We convened in the parking lot at 0705 CDT for the drive over the Aerospace Medical for our physicals. We arrived at 0715, but they opened at 0730. Everyone decided to go get breakfast, I elected to stay and wait for the doors to open, hoping to get the process started. They let me in and seemed a little confused, just like everyone else at Sheppard, by the fact that I was wearing a blue flight suit, no rank, but wings. In fact, while walking around, I had several Airmen salute me–after all, if I’m in a flight suit with wings, I must be an officer, right? I nodded in response, but I’m not sure what the proper response is. When walking past someone, there’s not really time to say, “I’m not really an officer, I’m not even in the Air Force, so I can’t return your salute…”

After explaining to the people in the medical office what I needed, they handed me a bunch of papers with a clipboard, and I set about filling them out. After returning them, there seemed to be some frustration with their computers as my cohorts returned. After everyone filled out the papers, the airman (airwoman?) behind the desk informed me that I did not exist in their computer. Well, of course I didn’t, I explained. They explained they knew I shouldn’t exist, but the computer said that I did when they tried to create my record, but that I didn’t when they tried to retrieve it. They seemed to be stuck on some sort of error where they were unable to enter my rank. Of course, I don’t have a rank. An hour and a half later, everyone else managed to get their medicals completed, but I still didn’t exist.

Eventually, some time around 0900 we were all finished, and I had in my pocket the first of many papers that would be necessary for my flight. We progressed to life support where we were fitted for helmets and masks. This took a good long while for each person. First they gave us all green flight suits, since our blue ones weren’t made of Nomex. Helmets had to be fitted, the headphones positioned correctly inside the helmets. Then they had to measure our mouths and noses and test fit oxygen masks until they found one that seemed right.

I didn’t think I would be at all bothered by wearing an oxygen mask. The guy who put his on first said, “Man, this thing feels claustrophobic.” I didn’t understand what he meant until they strapped mine on. It makes a hard seal, so you can only breathe through a tube. About the time I finally got used to that, he dragged me over to a machine and plugged my hose into it without saying anything. It got harder to breathe. He didn’t say anything. I was struggling for each breath when he flipped some switches and next thing I knew, my lungs were forcefully pressurized. I suddenly felt like I couldn’t breathe at all, but then I realized my lungs were full, and I was just having trouble exhaling. I found that I could, in fact, exhale, it just took a lot of work. I didn’t have to take in my next breath though; the machine did it for me. I finally realized that the life support airman was talking to me. He was asking me where my mask was leaking. I realized that my mask was, in fact, leaking at the top of my nose. I tried to say something, but couldn’t talk. I pointed to the top of my nose, and he yanked on some straps. Some lights lit up on his contraption, and he turned it off and disconnected me, then marked all over my mask with a yellow grease pencil.

He put my helmet, mask and some Nomex gloves in a helmet bag, stuck my name on it with some tape, and hung it in his closet. He said we should step a few minutes early so he could fit us for a parachute. That done, we collected some more papers and headed out for ejection seat training.

First, we watched a video tape, obviously from the ’80s, that told us how to work our ejection seats and parachutes. I had a hard time following which handle did what as the picture was pretty crappy, and hoped that I’d simply pass out and wake up alive if I had to eject. In the video, the guy reaches over his head and pulls on something, and then magically has handles to steer his parachute with. After he lands, he reaches over his head and pulls something else and his parachute lets go. I had no idea if it was at all obvious what did what and thought that it would be bad to get those things confused–releasing your parachute when trying to steer it.

After the tape, we moved on to the trainer. The ejection seat trainer is a T-37 seat more or less like the one in the plane, but hooked to a loud contraption of some sort. I suspect it’s steam powered, but no one would say. You strap on a parachute, then strap into the seat and work to get the various connections of things between seat and parachute all worked out correctly. Then, you bring your feet all the way up to the seat, put your knees together, straighten your back and lean your head back in the seat. Then you pull the handles.

And nothing happens. Ahh, right, after you pull the handles, you have to find the triggers inside the handles and squeeze. There’s two. I would assume that if you squeeze one or the other it would work, but I’m not sure. After you squeeze the triggers, the chair launches you forward onto your feet. It’s supposed to release the seat belt as well, but doesn’t work quite correctly, so you have to release it yourself. Supposedly there’s a chance that the real ejection seat could fail in the same way, and you could still be strapped to your seat. If so, you want to release the seat belt to drop the seat.

