The Talon ride is in the logbook! 1.2 dual received on the orientation flight in the mighty Northrop T-38 Talon! Jo, Mark, and I just departed Beale AFB and I'm posting this from Sacramento (KSMF) on the way home to Detroit.
I flew four cameras. These grabs are from the GoPro HD Hero mounted on the grab handle. I flew two ContourHDs mounted on the AOA indexer: One pointed forward over Lt Col MacLeod's head and the other just behind that one pointed off to the left to get the roll. Lastly, I flew Jo Hunter's ContourHD in my hand to point at whatever seemed most interesting at the moment (not the least of which is the airspeed indicator/mach meter).
These are the only frame grabs that I've had time to extract, but I can't wait to get the rest of the video offloaded and watch it to identify the really cool moments. I pulled these off in a Thai restaurant after the ride. Even if I had more time, it would be almost impossible to watch the video under those circumstances without getting all excited about the ride all over again. Introspection will have to wait.
Look for more frame grabs and for both an audio episode (yes, it will be epic) and a video episode covering the flight.
I'm going to try to slide down the back side of this adrenaline rush and sleep some on the kerosene canary on the red-eye ride home tonight. Fat chance.
And tomorrow will be interesting, as days like that always are. How do you walk down the hall and properly answer a casual "What's up?" from a colleague when, less than 24 hours ago, you were doing Mach 0.94 above the mountains of northern California? If there's a proper answer to that one, I have yet to discover it.
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