F/A-18D Hornet Ride

` Yup... that's right. I had the unique privilege to ride in the backseat of one of our aircraft on December 4th. It was awesome. This was actually my second time to do so, but this time was much better than the first. LtCol Passant, my old XO, was the pilot and he took me for quite the ride. We actually flew for 2 hours at times only 500 feet up going more than 500 MPH. We did everything you could think of including tanking on a C-130J, low level flying, mock bombing runs, and air to air flying vs. our wing man. I can not put into words how awesome it was. I am absolutely amazed at the capability for the aircraft to maneuver and the sheer power that it has. Even after working on these pigs for 5+ years..... it is amazing.

Here we are lined up on the runway just moment before take-off. It was an awesome feeling when he put the A/C in afterburner.

Just seconds after taking off. Our wing man has already closed into tactical formation and is only feet away from us.

We met up with c-130J tanker over the Salton Sea. We took about 4ooo pounds of fuel (for a total of 14,000 pounds! That is with 2 external fuel tanks). They made it look so easy.

Here is a couple of neat shots of our wing man tanking. My buddy Brandon was in the backseat of the other aircraft. I think that he would agree with me that it was AWESOME!

Here is a picture of the Colorado river. Later in the flight we actually flew down it like it was a race track. Much quicker than rafting down it!

My "Top Gun" pose.

Check out this video. I put it in order of the flight, so hopefully you can get some sort of idea how awesome it was. You will notice that there are no pictures or videos taken when we were doing the air-to-air flying. I could barely breathe much less hold a camera up. Let's just say that the G force was much more intense (we pulled up to 6.5 g's). At one point I even had to ask the pilot to level off so I could catch my breath and focus my vision. The best way to describe the ride...... think back and remember the most intense roller coaster ride you have ever been on, then multiply it by 20, and make it 2 hours long.

I hope you enjoyed the pics and video. Until next time...

Josh