dembro
Pre-Flight
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dembro
Apologies in advance for the huge book below - good news is that I have a TL: DR in the form of another video!
So my latest video is a little different. Back in 2009, I was lucky enough to get to fly with Air Combat and get an hour or so of dogfighting instruction. That seems like a thing that most of us GA pilots don’t get to experience (unfortunately) so I thought I’d put a video of the experience together, so you can decide if it’s something that might be up your alley.
Full Disclosure: This video/post is most definitely NOT sponsored by Air Combat. It is based on a video that I made while working on a video project with Ford Motor Company back in 2009 to help them launch a car. They paid for the dogfight for me and my cousin - seemed like something I should mention. I’m not going to talk about cars at all.
A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW OF AIR COMBAT
It’s impossible to make a watchable video that covers everything about the experience but I’ll try to cover it here. There’s also a lot that I remembered watching the raw footage for this video, and I have new perspective as a pilot.
TL: DR? It’s expensive. It’s awesome. I puked a few times.
My cousin and I drove from Madison, WI all the way to Fullerton, CA to get the dogfight in. The road trip was great, but we were really pumped to get in the air. A little background, at that time I wasn’t a pilot, neither was my cousin Mike. But we both love airplanes and spent most of our childhood playing Aces of Europe/Aces over the Pacific and F-19 Stealth Fighter (am I showing my age here?).
The Fullerton operation of Air Combat, (10 years ago) was pretty great. I know they’ve since moved so YMMV. We were welcomed by the flight crew and a dispatch officer. After some introductions we dug right into briefing our ‘mission.’ Our pilots gave us a crash course on air combat (high yo-yos, low yo-yos, etc) and emergency procedures, all in a wood paneled mission briefing room with the classic plane on a stick props. The ambiance of the office really lent itself to the experience.
After the briefing room, we suited up in flight suits, helmets, parachutes, and life vests. The pilots got their final weather etc briefings and we were out to the aircraft.
For our mission, we flew Marchetti SF260s. I wish I could give you a more detailed review of the airplane, but it was just about 10 years ago and, since I wasn’t a pilot yet, I didn’t have anything to really compare it to at the time. I will say that stick forces were very light and responsive. The plane also seemed to give you a lot of warning when it came to approaching aggravated stalls (someone who actually flies one should tell me if that’s true). Stepping into the cockpit pre-ab initio was overwhelming. You can see in the video that I’m definitely nervous. Our pilots seemed to have a good bead on that and worked to make us feel comfortable.
Speaking of pilots, I wish I had spent more time interviewing ours. ‘Monk’ flew with my cousin - apparently called that because he’s an aerobatic instructor and didn’t have any war fighting experience. I flew with ‘Spartan’, who was a retired F-18 squadron commander (IIRC) and very intimidating. Both of these dudes were professional pilots for their day jobs. They absolutely knew what they were doing.
The flight begins with a formation take off out to an aerobatic practice area. Once you’re in the air you’re immediately taught the basic concepts of formation flight and allowed to fly a little bit of that with instructor guidance. This seems like a good place to mention that I think the experience is very different for non-pilots. There are some functional take aways - they had us keep our feet on the floor the whole flight to avoid inadvertent spin entry and uncoordinated flight - but mainly they don’t have time to walk you through everything like angle of attack, how airplanes fly etc. We instead concentrated on high level concepts like energy management, you’ll hear this in the video’s audio. I don’t know if I ever looked at where the airspeed indicator was.
My understanding is that if you are a pilot they let you put your feet on the rudder pedals and actually expect you to try to fly the plane a bit. If you are a pilot you should also let them know when you book the flight - they can pair you with a CFI so you can log the time.
My video focuses on the actual dogfight side of things - you start with two practice sorties. One plane is the fighter and one the bogey. The bogey just does a horizontal turn while the fighter does an aerobatic yo-yo maneuver to close the gap and engage.
During the first practice fight, I let my gaming experience (I’m going to blame it on that anyways) take over and pumped the stick forward to try to get a shot. Big time negative Gs (not THAT big time). It was enough to send me into a nausea cycle that…. well…. You’ll see how it ended.
