Flying high in vintage fighter jet

By GREG CLARKE


A runway built for the needs of World War II stretches toward trees and fields. In the cockpit the sound of an engine winding its way to power is a distant noise, barely audible through my flying helmet.

Far louder is the sound of heavy breathing through the oxygen mask clamped over my nose and mouth. I am kitted out like a top gun but, if a ride in a fighter jet is meant to be about excitement, in the moments before blast-off fear is a much more powerful emotion.

Darren De Roia fires the jet, a Strikemaster MK 88 that was once part of the RNZAF, toward the end of the runway and we launch into the air well before the trees.

Then, minutes later, despite an awareness of blue sky above us, I am not certain which way the ground is. De Roia has not been flying straight since take-off. A bank of cloud is below us but I am staring straight at it through the canopy of a fighter jet's roof. The aircraft is upside down. The blue is beyond my feet.

De Roia flips the fighter again and the blue sky is where it is supposed to be - above my head.

"Want to try the loop?" he asks, pulls the control column gently, and points the jet's nose toward space.

We head vertical, climbing at around 14,000 feet a minute.

Our domain is the sky above Ballarat, about an hour's drive west of Melbourne. The Strikemaster, formerly based at Ohakea in the North Island, is one of the most successful fighter aircraft made in Britain.

This aircraft is roughly the size of a Cessna but there are a few significant differences, not the least of which is the Rolls Royce engine. The Strikemaster has a top speed of 834km/h and the renowned 12 Apostles, towering rock formations in the ocean on the southwest coast of Victoria, are around 15 minutes flying-time away. De Roia often performs his routine above them and is something of a tour guide at altitude, describing manoeuvres as he employs them. The loop is a little like flying around the inside of a bottle.

We peak at around 12000 feet and as we start our inverted descent I look out through the roof, beyond the clouds toward earth but I have been warned not to look through the top of the canopy. Keep your eyes fixed on the horizon (wherever that is) and your chances of being sick are minimal.

We exit the loop at around 500km/h. "That's 4-Gs [gravitational forces]," says De Roia.

My body is four times its normal weight. I lift my arms off my knees and the struggle is obvious. A far easier motion is to tilt my eyes toward the air-sick bag tucked into my flying suit.

I just regain a sense of composure when De Roia mentions we are going to perform an "attack" and singles out a set of farm sheds. He executes a wing-over; for a moment we are 90deg to the ground.

We dive towards the "target". The Strikemaster had two machine guns and could carry 1360kg of bombs. The guns' firing button is on the column between my legs. We release our "weapons" and head back toward space, climbing vertical again.

The sun is streaming through the canopy. I can't see a thing. My stomach may have gone the way of the "bombs".

"We'll track back to Ballarat now," says De Roia, initiating both relief and disappointment.

As we touch down there is a sense of triumph yet it is driven more by the fact the sick bag is empty rather than the fact I am still alive.

Contact

Australian Jet Adventures, ph 00 11 61 3 5339 2769.

Cost

Prices for flights start at A$1500 ($1723). This includes around 18 minutes of flying time. The flights over the 12 Apostles are A$3300 and include almost one hour of flying time.


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