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kwk eslngel Seven> a gleaming blue and gold TA-4 Sky- tion Che mptionless on runway 32 at Marine Corps Air Sta- ing to J* North Carolina. I sat in the rear seat, try- ^V-8A H*X niore a'r 0111 of the vents. To my left were two holding s,arriers *n green camouflage, huddled side by side, pied. Th ?(rt of tfle active runway we so conspicuously occu- making th Harrier P'lots wanted to take off, but we were giyen nty Cn| wait- The problem was that the tower had not visua] f|j P'0t’ Navy Lieutenant Wayne Molnar, the special low grey^ t rU'es clearance he requested because of the many day. c ouds above the airfield. It was not a Blue Angel
engineless, a metal arrow. I had the sensation of really flying. It was exhilarating.
“First we’ll do a wingover,” said Wayne. He explained the maneuver as he eased the nose up while turning to the left; we eventually descended in the turn and then pulled up with the force of about two Gs and began a wingover to the right. I was awed by the seamless precision of his flying, and also a bit jealous because, as a private pilot, I had attempted similar precision maneuvers.
mkk„d lhat ..i_y uiiu. .'\llkki W1 1CUUU1VJ11 lllglll WUU.U
• hen an earlier flight had been canceled because
Scrubbi
of
my Blue Angel orientation flight would be
\Vayne aCa[^er’ Lieutenant Molnar had been very apologetic, h yea^sa ^ native of Florida who looks younger than his and that h exPiaine(l that thick cloud cover had moved in he 5^ e Was as disappointed as I. Why? “I like to fly,”
had newsv<irW'len * heard the tower come up on the radio. Lieutenan( v»°’ t*le tower only had a few questions about ^hen he t , °'nar’s clearance, which he answered quickly. Laniers t° r towcr that it would be fine with him if the °ffer, the°0^ °h ahead of us. Instead of taking Molnar’s ^°r takeoff <>>Ver resPoncled with: “Blue Angel Seven, cleared
I fijp^jto go?” Wayne asked
Panel
the intercom toggle switch on the instrument
^’hen ^ ®ave the only possible answer to his question.
rt,nindrvi en8lne spooled up to a full-power whine, the sound hi.., cu me nf • . • .
[tawk didn'v6 a comrnerrial jet liner; surprisingly, the Sky-
At “
tots,
“'-k Up a H “ quieiscnuig lumuie ana ieu ine aircran
raPid njpJ1 hown. I noticed that the stick was making small 'nt° the ements: Wayne was easing—feeling—the Skyhawk htfWav t l hfted off and flew only a few feet above the
ho:, i heard---------- • -
*ng 727 . seem to be accelerating much faster than a Boe- 'Wi knotsSt WC SPeh down the runway toward takeoff speed— r°ck im .L , heard a quickening rumble and felt the aircraft
eing retrCart an°ther noise—the sound of the landing gear *n taCtCCL Suddenly, a rush of acceleration pressed me "W’k /0() "V seat. and I felt a sublime smoothness as the Sky- n!as hstonH'u1' to knots—still just above the runway. I
he Isllecl by the smoothness: a calm, silky parting of
air that
never before experienced in any aircraft.
pane’s p htfbed straight out from the runway, I noticed L Was spf31!. rePeatedly swiveling from full right to full left.
LnctorySCarchmg for other air traffic—not with a few per- c°Hision 8 ances’ but with a serious, steady scan. A midair Cri<! our j. °u'd do more than ruin our day, it would surely ate and c*Ves' Lieutenant Molnar, I thought, is both consider- 1'1°re than^11'’ ®ut as an experienced F-14 Tomcat pilot with Pr^umab| ’riOO flight hours and 175 carrier landings, he eV|(lenCe L Was chock-full of the Right Stuff. Would I see • ^ayne ° 11 during our flight?
a0 a CanSlTlart^ banked the Skyhawk to the right and flew ihafts 0p L°n formed by incandescent white and grey clouds;
11 Places SUn^bt illuminated the lush green vegetation below, W°U,d hcarVC|'ICtl by mist and mottled by cloud shadows. I lr*gs-^t. tae swoosh of the wind, but I couldn’t see the ey were behind me. The Skyhawk seemed to be
er 1986
Next Lieutenant Molnar did a barrel roll, which begins like a wingover, but the aircraft keeps rolling until it goes through 360° and ends up circumscribing a huge corkscrew in the air. Because of Wayne’s gentle precision, I was hardly aware that at one point I was upside down. 1 had again pulled two Gs and hadn’t found them especially stressful. This was fun!