I will admit, I was pretty embarrassed puking next to a real American hero. He was pretty understanding, but I know it’s no fun to be in his position. Spartan, if you read this… I’m sorry sir.
You’ll notice in the next dogfight that Mike’s aircraft didn’t put up too much of a fight. I think that’s pre-choreographed by the pilots. If someone pukes, that person gets to win the next one to keep morale up. I don’t think it actually mattered to me, and in retrospect, once I saw the videos and it was obvious I felt bad for my cousin who had to just chill while I shot him down.
The fourth dogfight in the video was epic and the only one where we both worked against each other as hard as we could. I wish there had been a camera plane to show you what it looked like from the outside. As we both pull hard at the onset, you’ll hear Spartan say “HUGE vertical there!” - Mike and Monk and pulled harder and were basically executing a hammerhead above us. It was epic. We fought a bit more until my stomach forced me to yield again. Sorry Spartan.
On the flight home you’re treated to more formation flight and then, on the ground the videos are loaded up and you debrief the whole thing with the pilots.
I’d like to think that if I went back today, my stomach would be better AND I’d take away even more as a pilot. Puking was rough but, I’m going to be honest, it didn’t deter me at all (though I was pretty frustrated with myself in flight) - flying this sortie was probably the most epic and cool thing I’ve ever done in an airplane.
This flight was the moment when I decided I NEEDED to be a pilot. No more waiting. In the end it took me 3 more years to reach my goal.
If you google Air Combat, you’ll find that they’ve had some management changes at their company in the past few years and had a takeoff accident during training a year or so ago as well. I can’t comment on any of that as my flight was almost a decade ago but it brings up an important point: If you’re interested in doing this (or something like it somewhere else), be smart and do your due diligence and make sure you’re comfortable with the risks you are taking for the adrenaline rush. I think the cost of the whole thing was about $3k for both of us, which is about half of what I paid for my entire PPL a few years later. Just something to chew on I guess. I don't doubt it's totally worth that 3k - but that is a TON of avgas you could burn in your own bird.
Anyways - thanks for watching the video. Happy to answer any questions you might have about the experience!
So my latest video is a little different. Back in 2009, I was lucky enough to get to fly with Air Combat and get an hour or so of dogfighting instruction. That seems like a thing that most of us GA pilots don’t get to experience (unfortunately) so I thought I’d put a video of the experience together, so you can decide if it’s something that might be up your alley.
Full Disclosure: This video/post is most definitely NOT sponsored by Air Combat. It is based on a video that I made while working on a video project with Ford Motor Company back in 2009 to help them launch a car. They paid for the dogfight for me and my cousin - seemed like something I should mention. I’m not going to talk about cars at all.
A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW OF AIR COMBAT
It’s impossible to make a watchable video that covers everything about the experience but I’ll try to cover it here. There’s also a lot that I remembered watching the raw footage for this video, and I have new perspective as a pilot.
TL: DR? It’s expensive. It’s awesome. I puked a few times.
My cousin and I drove from Madison, WI all the way to Fullerton, CA to get the dogfight in. The road trip was great, but we were really pumped to get in the air. A little background, at that time I wasn’t a pilot, neither was my cousin Mike. But we both love airplanes and spent most of our childhood playing Aces of Europe/Aces over the Pacific and F-19 Stealth Fighter (am I showing my age here?).
The Fullerton operation of Air Combat, (10 years ago) was pretty great. I know they’ve since moved so YMMV. We were welcomed by the flight crew and a dispatch officer. After some introductions we dug right into briefing our ‘mission.’ Our pilots gave us a crash course on air combat (high yo-yos, low yo-yos, etc) and emergency procedures, all in a wood paneled mission briefing room with the classic plane on a stick props. The ambiance of the office really lent itself to the experience.
After the briefing room, we suited up in flight suits, helmets, parachutes, and life vests. The pilots got their final weather etc briefings and we were out to the aircraft.
