Ever get buzzed by a Tomcat or Hornet?

If any of you guys want to be the ones doing the buzzing, there's a MIG 21U for sale on plane trader with 130 hours SMOH for $95k. It's capable of Mach 2 and will definately make maintaining a yacht look cheap

WOW...some of these stories bring back some great memories, if not on water, of the Thunderbird's. From grades 2-10 I lived in Universal City, a suburb of San Antonio and also home to Randolph AFB. Randolph is still, to the best of my knowledge, a major flight training facility (T-38's I think but could be something else newer as that was over 30 years ago)...anyway, my best friend at that time had a dad who was stationed at Randolph and we went on to the base quite frequently...I will never forget seeing the Thunderbird's practicing there for an upcoming airshow or watching the other monster planes roaring up and down the runway....those were certainly more care free and enjoyable times..

Cheers,

Took my Dad for a float trip down the Little Tennessee River before dam was built. As we were floating under a bridge, a jet flying through the canyons joined us. Besides scaring the crap out of us, and being wayyy to close, exhaust almost turned us over.
At least a US plane!

LaWs

The U.S. Navy unveiled a new laser weapon today capable of bringing down a drone for about $1. Very cool. Or should I say HOT.

Navy unveils powerful ship-mounted laser weapon - U.S. News

Ok. So this is an old thread, and I'm relatively new to the forum. Been lurking for the better part of a year as I accumulate knowledge for the 'big transition' from 22+ years in the Navy. Wife and I are interested in finding a viable way to live aboard and reset to a simpler, slower life. Looking at 60-70' class, and I'm 6'5", so how I fit matters. However, since the mid-90s I've been the a$$hole FA-18 pilot you've all been talking about... let me provide a little bit of background to dispel rumors and explain how we are able to do what we do.

For the record, flying tactical jets recklessly around civilians is forbidden. It is technically called flathatting by Navy policy. I know this, because I had the unfortunate role of investigating a flathatting incident by one of my best pilots. I was the CO of the squadron at the time, and I had to determine how to endorse the boards findings. Not a fun task, so I won't bore you with the details. What's relevant to know is that he took too much poetic liberty on a Navy permitted maneuver we routinely use at sea...

It's called 'rigging a ship' which I'm sure the nautical types on this board find amusing because it doesn't fall under the typical definition of 'rigging' that most of you think of. When you've got the cruise control in your jet set at 450 knots, however, it's valuable to have a standardized way to inspect ambiguous vessels that pose a potential threat to the Carrier Strike Group (CSG).

As far as I know, the details of rigging a ship aren't classified in any way, but really just based on some traditional naval protocols, plus the need to be able to reliably capture the name and nationality of any vessel. I've done this by writing down the info and transmitting it via radio back to the team on the carrier in charge of maintaining situational awareness of the sea surface picture (commonly referred to as the Zulu Module). I've also taken digital pictures from the cockpit to bring back photographic evidence. Other times, it's just easier to capture an IR video on your targeting pod to bring back to the ship at end of your flight.

At any rate, the rules of rigging a ship are pretty straightforward:

1) Don't cross the bow of the ship, close aboard. This is considered somewhat of a hostile act (although not really by any legal tenet I'm aware of), or at least that is what they tell us.

2) Refer to rule number 1.

And this is what makes Naval Aviation so much more fun than the Air Force. We get told what we can't do, and then everything else is fair game... and that's a pretty wide latitude for interpretation! In the USAF, god-bless 'em, they are told what they can do. Everything else is forbidden, with rare exception.

How do we prefer to perform the rigging of a ship?

1) Identify the vessel to rig.
2) Set up nose-on the ship, no lower than 200' AGL (ok, so there is that one rule), with a minimum of a few miles of separation (remember we are moving at 7-8nm per minute).
3) Pick a side of the ship to fly by with about .25-.50nm lateral separation (completely up to the pilot based on the need to capture the photo)
4) Fly down the ship, bow to stern, looking for ship's name on the bow and general inspection of ship and cargo (this happens quickly). Photograph, if desire/required.
5) Once past the stern, we perform a high-G (~4-6G) level turn for 270 degrees to set up for a pass perpendicular to the stern of the ship.
6) Fly past the stern of the ship, note the name, and flagging of the vessel. Photograph, if desired/required.
7) Another 270 degree high-G turn, to setup for a final pass parallel the ship again, this time on the opposite side of the initial entry, and going the opposite direction... stern to bow.
8) More pictures and vessel ID verification, then off for another one.

In busy waters, I've rigged somewhere around 10-12 ships in a flight that was 1.5 hours from launch to recovery, which typically yields about 45-50 minutes of time for actual rigging.

With rare exception, Navy Fighter pilots enjoy this task. It's relatively mindless, easy, and fun. We usually feel like we're providing an airshow for the sailors, and it helps break up the monotony of some other tasks that aren't as fun for us to do.

