most memorable Internext 2003 experience

[baddog]

First off, it was a pleasure meeting EC and Vid, and some of you others . . . . however, I have to say my most memorable experience was the stunt plane ride provided by LightspeedCash.

Lightspeed Steve announced they were sponsoring this on GFY, and I wanted to go on this flight when I first heard about it. When I went to their booth on Mon, I was told they were only doing 12-18 people a day, so I pretty much figured I was screwed, especially since I don't promote any of their programs. Well, I was talking to Steve Monday nite, and he was telling me that people were signing up but not showing up. When I told him how much I wanted to do this, he said to show up the next day and I would get on . ..

Later that night I met one of the pilots, after talking to him I discovered he trained fighter pilots from other countries to fly the F-16 fighter jets. I told him I wanted to fly with him.

The next day, Lightspeed sent me to the airport with 6 other people, as soon as we got out of the cab, "bags" (the pilot) pointed to me, and told the other pilots, "Lloyd, he is mine!"
we went nuts up there. . . .they have cameras inside cockpit and on the wings, they will be sending me a DVD of the video when they get it burned.

They have 3 different levels of extreme, and you tell them how far you are willing to take it. We did everything in the first 15 minutes, he said what do you want to do, I said, "I want you to have fun, don't worry about me, I can handle what ever you can dish out." We hit +6 G's and -2.5 G's, you name it, we did it.

He told me it was the best flight he had ever done, because he had carte blanch to do whatever he wanted. I told him that even if we crashed on the desert floor it was cool with me as I would die happy.

One of my favorite tricks was something like this.
Headed straight up, cut the engine, fall backwards, cockpit filling with the smoke from the trail you just left . . . .hit the stick to a sharp right causing the plane to flip where it is now tumbling over and under while spinning, in a corkscrew, before starting the engine back up and speeding towards earth then bringing it level, upside down, into an inverted loop, and as soon as you connect your smoke trail together, flipping right side up to another loop . . .

For those inclined to look up such stuff, we did Gyroscopics such as tumbles (described above) Knife-edge spins (combined with tumbles), and other advanced maneuvers such as tail slides, hammer/tail slide connectors, torque and snap rolls and much much, more.

When we returned (30 minutes later) they debrief you and show you the video tape. The other pilots were watching the tape and asking me if I fell asleep or something, he told them "he rides Harley's, it is pretty tough to get him too excited." But in all seriousness, it was the most fun I have ever had with my clothes on.

You can check out FighterCombat.com here (take the Flash tour) or see Lightspeed's announcement here - lower right hand side has planes we used.

Was very cool, and I think I have a permanent grin on my face now, and it will be tough to top this Internext experience.

Anyone else?