Fighter Pilot for a DayI used to think I knew how to fly. Now I'm not so sure. What changed my mind was a trip to Air Combat-USA. Normally based in California, they were doing a summer tour around the country, and were going to be flying out of K3 Aeronautics at Kankakee for a weekend. How I even got to do this in the first place is worth mentioning. Back before last Christmas, several members of my family, chiefly my brother, had been telling me how they got me the most amazing present ever. I was a little skeptical, and literally thought to myself, "To be as good as they're hyping this, it'd have to Air Combat-USA or something." When that turned out to be the present, I was absolutely astonished. They had no idea I'd even heard of the place. After six months of waiting and hoping the weather would be good, June 14th finally rolled around. When I got to Clow that day, I had to chase a hawk of tail off my plane, so the day was already starting off on an interesting note.  The flight to Kankakee was only half an hour and the weather was beautiful. In addition to having something to look forward to when I got there, it was nice to be flying somewhere different for a change. I tracked the Kankakee VOR to the airport, and landed on runway 22. On the way there, I could here the Air Combat USA planes returning from a round a mock dog fighting. I arrived at Kankakee with plenty of time to settle in, and used the extra minutes to review some material I had printed out. The book Air Combat USA suggests reading is the official navy manual by Robert Shaw. I bought a copy on Amazon.com, but I wouldn't recommend it. The book is dry, and the few maneuvers that get covered are explained surprising well on several websites which cover flight simulators. Also, only two chapters from the whole book are relevant to one on one engagements in similar aircraft. A few minutes later, I met my instructor, whose call sign was "Smudge". The moniker was a reference to his fingerprints. Being the IA who maintained the airplanes, he tended to smudge oil around the FBO.  Around 9:45, my "opponent" showed up. He was a pleasant gentleman in his sixties, named Craig, who had done mock air combat at least once before. He was not a pilot, which I was to find out was no handicap, since the dog fighting business is about as far from regular flying as you can get. My instructor told me that being a pilot actually works against you, since what you think you know doesn't apply. Craig's instructor had the call-sign "Pigmy" and had flown A-4 Skyhawks in Vietnam. After signing the obligatory waivers (most fun things seem to require waivers), we put on flight suits and received a safety briefing including the use of the parachute, a crash course on tactics, and off course the use of the sic-sacs. The entire flight is filmed, and their stock joke during the briefing is that if you throw up, they will only stop the filming if you hit the sic sac. Since Craig and I were both newbies, the tactics section just covered "pursuit curves", low yo-yos, and high yo-yos. Any more info than that would have been wasted on us. During the briefing, the previous two pilots arrived after completion their flight. One of them had not quite made it to the sic-sac in time.  After the briefing we put on helmets and went out to the airplanes, where we all took photos, because we obviously don't get to do this very often. Air Combat USA uses Marchetti SF260s with 250 h.p. engines, which are the primary trainers used by several air forces. The cockpit layout was pretty standard, except the plane was configured with the gauges on the right side, instead of the left. It had a definite military feel, with plenty of grey and matte black. The cockpit also sported a reflector gun sight, a trigger on the stick, and wall to wall sic-sacs. In conjunction with the gun sight, each plane has a smoke system which activates in response to a "hit" from an opponent's gun.  After taxing out to runway 22, the instructors did a formation takeoff, and we climbed out in formation to the aerobatic area nine miles south of the field. The formation flight is used as an opportunity to get the student used to the feel of the airplane. Flying close to another airplane, was slightly unnerving, but also really cool once you got used to it. Of course, I had to take some photos. 
Once in the practice area, we did some 30 degree bank turns so each pilot could practice tracking the other plane in the gun sight. After the basic tracking lesson, there is an exercise where each pilot gets to win a round and using one of the maneuvers discussed in the briefing. The idea is to ease the pilot into the experience. After that comes the free for all phase. Each dog fight starts with a left to left head on pass (I didn't realize this at first), after which each plane has to do some maneuver to reverse direction. I used the opportunity to fly two maneuvers I've always wanted to do: a split-s, and an (5.5 G) Immelman. Embarrassingly, I got "shot down" twice, before I could even get a sense of what was going on, since the physical sensations are extremely disorienting and completely unlike anything I've ever done before, including spin training. After that I thought they started taking it easy on me, because I won the next two. I later found out why my luck had improved. The frustrating part was that by the time I felt like things were starting to click and I was getting a feel for the plane, the whole thing was over and it was time to go back.
 I walked away being extremely impressed with the instructors. Not only are they keeping their wits about them the whole time, they are operating the cameras, maintaining situational awareness, and generally preventing the student from doing anything really stupid. I also walked away with a new found respect for the military pilots who do this for real in much more sophisticated aircraft when the stakes are much higher than some one not having a good time.  Would I do this again? Hell yes, in a heartbeat, but the experience was such sensory-overload that it took a while to sink how much fun I'd actually had. Even if I never fly the unfriendly skies again, I've always got the DVD and 1.0 of air combat time in my logbook. Where To Now?
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