Now Wayne demonstrated an aileron roll to the left, and then one to the right. He suggested I try one, which I was anxious to do: first raise the nose slightly, nudge the stick to the left, or right, and in a few seconds the Skyhawk completes a 360° roll. I did two in a row. Nothing to it.
Wayne said, “Why don’t you take it and turn right 180°?”
I confidently grasped the stick and soon began to congratulate myself on the nice steady turn I was making. But then I looked at the altimeter; the larger of the two needles was hustling around the dial in a counterclockwise direction. I was losing altitude at an alarming rate! So I pulled back on the stick to stop the descent—or dive—and saw that the large needle on the altimeter was now moving rapidly in a clockwise direction. I had overcorrected wildly. I rationalized my heavy-handed performance by thinking that I wasn’t yet used to the Skyhawk’s highly sensitive flight controls. After what may have been a 150° or 210° turn, Lieutenant Molnar took over. Embarrassed, I said, “I couldn’t seem to maintain my altitude in that turn.”
“Hey, this isn’t a flight test or anything like that. We’re out here to see what this airplane can do, and to have some fun.”
It was during the next maneuver, a split-S, that I realized my eyeballs had considerable weight. Wayne rolled the plane 180° to an inverted position and began easing back the stick. As we flew what was essentially the second half of a loop, I watched the needle on the G-meter on the left side of the panel creep up to “4,” meaning that my body was now four times its normal weight, or 680 pounds. Feeling at least that
idly, causing me to slump forward against my harness- *■ [, controller began issuing instructions, using precision apP radar, after we had intercepted the electronic glide Patve runway 14: “To the right of glide path . . . slightly a,-jC glide path. . . .” At no time did Molnar dip below the path; he was always above it, or on it.
We burst out of the clouds around 900 feet with the oU(d way straight ahead. Having been cleared to land, we s find no aircraft between us and the runway. Neverthe e^ ^ Lieutenant Molnar carefully scanned the airspace ^Q^ots
The needle on the airspeed indicator was glued to
130
adjust
,ents
When I drove out the main gate of the air station
mid fin‘
the Right Stuff. Clearly he was a confident, highly
gest
pilot who loved to fly. But 1 had seen nothing to sllPS he was a flat-hatting exhibitionist given to taking cr ^re chances. To the contrary, I had never flown with a nlg yfol' safety-minded or courteous pilot than Lieutenant Way ^
as
the
heavy, I grunted and tensed my muscles to prevent blood from rushing from my head and leaving me temporarily without vision, which is called “greying out.” I had been advised to do this because the Blue Angels don’t wear G-suits, even though during their performances they pull up to seven positive Gs and almost three negative Gs. My eyeballs pressed against the bottoms of their sockets and my cheeks sagged. It took a great effort to raise my hand even a few inches. Gradually the Gs lessened and all was normal again.
Having shown me a half loop, it was now logical for Lieutenant Molnar to show me a full loop. We would pull four Gs twice, on the upside and on the downside. Again I watched transfixed as the G-meter registered “4”; this time the Gs seemed tougher to take, and I wondered if their effects were partially cumulative. I felt as if 20 hands were pushing me into my seat; I was slack-jawed. The Gs eased as we neared the top of the loop, and I didn’t mind at all when, for a second or two, my body was weightless. But soon the Gs began tugging at my guts again, and I grunted and tensed up; my face felt like a bloodhound’s looks. When the loop was over, I took some deep breaths.
I asked, “Do you get used to pulling Gs? I mean, do you get to the point where they don’t really bother you much?”
“You get used to them,” said Wayne. “You can’t be a tactical jet pilot if you don’t.” Then he added, “We like to pull Gs.” At that moment the scent of the Right Stuff was strong in the cockpit of Blue Angel Seven.
