Maj. Scott Anderson (front seat) of the USAF Thunderbirds and Patriot-News columnist David Jones (back) give a thumbs-up before taking off from Harrisburg International Airport on July 2, 1992.Patriot-News/Mark Rosnick

Seeing how it’s mid-July with not a lot going on, I thought it an apt time for another edition of Off Topic. And considering this being the second summer of an aging Maverick, more than 30 years past his prime but still attempting vitality, I have the perfect complement.

A few months ago, my wife sent a loaded box of various photos and VHS cartridges off to one of those outfits that digitizes them. She asked me to mine from my hardwood storage spaces around the house anything I wanted in the box. I fetched a few tapes but didn’t finish my task. She sent hers and not mine.

Back came all the stuff from when we were young and our kid was either not yet conceptualized or quite small. Lost memories were retrieved. Basketball games played with springy legs. Kindergartener sledding. People acting the dopey way they did in their first video camera experiences.

But the handful of VHS cartridges I’d gathered were never sent off. For a while, I was panicked that one of them in particular had been lost. In fact, last weekend I launched a full-on household search for it before my wife remembered she’d stashed those unsent tapes under the bed.

Sigh of relief. Because one of them contained the sort of memory for which you really do need video evidence. Not so much to show others but just to reassure yourself that, yes, I really did experience this.

It just happens to have been 30 years ago this month. So, I thought, perfect. It’s not about sports, but that’s what Off Topic is all about.

See, once I got to fly an F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jet.

It seems like half my life ago because, well, it pretty much was. In July 1992, the United States Air Force Thunderbirds aerobatic flying team put on a show at Harrisburg International Airport. And the editors at what we then called The Patriot-News asked me if I wanted to take a ride-along flight. I said yes before the question had been fully asked.

I come from an Air Force family. My late Uncle Frank was a sergeant in what was then called the Army Air Corps and served in India and China. My late first cousin Kevin was what they called a life support/egress specialist with the USAF’s 55th Air Combat Wing and served in Nixon’s secret operations in Laos during the final stages of the Vietnam War. He didn’t want to talk much about what he saw; I never pressed him.

And my father was the navigator of a B-29. He flew 31 missions over Japan from his base on Saipan during World War II. He was among a number of crews who trained to drop the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, though none of them knew exactly for what they were practicing. As it turned out, another Ohio-based crew commanded by Columbus-native Col. Paul Tibbets flew the first atomic mission over Hiroshima.

My dad’s crew then were sent to drop leaflets warning the Japanese populace about the imminence of Nagasaki. I used to show them to my friends when I was a teenager; they sat on a basement shelf right out in the open, printed in Japanese characters, the only feature recognizable to an American being the photo of President Harry Truman.

My father ended up working as an industrial engineer for 25 years at North American Rockwell, an aerospace contractor who had a major presence in NASA’s space race to the Moon.

We had Aviation Week & Space Technology magazines scattered about the house throughout the ‘60s. My brother and sister both worked short stints at Rockwell in Columbus. It was a heady time. We all grew up with a great affinity for the most exotic aerospace technology – jets, spacecraft and the Air Force pilots who guided them.

So, when I was asked to do a media ride-along in an F-16, I was agog. What I didn’t realize until I arrived at the Air National Guard barracks at HIA was that I would be essentially flying the F-16 for a few minutes, if I so wished. Of course, Maj. Scott Anderson, my Thunderbirds guide up front in the specially appointed two-seater, would be handling the throttle of the F-16, ready to make any adjustments and take over the plane if need be. But I had a stick in the back seat. And I was going to fly the sucker. It was too much to comprehend.

It still is. I almost had to watch the video on Tuesday to believe it really happened. After getting it digitized at a local camera store and loading it onto YouTube, yesterday was the second time in about 20 years I had seen it. And I had to stop at a couple of junctures just to take deep breaths and settle myself.

I’ll give you the outline below. And you can click here to read the story I wrote for the next day’s Patriot-News of July, 3, 1992.

But you need to scroll down and watch the video to grasp something of what it was like. Here are the Cliff’s Notes:

• Maj. Anderson stands the Falcon on its tail and climbs a mile and a half vertically in about 30 seconds. Then he inverts the plane and rolls it upright. It was like the craziest carnival ride you’ve ever done, to the 8th power. But it was just the beginning. Because I was going to be given control of the ride.

