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Air Combat USAThe Most Fun You Can Have With Your Clothes OnBy David PeeversYour first time out in a Maserati on the Neurburg Ring in good old Deutschland at 180 mph? Shark fishing from a kayak in the Sea of Cortez? Mano a Mano with a wounded water buffalo in the African veld? All good stuff for those of us with a penchant for the edge. And – oh yes - expensive. But plunk down $995 at an unassuming little airport in Fullerton, California and get ready for a life-changing experience that’ll keep your ‘nads quivering in hyper-drive for your next six incarnations.
One of these terra-nauts will be your classroom instructor and another will be your copilot in a high-performance Marchetti SIAI, an air combat plane used in training jet fighter jocks. Or you may be suiting up for a flight in the amazing Extra 300L, an international champion of aerobatics where you can pull up to 10 G’s. These machines will do anything that you can possibly ask of them. Both aircraft are outfitted with an infrared video 'machine gun' that causes your opponent’s aircraft to explode in a ball of thick smoke when you’ve made a ‘kill’.
You'll fly your aircraft to a 'combat' area over the Pacific Ocean and engage in a series of six dogfights, where you'll try to get the upper hand on your opponent, the 'bandit'. Line him up in your gunsights, squeeze off some rounds and shoot him out of the sky. You follow the Rules of Engagement. This means flying almost directly at the other aircraft at a closing rate of more than 500 mph. Then, when your wingtips have crossed, you haul back on the stick and instantly go into a vertical climb that’ll drain all the blood from your head and make little cartoon figures start scampering around on your eyeballs.
In the hangar I met a couple of Porsche execs from a local dealership who had, “Done it all”. They told me about their manly experience and then trotted out to the flight line for their “piece of cake” experience in high-performance flight. Yeah, right. When next I saw our mighty warriors, they were drenched in sweat, other bodily fluids and – in one case - breakfast. Muttered one, “I thought I knew everything there was to know about speed. But I never, ever thought I would feel anything like I felt up there”. Said the other, “I never should have had that cheese omelet for breakfast.” Bungee jumping, whitewater river rafting, high-speed racecar driving - forget 'em! There is no on-the-edge experience that remotely compares with Air Combat. That is, until you try the same thing in an F-16. Half-day flights: $995 Full-day flights (including two fights and a leather flight jacket) $1,595 Air
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Here’s what you do. You
drive to the Air Combat USA offices at Fullerton airport, about 30 miles
southeast of Downtown LA, and meet with some of the top military pilots in
the world. These are the studs of aerial combat: Gunnery instructors at the
‘Top Gun’ school for Navy pilots in Arizona; Luftwaffe veterans who
routinely flew up Canadian river beds in F-16’s at Mach 1 – below the
tree tops! These people are simply not like the rest of us. 
After a morning theory
session, you’ll fly off alongside an opponent in another plane, for your
first experience of air combat. You are the pilot. And you had best
believe it's the real thing: Nothing you can dream of doing on the
ground will ever prepare you for what's about to happen in the sky.
You will fly at 270 mph and experience dives, snap
rolls and loops. You will fly upside down - the world spinning around your
head - and roar like an animal when the G-forces threaten to tear off your
helmet. You will curse when a plume of smoke pours from beneath your
fuselage (meaning you've been killed) and shout for joy when you've got that
other sucker in the cross-hairs of your gunsights. And it'll all be there
for you to view on the video that was made of your entire flight, complete
with all the grunts, groans, wails of defeat and victory screams.
When I flew with Air
Combat for the first time, it was the morning flight and I arrived back at
the airfield drained and as humbled as I’ve ever felt. I’ve ‘done the deal’
many times in blue-water sailing, whitewater rafting, competitive boxing and
wrestling, Big Game fishing and the lot. But I’d never been through anything
that compares with Air Combat. The speed and velocity at which things happen
is beyond belief. I’d made three ‘kills’ and the other three fights I’d
just as soon forget. 