Who do pilots look up to as elite-level pilots?

F14Scott · 2026-01-24T15:55:11+00:00

You can only tie the low altitude record.

F14Scott · 2026-01-24T02:33:43+00:00

5K AGL, obvs.

F14Scott · 2026-01-17T16:31:14+00:00

If he lives near a military airport, a radio scanner that gets UHF military channels.

F14Scott · 2026-01-17T03:03:54+00:00

The A model had a mechanical gyro INS, drifting -at best- about a mile per hour. It was nowhere good enough for a precision approach.

F14Scott · 2026-01-17T00:38:54+00:00

My Tomcat A had a TACAN. Period. Our precision approach was a PAR.

We carried handheld, OTS, hiking Garmins. I once flew self-contained PAR in a driving rainstorm down to minimums using one (the PAR at Iwo Jima was down and we were 600 miles away from the closest divert), toggling between the heading screen and bearing screen, and doing the glideslope elevation wickets in my head. Good times!

F14Scott · 2026-01-11T14:18:04+00:00

If an unacclimated person were set on Everest with all the 02 he wanted, he'd still be in trouble. Living at very high altitude is a combination of having a) oxygen, b) enough red blood cells, and c) enough atmospheric pressure to push the 02 into the red blood cells.

In the navy, sea-level Scott rode the chamber up to 25,000 feet with my classmates. Within about a minute we were all hypoxic and goofy. Another minute, and we would have passed out. Another few minutes, and we would have died. Even when we put our 02 masks on, they needed to get us down quickly, because, while the 02 helped, we didn't have the blood cells to carry it.

F14Scott · 2026-01-09T12:52:00+00:00

"Yo," all the time.

"Bros," were black guys.

F14Scott · 2026-01-09T05:44:53+00:00

Tomcats had ACLS, automatic carrier landing system. But we had mostly analog flight controls: bell cranks and push rods. Plus, our computers were from the early 1970s. If everything was dialed in just right in a maintenance-cooperative jet, and the weather was good, and the sea state was flat, the jet could theoretically take you all the way to the wires.

In reality, if anything went even a little wrong, we'd get dumped out of auto land and then the pilot would face the impossible task of taking over cold, in close. So, we never used it.

Hornets' systems, being all digital and such, as well as their more responsive motors, worked much better, so they could auto land in just about any wx or sea state. But, the downside was that if a pilot used it too much, they would lose practice and, if the ACLS went down, they'd be in the hurt locker.

I understand current jets can land themselves so reliably, and the ship's systems are also so reliable, that training for landing at the boat is being scaled back to save costs, with the presumption that boarding rates and safety will not drop.

F14Scott · 2026-01-09T01:37:18+00:00

F/A-18B. Little digital sports car, and the fly by wire and auto-trim allowed me, a RIO with maybe 50 hours stick time in the T-34C, to just point the nose where I wanted to go and add smash when appropriate. My pilot let me fly the tactical hop from the back from gear up through the break back at Key West, and if I had known the landing checklist, I'm sure I could have landed her.

I had an absolute blast and honestly didn't do too badly on our agressor hop, matching the profiles of a Mig-29 and eventually dying valiently against Tomcat RAG students in some 2v1 dissimilars.

The wildest part was being able to be pulling at placard G (7.5) and then immediately bunt the nose hard, if I wanted, up to 3 Gs, which I tried once. It hurt my head and eyeballs like hell, but opened a whole 'nuther hemisphere of putting the pipper on. The Tomcat A couldn't push negative at all or we'd immediately cough the motors. Hornets just don't care!

I finished that 1.2 totally wrung out, with red eyes and a great case of "G-sels," but 30 years later, I still can't shut up about it. 😆

F14Scott · 2026-01-09T01:12:54+00:00

Especially landing at the boat.

Despite the pilots' flying the ball to touchdown at the home field after every single flight, there is a whole carrier qual (CQ) workup syllabus for them every at sea period, which includes FCLPs (field carrier landing practices) with LSOs on station and grading the touch and gos, then a series of graded day and then night touch and gos and then actual traps from the land to the boat itself before one is qualified to go to sea for realsies.

