Awesome video

I forgot how I stumbled onto it, but I’ve been meaning to post this absolutely amazing video for some time now. I like to think of it as three minutes of “I can’t believe they pay me to do this!” In case you’re wondering, the planes are French Mirages (not flown by the United States military). Perhaps contrary to popular belief, Student Naval Aviators are pretty busy folks during our flights...constantly scanning a myriad of gages and instruments while adjusting altitude, airspeed, heading (in theory!), executing maneuvers, and avoiding other aircraft in exceptionally crowded airspace. That being said, we don’t always get a chance to “step back” and enjoy what is going on outside of the airplane. Flying is pretty cool after all! Today, for example, I was flying in formation with another airplane at 9,500 feet – which happened to be just above a broken cloud layer. Unfortunately I was flying as “wing” so the only thing I saw was the other airplane! You see, the “wing” pilot constantly monitors the “lead” airplane for changes in relative motion between the two airplanes and adjusts the controls to stay in position in the formation. I did, however, steal a very quick glance of our flight “cloud surfing”...or flying just above the cloud layer during the departure phase of flight. Hey, everyone needs some type of motivation to make it through this intensive training pipeline…and I think moments like these, as rare as they are, are mine!