• The video advances a few minutes, leaving out the ascent into open country over Perry and Juniata counties where we can have a little fun. What’s spliced out is Maj. Anderson giving me the stick as he says over the radio: “It’s the greatest sports car in the world and you can’t break it. We’re gonna do whatever you like.”

They chose this guy to do media flights for a reason. He was so effortlessly cool, he had plenty of cool left over to gift geeks like me. What a perfect representative he was for the USAF Thunderbirds.

• The tape picks up with me doing timid turns this way and that by pressing the rigid fly-by-wire stick. It looked like a game controller with the gun button disarmed. It sensed pressure without actually flexing. Press left, the left wing dipped, the plane flying straight ahead. Press right, it dipped right. Pull back and left and the nose lifted into a turn left. Push up and left and it dipped its nose and rounded out the turn. Pull back and right and it evened. Amazing. The throttle compensated automatically, though Maj. Anderson was there to take control if needed.

• Maj. Anderson tells me we’re gonna do some “vertical maneuvers.” This is where you see just how remarkable advanced engineering can be. And when do we as garden-variety humans ever experience it? This machine designed by General Dynamics in the 1970s is one of the most responsive and durable fighters ever built.

When we do these high bank turns, one wing stuck straight down toward the green countryside, Maj. Anderson reminds me as he instructed in the pre-flight briefing to find the horizon and fix on an object to maintain orientation. It really works.

And when I pull the plane out of a >6G-dive with a grunt to augment my gravity suit and push blood back up into my head, you can see the wings vibrate and contrails flare off the wingtips. You see this sort of performance from a manmade object and it’s awe-inspiring.

• It’s been a long time, but I remember the next thought that crossed my mind was how effortless Maj. Anderson is in giving me commands in a relaxed voice, graciously placating the incessant chatter from the tower guys starstruck by talking to a Thunderbird, and simultaneously monitoring the telemetry and radar to make certain we’re clear of surrounding civil and commercial aircraft.

And he’s not even breathing hard. I can’t hear him breathing at all. Meanwhile, I sound like your golden retriever having a dream about chasing a rabbit.

• The highest-G turn I’m able to do to myself is 6.8. Which isn’t enough to get my 9-G pin the Air Force gives to anyone who rides along and survives one without passing out. So, Maj. Anderson takes over the stick, warns me to get ready. In a second, he cranks off a 9-G, as if careening a Ferrari around a Malibu hairpin. For a moment, it looked like I was peering through Kittatinny Tunnel. But then, snap, I was back.

Now, I’m beginning to hit the wall. You can see my head wobbling around a little. Maj. Anderson asks if I’m about ready to head home. I manage to make an affirmative noise.

• I’m not certain, but I believe we were at about 8,000 feet at this point. So, we had to get back in position to land at HIA in about 30 or 40 miles which meant a rather steep descent, I’d guess about 400 feet per minute. This, believe it or not, was the part that made me queasy. So, you can see me reaching down to my right and turning the oxygen-mix knob up to 100%. It helped.

• Maj. Anderson flips the monitor to the front camera and you can see our final approach to HIA. I remember at this point being absolutely drained, more so because I was allowing my body to relax. I can say flying a jet has nothing to do with sport and that’s true. But believe me, it’s one of the most athletically taxing things I’ve ever done. It is the only experience that I imagine compares to driving a race car in the way it demands from both mind and body at once. And I was up there barely half an hour.

• I also remember shaking hands with Maj. Anderson and leaving the PA ANG terminal thinking about the pressures and responsibilities some people not only live with but thrive upon, a gravity so few of us can even imagine. These pilots didn’t become this good for airshows. They did it because they wanted to come home. They make it look so easy.

Experience gives us perspective. The more you see, the more you do, the more you travel and the more you converse – grasping unimagined thoughts on unbeaten paths from people beyond your immediate hemisphere – that’s what makes life worth the trip. I’ve loved being a journalist because it’s given me all of that.

But only once in a great while, if you’re lucky, do you experience the exotic.

I’ll probably never do anything again like fly a jet. But I got to do it once. Once was fine.

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