Recently Dale Varner, a flight surgeon with the Air National Guard, had an opportunity to experience an F/A 18 in the back seat. Dale is also an avid simulation fan, and flies Falcon 4.0 in addition to Flanker 1.5. Here is his story...

Speaking of F/A-18's, I got a hop in one. The Canadian Air Force was at our base this weekend for DAC (dissimilar aircraft) missions. They brought 5 hornets all with backseats open for salivating flight surgeons. This morning, I was on a 4 v 6 (Hornets v 16's). We flew CAP over Kit Carson to protect Pueblo from those nasty Vipers.....whoohooo, what a fur ball!!

It was amazingly easy to sort out bandits in visual range. When I was in on viper v viper a couple of years ago, it was almost impossible even when the bandit had an orange day-glow AIM-9 on his wing. Yesterday, I was bummed when I got in the back seat and found out that the instructor seat had no RWR, I always thought that was the coolest thing on the 18. I did have the MFD version of the HUD so I could see some RWR on that.

And no, I know your next question, he didn't let me play with the buttons. In fact he gave me the proverbial don't-touch-the-levers-with-yellow-and-black-stripes lecture to annoying duration. As you know from the sims, the ejection handle in a Hornet is strapped right against your dick...good design because we all know the first thing that a Navy guy will reach for when in trouble.

Our flight out to the MOA (military operations area) was awesome. We took off in formation (I always thought that was cool but pilots seem to favor the vertical climb out of the sandbox). There was nearly full and smooth cloud coverage to about 8000 ft MSL (the base sits at 5000 MSL). The lead pulled the flight up to that level and we skimmed top cover. It seemed like snow skiing at 350 knots...really cool. I pointed out the AF Academy on the way past Pike's and the Canadian pilot gave me a courteous, "Oh." And I felt like an idiot.

Once we got to the MOA, we set up a CAP. The vipers were late so this wasted a bit of time but gave me a chance for the Varner to Varner, "don't get sick you pussy" lecture. Soon "AWAC"s called and announced a threat was in the area...fights on!

Canadian F/A 18 Hornets taxi out to take-off for a mission from Aviano Air Base, Italy, in support of Operation Joint Forge.

We had two engagements but each lasted a long time...or it seemed. Flight time was 1.5 hours. (We flew lead, the wm stayed very tight in the hornet 1-2 position until we were close to the merge. We either split for the pinc or the WM dropped low to the left depending on the threat.)

We initially went 4 hornets v 6 vipers. We flew CAP over the MOA and the viper package came from the west. Our guys (18's) flew some kinda' funky CAP pattern ( I think 'cause they knew the threat was west) which was a short straight run followed by a 4 to 5 G 180 degree turn.

In the first fight, my pilot and wingy were on the away run when the escort bandits (2 vipers) approached. Hornet 3 and 4 engaged them initially as we held in CAP. So we were there with what was left of the other crew (Hornet 4) when the 4 viper strike team approached...they came low. Our wing man took the lead viper and while we were high and right. We then inverted and pulled down on the second bandit.

Where were bandits 3 and 4 you ask? Beats me, they were off radar and I was busy trying to avoid GLOC while looking straight up (really down) for our bandit on the deck. He blew by pulling a bit vertical and we didn't get our nose on him. Virtual missiles were flying at this time too. The ground referees were calling kills and missed shots.

We pulled up out of a fur ball and I had lost my SA. I looked to the left and thought I saw our wingy...oh shit! It was a bandit directly at 9 o'clock level, a quarter mile out and heading the same vector. What would you do? Keep in mind that the viper can out turn you but we were just under the viper's cornering velocity (about 300 knots).

Time for a commercial break about the two fighters. I only have about 5 hours in a viper and I thought that when the hornet pilot sheepishly told me that vipers could outperform hornets, I would not feel the difference...wrong. It was very obvious in the fur ball. Hornet max G was about 7 compared to viper 9. The Hornet didn't have the thrust to weight and started turns out mushy.

Don't be fooled, the Hornet jocks can hold there own and know how to use assets of their fighter to advantage. Notice that I said, "in the fur ball," BVR, a hornet is not to be messed with. Another thing that I noticed was that corner airspeed thing that we learn about. My pilot would hall at nearly Mach to the fight and then rapidly slow to about 320 at the merge...every time. Guess it's important after all.

Anyway, back at the fight, it seemed like an eternal stare off between the fighters. We juked a couple of times but Mr. Viper didn't flinch. I thought, "We gotta break and turn into him...now!" But I didn't know where our wingman was. We turned away, hard right. I lost the viper and a couple of seconds later the ground referees announced that we were both dead. He shot us and our WM shot him....sacrifice fly?

We set up another CAP and waited shortly for the fights off call. We had used up over half of our fuel by now and one hornet had called bingo. So not much time and separation was made before fights on again. This was less organized, to me anyway. This time, from the merge, I saw the whole thing and it got me hard. We were able to turn and get behind a viper.

As we pulled hard onto his six, I thought this is it, we are going to smoke this guy! He was turning hard too. We stayed. He tried a high yo-yo just like I first read in old "KC"s writings. I saw it and more importantly, so did our driver.

KC-10A Extender refuels Navy EA-6B and F/A-18 fighters over Persian Gulf.

We slowed slightly and got tighter on his six but we musta been winchester by now and as yet, had not really gotten a good nose shot. Oh yeah, baby!, he pulled vert for the old my-viper-has-more-thrust-to-weight-ratio trick. Sorry, we were all going too slow by now from spent energy. We got so tight on his six that, I swear, if we didn't have a canopy, my hairs would be singed from his afterburners. He was dead, dead, dead, coulda' just thrown a hand grenade at him.

Once in the middle of this fight, we passed through another dog fight. I think our bandit was trying to get a shot off at our wing man before dying. At that point I thought, "Wow, this looks just like Top Gun the movie," when I noticed my visual fields had grayed to about 80%. I had gotten so into the coolness of it all that I forgot to grunt a bit 'o blood to my head.

Fortunately, I was in a Hornet and it really wasn't that much G...maybe 6 or so...and a quick push got my full vision back. I later thought that it was a good thing that I didn't get a quick onset 9 G in a Viper or I would have been doing the funky chicken in the back seat.

The Hornet flight had all called bingo by now.

The RTB was uneventful. I made note, as before, that the landing was not like we do at the LAN squadron. It was a quick drop and brake turn into the sand box and bamm, we stuck the run way. I thought, "what approach, there was none." We came down in formation with the wing man ON the right wing. When we touched down, the pilot said, "look above the canopy." As I did, the wing man flew about twenty feet above full after burn to come around for his landing...cooool.