The only way to fly

"I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth. . . put out my hand and touched the face of God!" Words cannot describe the intensity or the feeling or the experience of what I did this morning. I will try to convey to you just exactly what went down, but I will surely fail. No doubt you have a formulated opinion as to the life of a fighter pilot/rockstar. Well, I've had the very unique privilege since being in AK of sharing first hand both lives (ironically). The rockstar was the band "Third Day," arguably the "BIGGEST" name in modern Christian music. Someday, I'll come back to that subject, but today, I will discuss the fighter pilot, my boss. Besides being a great friend and mentor, he is a strong supporter of his troops and worked tirelessly to get me in the cockpit of the two-seater, F-16D aircraft that is used for incentive flights up here. After three months of wondering and waiting, the day finally came and I spent a little over an hour this morning flying high and extremely low, over this great final frontier. The prep was certainly unique - I had to be cleared medically by a flight doc as well as an aerospace physiologist. I then had to receive "egress training", basically "how to get out of the cockpit fast, on the ground or in the air". I also had to receive "hanging harness" training, for when I got stuck in the trees after "punching." Thankfully, I did not have to use any of the information learned from those classes much, but it was good to know. Once the request was signed by the base commander, I was on "go" status. This morning we had to go in to mission plan and determine our route for the trip, make some airspace agreements, and get briefed on the weather and restrictions. (just leaving the squadron building or "stepping" to the aircraft, pilots have to remember more and prepare for more than most of us face in an entire month of planning. The pictures on the right are progressive: 1. We received permission for an "unrestricted climb" to 15,0000 ft - basically, fly down the runway as fast as possible, then pull the aircraft on its tail and go straight up for 15,000 feet at 500 knots feeling 6-g's (basically, my body's weight was multiplied six times) - "wow" was all could think - I certainly couldn't speak for a while! Then we turned south to begin the "Low Level of Justice" - a route through the Alaska range that took us past tundra hilltops, snow-capped peaks, glacial valleys, mountains streams, and shear cliffs - most of the scenery was above and off to the side - we were that low! Pretty incredible. Then we saw some range targets and performed a few acrobatics and bombing maneuvers. This plane can turn on a dime! The closest turn we did was a 7-g turn (we did a few) and that was pretty fanatastic. Then we returned to base and I got to take the stick for a few seconds to feel the aircraft. After a few patterns, we touched down and called it a day. Rachel got some video of us "stepping" and of course, of the return to terra-firma! I can't wait to share these with everyone, but know that it was pretty incredible! Thank you, Marco for the ride of a lifetime, and thank you AMU for making the aircraft ready for launch - I have never felt safer in an airplane, ironically enough! God Bless - David