Stupid Pilot Tricks...

Kinda looks like a puppy coming in for a treat, doesn't he?

Reeeeely coming in for a treat! Nosy fella, aint' he? Dusty picks up here:

After sending John these pictures, he wrote back:

And this was a good idea because? Is this just "pilot stuff" or was there a real purpose?

Two very good questions.

I have no idea where this was shot or why, but this is typical of European air forces...lotsa stuff they do we wouldn't dream of doing (anymore). Not because it's too hard but because it's sort of pointless.

It's like flying an aggressive overhead pattern in min 'burner, 60 degrees of bank in the final turn, 30 degrees nose-low, then rolling out, swapping ends, chopping the throttle to idle and touching down a millisecond later. It looks cool but if you destroy a multi-million dollar national asset in the process it's supremely stupid.

Chalk it up to boredom. Most (not all, but most) people flying the Eurofighter, with the possible exception of the Brits, probably don't get much opportunity to do a lot of operational (as in in Iraq and Afghanistan) flying so my guess someone started playing the "wouldn't it be cool if...!" game in their minds and the next thing you know you have a Typhoon resting its radome on an airborne C-130's ramp.

But, I could be wrong.

Maybe I'm losing my sense of humor but if I was their Wing King, I'd be tearin' faces off right about now...

Now Bill hadda weigh in, and he did it all Tuttle-y (as we've come to expect, after all, Dusty and I were RLO's (Real Live Ossifers) and therefore are humorless and dull), so, Bill sez:

So, is the loadmaster holding up Miss December for the Eurojock's edification or is the loader getting ready to mid-air transfer the box lunch the fighter guy left on the Ops counter?

Dusty did a wing-over and snap-shot back:

The answer is usually "a" (seriously).

As for "b," the mid-air transfer would be difficult with a pressurized canopy (even tho' is is going slow enough to have to drop the slats...you know, limping along at about twice the "dash" speed of a Huey). Of course, had one of the film crew been a jealous type, envious of the fast mover strutting his stuff so brazenly (like, say, a rotary-wing guy) he could have just tossed it in the intakes.

So, Bill volleyed back with:

The 177th FIG our of Atlantic City used to hold up the latest centerfold for the edification of the Bear crews they intercepted. The Bear crews always had their cameras out, telephoto lenses firmly in place.

As far as strutting goes, I had an F-4 guy call me once:

"Huey on the medevac pad at Binh Thuy -- can you do *this*?" as he made a low pass, inverted, along the active.

"Nope," I replied. "Can you do *this*?" as I took off tail-first.

Heh. I get better email than you guys do.

After sleeping on it - I figured this is probably a shoot for something like Discovery/History/Military/Fill-in-the-blank Channel... which means the Wing King would have been flying this bit himself... mebbe.