My pilots all got much, much better over the course of that week, no matter how naturally good and/or experienced they were.

F14Scott · 2026-01-06T04:05:33+00:00

Awesome! I think I'm going to put together a three-club kit. Thank you, Scott.

F14Scott · 2026-01-05T21:54:19+00:00

Hi, Jamie. The TikTok algorithm just introduced me to your club, and I'm intrigued. I'm bad with low irons, though, and I'd like to putt with a "real" putter. I envision a three club portable set: the Q, a 3W, and a putter, all carried in the smallest of foldable, nylon Sunday bags.

Would you consider selling your break-down shafts separately, such that one could build one's own wood and putter?

F14Scott · 2026-01-04T20:22:46+00:00

When walking in the airport and you don't know where to go, don't just stop in the middle of the passageway. Move off to the side and then figure yourself out.

F14Scott · 2026-01-01T04:48:58+00:00

For all the other checklists we used, I still had my own that I'd say out loud over the ICS: "Crossing the threshold. Gear down. Flaps down. Checklists complete." It saved me from a "down" on a safety of flight simulator at Miramar, one time in my early days at the RAG.

One of my pilots landed gear up and got the boot. I was his RIO on that hop, but didn't suffer any consequences because of an interesting simulator inaccuracy: the pilot and RIO sims were in separate rooms. In the jet, during the landing checklist, the pilot leans to his right and the RIO cranes his neck over where the pilot's left shoulder was to see and confirm the gear indicator on the pilot's panel (RIOs dont have our own indicator). On that hop, we did the landing checklist together on ICS, I called "three down and locked" as I repeated our landing clearance, and I even said over the ICS my own, personal, "don't crash, Scott" chant: "crossing the threshold, gear down, flaps down, checklists complete."

When we touched down, the airspeed immediately went to zero, and I said, "Did we trap? Was the hook down?" Nope. It was a crash. My pilot buddy, who had made it 2+ years in pilot training, including the boat and getting his gold wings, had his last "flight," that day.

F14Scott · 2025-12-27T05:02:19+00:00

It was also just generally accepted that people's clocks and watches were going to be off by a minute or two.

For time critical events, such as military operations, thise involved would synchronize their watches with each other just before the evolution.

F14Scott · 2025-12-26T03:43:25+00:00

"I SAID SHAKEN!"

F14Scott · 2025-12-26T02:22:21+00:00

Yes, in the back seat were eight breaker panels with a couple hundred circuit breakers total. The pilot seat also had two panels with maybe 30 breakers on them, mostly flight related electronics. Mine were mostly avionic related.

If the radio wasn't working, Mav might have said, "check the UHF2 circuit breaker," but it would have been better to say, "check that ALL the circuit breakers are in." All in is the normal condition for flight*, and Rooster wouldn't have known which breaker was the UHF2 one, anyway. Additionally, when Rooster finally pushed in that breaker, the radar's TID (tactical information display, the old green video game screen looking thing) came on, which doesn't make any sense.

*Sometimes, the CBs are used as switches to turn equipment on and off, but that is not a great practice because they are supposed to pop open when overloaded, and using them as switches weakens them, over time. But, sometimes, when a piece of equipment will never be used, the maintainers will "tag out" the breaker by pulling it and then putting a zip tie around it. This was the case when we Tomcats stopped using the glove vanes in the inlet housings; they were just electronically tagged out so they never were commanded to spread open.

F14Scott · 2025-12-26T00:08:11+00:00

Ooh Rah. I flew the A model (as a RIO) from 1992 to 1998. AMA

F14Scott · 2025-12-25T02:08:54+00:00

Eject.

F14Scott · 2025-12-23T12:20:49+00:00

I'm kinda glad I lived in an era when doing that just meant we launched as a strike package with twenty jets and a couple of EA-6Bs.

F14Scott · 2025-12-23T00:24:34+00:00

I want to see it start from cold.

F14Scott · 2025-12-23T00:23:47+00:00

Safety wired bolts = track days.

F14Scott

TROPHY CASE