That done, we collected some more papers and they pronounced us more or less ready to fly. They sent us off to get lunch, suggested we eat something “soft, but not greasy,” and said we should be ready to brief our flights at 1300.

We at lunch at a wonderful little deli. I had a “wicked chicken sandwich” which was, well, somewhat wicked. It was fried chicken doused in some kind of hot sauce. Probably not the best meal to eat before flying upside down, but it worked. They had some really good sweet tea, and that made me happy.

Back on base, we found Lt. Imlay who steered us into a flight room. He gave us a sheet with a selection of profiles to chose from so we could let our pilots know what we wanted to see.

I explained that I really wanted to see formation flight, but more importantly I wanted to go upside down. They said I could go upside down and then started talking about all kinds of formation stuff I didn’t understand. Just for good measure, I said, “So, you’re sure I’ll get to go upside down?” “Yes! You’ll go upside down!” They laughed a bit about my eagerness to do something they do every day. We worked out a profile where one of my cohorts and I would be sitting right seat for a formation takeoff out to an area. Once in the area they would demo some formation stuff including close trail, extended trail, pitch-outs and rejoins. This all sounded fine and good, and then after that we would split up and do aerobatics. My instructor said I could do whatever aerobatics I wanted. I said I’d want to do some rolls, loops, lazy eights and inverted flight. He said I could go inverted for 29 seconds before the engines conked out. Sounded good to me.

First our pilots briefed each other about the formation flight, and I didn’t understand a lot of what they said. That took about 5 minutes, then we split up and briefed with our pilots individually. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what was going to go on. He picked up two model T-37’s on sticks and flew them around the desk in formation to explain various maneuvers we’d be doing. I was absolutely giddy with excitement.

After that, we headed out to life support, picked up our helmet bags, and they fitted us with parachutes. Wearing the parachute isn’t exactly the most comfortable of all things. It’s insanely heavy for a sack of silk–but that’s probably all the straps and then the survival kit attached to it. We grabbed all our stuff, put in some ear plugs and walked outside to wait for the bus.

Not that the flight line was far, it was right there. But with 300 or so planes out on it, you could spend a long time walking to your plane without the little shuttle bus that takes you out to the correct row of planes.

Once we found our plane, my IP had me set my parachute on the wing. We had to wait a second for the crew to finish filling the oxygen tanks. That done, he helped me set my stuff in the plane, then did a quick walk around. I took a photo while he was doing his walk around. I was going to ask him to get a photo of me in my gear, but I didn’t really put it all on again until we got into the plane. I put on the parachute and climbed in. He helped me hook my oxygen mask to my parachute, then hook that to the plane. I put on my helmet and did all the connections between my parachute and the seat belt. I got one of the belts twisted and we had to redo it all again. I felt like an invalid, incapable of dressing himself.

Finally, all strapped in, my pilot walked over to the left side and swiftly strapped himself in. He turned on the intercom system, and had me put on my oxygen mask, and we fiddled with switched and knobs until we could hear each other. With the canopy still open, he flipped a zillion switches and fired up the number one, then the number two engine. The engines made this most beautiful screaming noise which is impossible to describe, but they don’t call the T-37 a Tweety Bird for no reason. I was amazed at the noise level, and this with the engines at idle.

The T-37 has character. Air Force pilots have been training in it for nearly 50 years. In terms of jet technology, it was cutting edge back in 1954. The instruments are ancient and the cockpit is strangely cluttered. It’s now old, and Sheppard is the last base with T-37’s. They’re being replaced by the new T-6’s. A year from now, the T-37 will be completely retired, so I will have been one of the last few people to have gotten a ride in one.

As we sat there with the engines idling, I was mostly concentrating on the fact that I felt like I couldn’t breath. My major consolation was that each time I inhaled, a light labeled “FLOW” lit up on my oxygen panel, which someone managed to convince me I wouldn’t die. I flipped the oxygen mode from “NORMAL” to “EMERGENCY” and that pressurized my lungs and made it so I couldn’t exhale which didn’t seem like much of an improvement so I flipped it back. I had a hard time hearing the intercom and the radio calls–I’m not sure why, my volume was all the way up. But we taxied out to the runway behind the other guy we were going to be flying in formation with.

We held short of the runway breathing jet exhaust for awhile. I remembered that I was wearing a damn oxygen mask, and flipped it on 100% oxygen so I didn’t have to breathe the exhaust, and that helped for awhile. The winds were just out of our crosswind limits by the gust factor, so we had to sit and wait awhile until they could clear us for takeoff. This turned out to be a good thing, because it let me get somewhat familiar with the cockpit and the oxygen mask while we were at 0 knots and 1G.

