Mike Durant

I'm chalked too.

We roll in, we hit the target, we break off, and we could do it a couple different ways.

We could do what we call welded wing, where both birds are flying in formation, we're both shooting at the same time.

Or we stagger, lead shoots, and then you roll in, you shoot, and then you join up.

We were staggered.

So the guy in the other seat, who shall remain nameless, he's no longer with us, so there's no point in telling anybody who he is.

He was...

I mean, all I can say.

He just... And this is my check ride, and I got a Lil Burr guy that isn't all that interested in seeing another platform sort of hone in on their turf.

So it'd be real easy to bust me if these two guys weren't really good dudes.

And it's Fred Horsley and Randy Jones are the two little bird guys.

Randy's a legend.

Fred, unfortunately, passed a few years ago, but both legends in the little bird community.

So they're giving us our check rides.

And we shoot and break, and I'm in the break, and I'm joining back up on Cliff, and a fucking rocket goes off of my bird.

And it goes right underneath the belly of Cliff's aircraft.

whoa now i'm flying right so i'm like what the was that and this other guy says uh uh my bad yeah you're bad you almost shot down our lead aircraft on a training mission i said all right we'll talk about it later so

We hadn't put those new cyclic grips in yet.

And we're using buttons on the cyclic that were already there.

We just rewired them to control the weapons.