If fuel isn't a terrible concern, we'll oftentimes use afterburner on the 270 degree turns to tighten it up and make it a little bit noisier for the casual observers.

After being in this business for 22+ years, I've lost track of how many ships I've rigged around the world. I do remember that each and everyone of them was some amount of fun for me, and I always wondered how it was perceived by those on the ships I've rigged.

At any rate, wife and I will be looking to make the transition from letting me fly 1.5 mach for a day's worth of fun, to topping out at a max speed of 11 knots.

FWIW, the picture I've used for my account here is a shot I took quite a while back on one of my detachments to NAS Key West for Fighter training. I think it was around 2007, shot over Fort Jefferson IVO the Dry Tortugas. One of my favorite shots, for sure.

Ironically, I just returned from my most recent Key West Det a week ago, this time as the CO of the Navy's only F-35C squadron. It was still a blast to fly down there, but this time I also took some free time to look at some options for retirement vessels. Happened upon a gentleman on Stock Island with a new-to-him Nordhavn 57'. Loved the vessel, but realized the headroom was a little tight for me (discovered that was well documented in forums after the visit). Nonetheless, wife and I started to get really excited just walking all around his boat and thinking about the next chapter...

Since I'm finally submitting a post, I'll offer up my appreciation to the forum and board members for maintaining such an information-rich ad-less medium to learn about yachting. I already feel like I know so many of you... Capt J, NYCAP123, K1W1, JWY, etc. Your posts are always interesting to me. Thank you for choosing to openly share your wisdom. The benefits you've provided to countless wannabes and newbies are immeasurable, no doubt.

Oh, and if anybody has questions about FA-18s, F-35Cs, naval aviation, TOPGUN, USNA, etc... I'm your huckleberry. Just don't be surprised if I ask for quid-pro-quo to gain answers to some of the countless remaining questions I have about living aboard successfully.

Cheers, and as we like to say 'Check 6!'

Best,
CAPT James 'Cruiser' Christie, USN

Have been buzzed three times between the waters off of San Diego and San Clemente Island over the last 20 years. Helluva a noise as they break the sound barrier, shakes the whole boat like you can't imagine, and can catch you by surprise. Pretty cool though to see the vapor ring around the aircraft.

A bit more unnerving are the unexpected encounters with Submarines popping up in relatively close approximation offshore. Once had some of their crew members come on deck and through out a fishing line in the tuna grounds, but didn't stick around for long. Not sure what that meant or maybe they were trying to "fish" something out of the sea.

Yes, that could be considered a steel beach event, but the term isn't limited to submariners. Skimmers have steel beach events, too.

One more experience of note at San Clemente Island.

We (42' Uniflite) and a lot of other boats were anchored in Northwest Harbor during a Fourth of July in the mid - 80's. We were pretty tight to the shoreline inside the kelp beds, nice and cozy with no swell. Had some Navy Seals row out to us and the other inside boats in their inflatables and mentioned they were going to light off some "fireworks" that night, we should be "OK" and proceeded to dive and place some type of underwater ordinance(s). We offered them some beer, but there were no takers. Each Navy issue inflatable had about 4 guys paddling, and our Zodiac inflatable looked more sea worthy than theirs.

The night gets dark, real pitch black, and boaters are shooting off flares and what have you, most likely illegally, but hey, it was the 4th of July. Then we see activity on the island, some HUGE Booms, the sky is lit like daylight by parachute flares, you can't even tell that it was ever pitch black and then the fun really begins. The individual underwater ordinances (not fireworks) begin to detonate and I can tell you that it felt like something grabbed your boat by the shafts/struts/rudders and shook the hell out of you each time they went off! The boats are creeking, groaning, and it was a bit unnerving. I guess we were conducting our own military grade shock test and survived ! The magnitude, noise and force of each detonation was pretty impressive to say the least.

The show went on for quite some time, and then they started lighting stuff on the island. Must have had a 100' row of gasoline (or other) fueled barrels that went up in flames and caught the island partially on fire. They brought their fire engines down and took care of everything properly - there is a submarine base on the lee side of the northwest edge of the island.

I figured they must have been entertaining some Admiral, and we always talk about that real 4th of July show. The noise and booms were spectacular, the only other time I heard the same was when Camp Pendleton was preparing for Desert Storm. We went back the following year, expecting the same, only to be disappointed. The only fireworks were from the crazy flare shooting boaters.

Resurrect another old thread...
South bound on the ICW, we had one of the owners on board, Lt. Gen Tom Miller, USMC, Ret.
Gen. Miller was instrumental in bringing the AV8 Harrier to the Corps. On this trip, apparently word got that he was aboard the vessel. We were between mile 235 and 240 in the firing range just cruising along when from astern a flight of 3 Harriers buzzed us.
A couple of minutes later, the General got a call on the ships phone welcoming him back to N.C.