Flying
Today I talked with a former fighter jet pilot from the Norwegian Air Force. He told me how back in the 70s he and his comrades had used basically all of the less populated areas of Germany as a training area for low flying.
He in particular was training for a specific type of reconnaissance mission where he would close in on a target, flying as close to the ground as possible, gather information about the target and then fly straight up to share that information via radio before he would be shot down by the enemy.
Luckily he never had to fly a real mission, he just simply trained flying low to the ground which I assumed must have been intense fun.
The only pilots who were flying lower, he said, were the American and British pilots.
He recalls one incidence where he was flying low over the ground following the terrain when suddenly a British Vulcan bomber showed up right in front of him doing the same exercise. While he was flying already just 50 feet above the ground, the Vulcan just passed below him.
When he asked me if I had any aerobatic flying experience I told him that I had only done simple unguided aerobatics like wing overs and lazy eights with the good old K8.
The K8, he said, was a glider he also used to fly, but back in his time it was one of the more advanced gliders. Nowadays its 60 year old aerodynamic design has no chance of competing with modern gliders.
I told him how back in the beginning of my flying practice I took my first solo flight on an old SG-38 and to my surprise his face lit up in a mixture of excitement and disbelief. He had heard about this glider when he was young, but there had never been one flying in Norway.
Isn't it funny how at the same time his experience of flying fast and low over the German landscape seems otherworldly and exciting to me while to him the fact that I got my first solo flight on an SG-38 seems just as exciting?
It got me thinking: I always thought of my flying career as somewhat boring, but if I look back on it, maybe I just managed to get the best of it.
Watching all these guys with their radio controlled jet models today, flying back and forth and back and forth I didn't envy them the least.
The way my colleague and I slope soared our radio controlled gliders on Slottsfjell for hours and hours until it got dark a few weeks ago was exactly the type of flying that we enjoyed. And so does hopefully everyone get to do the type of flying that they enjoy.