We talked a bit about takeoff limits, and how silly the Air Force was. The winds were within limits for the center runway, but out of limits for the parallel runway 50 feet from it. Eventually the dropped into limits and we were cleared for takeoff.

We pulled onto the runway at the same time as the guy in front of us. He was lined up right of centerline, we were off to the left. He went full power and started his takeoff roll. 10 seconds later, we went. Before I knew it, we were airborne, and my instructor was complaining about how slow the Tweet was. I managed to decipher the airspeed indicator, and we were accelerating through 160 knots. The never-exceed speed for the DA20 is 164 knots. In a few short moments, we joined up in formation with the guy who took off in front of us. After some instruction, he turned the controls over to me, and I did my best to hold us in position. It required a constant amount of attention. After we leveled off in the area, my instructor took control and we switched sides, left to right and back, all while within about 5 feet of the other aircraft. We did some echelon turns, where we were tucked up tight behind the other aircraft in steep turns. After that, we pitched out, then set up to rejoin. He let me fly the rejoin, coaching me through it. After spending 1000 hours of flight time doing my best to avoid other aircraft, it was weird to try to turn inside of one and intercept them. We joined back up, then he took control and put us back in close fingertip formation, then gave me the controls again.

I was pretty worried about flying that close to another plane but was doing better than I thought I might. At one point, I started over controlling, and my IP intervened and got back on track, then gave it back to me. After awhile, he calmly said, “could you move a little lower so I can see the other plane?” I just about freaked out when I realized that he’d let me spend the last 15 seconds or so flying where he couldn’t see the other jet!

I gave him back the aircraft, and they did all kinds of crazy formation stuff. We followed close, doing loops and rolls and lazy eights all while in formation. At one point he warned me were were about to pull some G’s. They hit me like someone dropped a grand piano on my helmet. The first thing I noticed was my peripheral vision disappeared. Then I noticed that I wasn’t seeing colors anymore. Then my vision shrunk up and I was looking down a tunnel of light. About then, fortunately, he relaxed, which is good, because I don’t know how much I could have taken without passing out. I looked at the accelerometer–we pulled a mere 4.5 G’s. The plane is rated for 6. I don’t know how people pull 8–it’s gotta be miserable. I did notice that when I was flying later, I was able to pull 4 G’s without it bothering me so much–for whatever reason it’s easier to deal with when you’re flying.

I was sufficiently impressed, and we split off to do the aerobatics. I thought he would demo the maneuvers first, but instead he just talked me through them. I started with an aileron roll to the left. I lowered the nose, got up to about 220 knots, picked the nose up to about 10 degrees over the horizon and tossed the stick full left. Just like in a flight simulator, the plane snapped around in a roll, and I rolled out perfectly wings level. I asked him how many I could do in a row. He said three or four, before the nose started to drop. I went in and this time held it for two before the nose started to drop. The rotation was fast–I don’t know how fast, but seemed roughly 360 degrees per second–though I suspect it was slower than that in actuality. I rolled us level after the two rolls, and the horizon started playing tricks on me–my body wasn’t used to rolling around that fast. After that, he had me try some loops. Pitch down, get about 250 knots, then pull 3G’s. I got sloppy sideways on the first one. The second one I spent too long looking at the ailerons and got too slow before I pulled us around. As a result of pulling a little hard while inverted, I managed to get the stall buffet, while upside down. That woke me up a bit, I relaxed and recovered then pulled through. I’m glad I did it though, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have gotten to feel the T-37 buffet. I did some lazy 8’s, but they were pretty ugly. Then I tried some inverted flight.

When you’re doing a roll, you’re holding positive G’s all the way around, so it doesn’t feel like you’re upside down. After rolling inverted and stopping us while upside down, I sort of went crashing into my harness. After about 10 seconds, I decided it was really cool being upside down, but I didn’t like the feeling, so rolled us back up right.

Aerobatics over, we rejoined in formation for the flight back. He did some crazy over banked maneuver to rejoin, and we started on the arrival. As we descended, I took a picture while in formation, though we weren’t as tight as we were later. I started to feel a little queasy on the arrival, so I was kind of glad that we would be doing a straight-in landing. We landed in formation–the other plane touched down just right of centerline, we were just left of centerline. That was *very* cool.

All in all, it was every bit as awesome as I thought it would be. I’m sure I’ll never get to do it again, but I would jump on it if I ever got the chance.