For our mission, we flew Marchetti SF260s. I wish I could give you a more detailed review of the airplane, but it was just about 10 years ago and, since I wasn’t a pilot yet, I didn’t have anything to really compare it to at the time. I will say that stick forces were very light and responsive. The plane also seemed to give you a lot of warning when it came to approaching aggravated stalls (someone who actually flies one should tell me if that’s true). Stepping into the cockpit pre-ab initio was overwhelming. You can see in the video that I’m definitely nervous. Our pilots seemed to have a good bead on that and worked to make us feel comfortable.
Speaking of pilots, I wish I had spent more time interviewing ours. ‘Monk’ flew with my cousin - apparently called that because he’s an aerobatic instructor and didn’t have any war fighting experience. I flew with ‘Spartan’, who was a retired F-18 squadron commander (IIRC) and very intimidating. Both of these dudes were professional pilots for their day jobs. They absolutely knew what they were doing.
The flight begins with a formation take off out to an aerobatic practice area. Once you’re in the air you’re immediately taught the basic concepts of formation flight and allowed to fly a little bit of that with instructor guidance. This seems like a good place to mention that I think the experience is very different for non-pilots. There are some functional take aways - they had us keep our feet on the floor the whole flight to avoid inadvertent spin entry and uncoordinated flight - but mainly they don’t have time to walk you through everything like angle of attack, how airplanes fly etc. We instead concentrated on high level concepts like energy management, you’ll hear this in the video’s audio. I don’t know if I ever looked at where the airspeed indicator was.
My understanding is that if you are a pilot they let you put your feet on the rudder pedals and actually expect you to try to fly the plane a bit. If you are a pilot you should also let them know when you book the flight - they can pair you with a CFI so you can log the time.
My video focuses on the actual dogfight side of things - you start with two practice sorties. One plane is the fighter and one the bogey. The bogey just does a horizontal turn while the fighter does an aerobatic yo-yo maneuver to close the gap and engage.
During the first practice fight, I let my gaming experience (I’m going to blame it on that anyways) take over and pumped the stick forward to try to get a shot. Big time negative Gs (not THAT big time). It was enough to send me into a nausea cycle that…. well…. You’ll see how it ended.
I will admit, I was pretty embarrassed puking next to a real American hero. He was pretty understanding, but I know it’s no fun to be in his position. Spartan, if you read this… I’m sorry sir.
You’ll notice in the next dogfight that Mike’s aircraft didn’t put up too much of a fight. I think that’s pre-choreographed by the pilots. If someone pukes, that person gets to win the next one to keep morale up. I don’t think it actually mattered to me, and in retrospect, once I saw the videos and it was obvious I felt bad for my cousin who had to just chill while I shot him down.
The fourth dogfight in the video was epic and the only one where we both worked against each other as hard as we could. I wish there had been a camera plane to show you what it looked like from the outside. As we both pull hard at the onset, you’ll hear Spartan say “HUGE vertical there!” - Mike and Monk and pulled harder and were basically executing a hammerhead above us. It was epic. We fought a bit more until my stomach forced me to yield again. Sorry Spartan.
On the flight home you’re treated to more formation flight and then, on the ground the videos are loaded up and you debrief the whole thing with the pilots.
I’d like to think that if I went back today, my stomach would be better AND I’d take away even more as a pilot. Puking was rough but, I’m going to be honest, it didn’t deter me at all (though I was pretty frustrated with myself in flight) - flying this sortie was probably the most epic and cool thing I’ve ever done in an airplane.
This flight was the moment when I decided I NEEDED to be a pilot. No more waiting. In the end it took me 3 more years to reach my goal.
If you google Air Combat, you’ll find that they’ve had some management changes at their company in the past few years and had a takeoff accident during training a year or so ago as well. I can’t comment on any of that as my flight was almost a decade ago but it brings up an important point: If you’re interested in doing this (or something like it somewhere else), be smart and do your due diligence and make sure you’re comfortable with the risks you are taking for the adrenaline rush. I think the cost of the whole thing was about $3k for both of us, which is about half of what I paid for my entire PPL a few years later. Just something to chew on I guess. I don't doubt it's totally worth that 3k - but that is a TON of avgas you could burn in your own bird.
Anyways - thanks for watching the video. Happy to answer any questions you might have about the experience!
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