is down in the ladies room!” Yeah, cracked me up. I went into the ladies room by mistake and the wisecracks were predictable. “If You Ain’t Cheating, You Ain’t Trying.” So the playbook allowed shady tactics? These would be covered in the airplane after take off, we were told. Then there was the cryptic “IYAC YAT” on the whiteboard. If your breakfast came up again, the hero camera would record the ballistics of every disgusting barf. The biggest thing on the board was “LOOK GOOD AT ALL COSTS.” The Marchetti SF260s we would fly had three video cameras – cockpit camera from behind looking forward gun sight camera and the ‘hero’ camera, which looked back at the pilots and was always on. So we put our flight suits on and sat for the briefing.Īn ex-F-14 Navy jock, call sign ‘Spartan,’ ran the one-hour brief. Tim, Paolo’s Dad, threatened to walk out if we stripped down to towels. We considered recreating the locker beefcake scene from the movie. Within minutes we were ordered to the locker room to put our flight gear on. We were instantly in an aircraft carrier fighter squadron ready room. We met at Fullerton and stepped through the looking glass. I texted him that Charlie and I were already at the beach playing half-naked volleyball with Maverick and Goose. He also claimed that he spent the night with “Charlie.” Yeah, right. Paolo ready to go Mach 2 with his hair on fire.īut two years ago, he travelled trans-Pacific the day before our knife fight and pleaded jet-lag. In fighter pilot lingo he is “flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong.” Now, two years later, my former adversary Paolo sits all grown up in the cockpit of an A-330 airliner. There were two little boys in those Marchetti SF-260 fighter airplanes that day. We were about to launch into air combat against a real pilot, in a real fighter airplane, with badass ex-Navy and ex-Marine fighter pilots. We showed up at their hangar for a pre-booked flight. Apwas one of the best entries in my pilot logbook: Air Combat Manoeuvring - “dogfighting.” Air Combat USA was an outfit in Fullerton Airport, California.
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