Pre-Flight Walk-Around

Your bird, #107, waits for you on deck with her canopy open to the sky. The F-14 is a big airplane, and on deck her mighty wingspan can certainly eat up a lot of valuable real estate. So, while stowed aboard, the variable geometry wings are swept back to what the engineers at Grumman Aerospace called "over sweep". With its wings swept back fully like that, 107 looks like a perched hawk. Her "trainer," the plane captain, stands proudly at attention beside his charge. He's made sure that everything's working in the airplane, no mean feat with such a complicated beast as the F-14.

You and your RIO do a thorough walk-around of the airplane to make sure that the plane captain didn't miss anything -- fluid leaks, a wrench left in the intake that could spell disaster as soon as you spin up those big engines. No offense intended to the very competent plane captain, of course, but in this business you're careful about everything. You duck underneath the belly of the F-14 and assure yourself that the tail hook is still there, and move back to peer into the gaping twin nozzles of the TF30 afterburning engines. Those are still there, too. Satisfied, you give a thumbs-up to the plane captain, who beams at you despite his obvious exhaustion.

Climb the ladder and settle into the cock pit... | Abort the flight...