Highway to the Danger Zone
Maverick, is it?
Yanne here, owner of this "website", with a quick letter to our three or four subscribers who are actually pilots.
I don't own a motorcycle, but every time I'm driving adjacent to a runway I stick my arm out the window and pump my arm and fist into the air, but since I'm in a truck and white I feel like it comes across more as a negative political gesture than any sort of positive encouragement to take flight. "Shutdown the airport!"
I've got a C-130 Pilot buddy out of Reno (or at least that's where he used to be until he went off grid. Or was it me that went off-grid? I don't even know if he's still alive. I could text him right now, but I'm going to keep going with the email because I like the direction this is heading in my mind). I seem to remember him saying that they all got demerits in flight school anytime they made a Top Gun reference. Makes sense. I feel like I could get through the curriculum using nothing but quotes from the movie. Sounds like a formula for success whilst also getting performance dropped and getting sent to a ship undesignated. That was the playbook I adopted for myself in BUD/s...kidding...I straight up quit.
Here are a few rules about flying, and generally being in the Navy for 15-ish months, that I've picked up along the way that you might find useful:
1) Always showboat with MIGs.
2) Disregard Air Traffic Control and lawful orders in restricted military airspace...not a big deal.
3) Turns out there's quite a bit of money in flying cargo planes from Hong Kong. It deserves more career consideration.
4) If you learn one song on the piano, it should be this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8wFBUF1ZWY
All I've got,
Yanne