Related anecdote - I worked with a coder a while back who was a naval aviator before he went back to school, flying carrier-based transports. I asked him once about whether he would have wanted to fly fighters instead, and he said that just flying transports was already a huge amount of work, as far as flight plans, training, practice, and such. Flying fighters apparently involved doing all of that same work, plus a bunch more for weapons, tactics, etc, so those guys never had any free time. Apparently, flying fighters wasn't nearly as fun as it sounds.
On the other hand, when you're the engineer maintaining the flight sims for the pilots, boy oh boy can you have fun in those machines :) I've logged over 100 hours on the F-18, and 20 for the F-111. Never got to experience those long high G turns though...
believe me, flying fighters really is as much fun as it sounds. It is more work than the transport guys, but you get out what you put in. its all worth it coming in for a 450 knot overhead at 600', pulling six g's in the break, then catching the three-wire aboard the carrier.
To remember that there are people that can and do pilot those jets regularly, before coming home to their family, gives me a kind of feeling of vertigo and envy, that my life (and the other peasants around me) is flat, onedimensional, boring and meaningless.
> Apparently, flying fighters wasn't nearly as fun as it sounds.
Hm. I figure the glory you get from being a fighter pilot is one of the perks, so they might as well milk that for all it's worth.
My point is that it's interesting to note the professions that seem more glorious than they actually are, and beware those who sell themselves or the job based on that glory: it's an illusion.