Perhaps because I had lost a few marbles to the G-forces, I did an unwise thing: I asked Wayne if I could try a loop. He cheerfully acceded to my request. After the Skyhawk was more or less steadied at 400 knots, I began the loop by bringing the stick straight back until we were pulling about four Gs. My loop seemed to be going well, and the Gs weren’t as difficult to take as before because I was concentrating on flying. Then I sensed that something was wrong: we seemed to be soaring upward much too long. Wayne confirmed my suspicion: “Keep the stick coming back.” Not wanting to become a manned space vehicle, I immediately brought the stick back further. Eventually we reached an inverted position at the top of something that was definitely not a loop. Flying down on the backside I again had the feeling that something was not right. Wayne said, “Wings level.”
As 1 tried to level the wings in my disoriented state, I had a strong temptation to cheat by not coming out of the maneuver with a full four-G pull, but I wanted to show at least a modicum of the Right Stuff, and I stuck it out.
When we were straight and level again, Wayne asked me how I liked the flight. “Great,” I said. “I’m really enjoying it.”
“Anything else you’d like to do?” I could tell from the tone of his voice that our flight was nearly over. I didn’t want it to end, so I blurted out a description of an unusual maneuver that I'd read about in the Naval Institute’s new novel, Flight of the Intruder, in which the hero flies his A-6 straight up until it loses all air speed and begins falling on its tail.
Wayne said, “If you stall a Skyhawk, you can get into a spin. It’s difficult to recover from a spin in a Skyhawk.” I recognized this as understated pilot talk that meant: you’d better eject if you get into a spin.
So much for that, I thought. But then Lieutenant Molnar offered to show me a snap roll, explaining that the tactical roll rate of a Skyhawk with full stick deflection was 720° per second. “Sure,” I said, not knowing what I was getting into.
The maneuver was as abrupt as the others had been smooth. The Skyhawk rolled 360° in a flash, and clouds and
sky whirled around me; the strong centrifugal force thiew against my torso harness. If it had not been fitted snugly 0 the ground by Petty Officer Second Class Dave Donaldson, my head might have struck something. Before the flight ^ Donaldson’s friendly manner and the patience he displays explaining the controls and instruments in the small Sparta^ cockpit of the Skyhawk helped greatly to put me at ease, and Lieutenant Molnar worked as a team. When Molnar tested the flight controls from the forward seat he watche Donaldson in a rear-view mirror signal to him—in a sm military manner—that each control was okay. .
Knowing that I was itching to do something that was part of the standard orientation ride, Wayne pulled back jj the stick and we shot straight up. As we climbed vertica he began doing aileron rolls—lots of them. I soon deci that this maneuver was more enjoyable to watch than to ’ and I wondered, as we twirled upward, whether Lieuten Molnar was trying to set a new record for vertical rolls- nally we nosed over and leveled out, but upside down. Wayne said, “Let’s fly this way for awhile and see how world looks.” My stomach was queasy. 1 hoped that our verted flight would be brief; fortunately it was. j ^\[
As we headed for the air station, Wayne asked me > all right. He had already asked me that a few times, an told me that some of his passengers failed to admit s0°nch enough that they were sick. Hell, / wasn’t sick, my sl0> was. So I said, “Fine. I’m fine.” (js>
The airfield at Cherry Point was blanketed by low c 0 and the controller vectored us for an instrument appr°aCnot)j- Soon we were in the soup, descending. I decided to sa^0l). ing further to Lieutenant Molnar because of the intense centration he would apply in flying an instrument appr0 When he put out the speed brakes, the plane decelerate
even though Wayne made numerous small power l-„ to keep us on the right approach. When we landed on runway, my stomach was still nervous. Yet I was disaP pointed that the flight was over. was
raining. I went to the first fast-food restaurant I col not to eat, but to drink a Coke to settle my stomach- -ng. some notes about the flight, but had difficulty concen to I fell to wondering if in Wayne Molnar I had been e*P|g(j
nar, a professional Navy showman. Currently serving Blue Angels’ narrator, Wayne will fly next season W - $ demanding position of Opposing Solo. His colleagues think that he is not only a crack pilot but a man to trusted—with their lives. I had trusted Lieutenant {
with mine, and concluded early in the flight that my c0iiie was not misplaced. I decided, finally, that I had in e in contact with the Right Stuff—Blue Angels style-
• /
Proceedings/ ^