How I got a free Ferrari & to pilot an F16 Fighter Jet

he's like you want to roll it I'm like yeah my relatives you know my grandfather was Army Pacific world war two and his younger brother flew on nuclear b-52s in the Cold War in the 50s so he's got amazing stories from seeing st. Elmo's fire or shooting a sextant at the stars and a b-52 over the North Pole and later f4 phantoms in Vietnam my uncle whet he had the craziest stories because he was the guy that flew bombers in World War two and then every fighter plane from World War two Thor create up to like f-86 fighter jets this is what I was influenced by as a kid they'd be like hey what tell Casey about that time you bailed out of the f-86 after having a mid-air with the RAF guy he's like bailout hail plane got cut in half I fell out so it'd be great ridiculous stories that we're all true but my parents were both only children that majored in fine art in the 70s and we're probably a little too influenced by the hippie generation so that kind of killed that trend for me so as a kid naturally with this kind of personality influence race cars and racing and obviously that's been my career path and my love and everything like that but in growing up I started seeing all the similarities between racing drivers and fighter pilots and the jobs and the careers and racing and aviation and of course have a great interest in respect and admiration for that I always wondered to myself like that's what all the family did and I didn't do that but I'm the one that does racing I wanted to do an article wanted to figure it out and a gentleman finally that I knew had had some sort of contact I say do you know any way I can go work with the Air Force you know go see what's out there do an article he goes hold on and a couple days later he calls me back and he goes so a general de Pentagon just said the words Casey puts in okay in the same sentence and I'm like well as long as he didn't put a hit on me then great but what they translated out was probably the biggest honor of my life and like somehow hugely humbled for after some time and background checks and everything like that I got invited to go spend two days with the Air Force Thunderbirds in Las Vegas at Mel's Air Force Base and work with them racing in the racing world in car world is like the proverbial mountain but when you spend your life climbing Mountain it's hard to ever go see another mountain you know what I mean so lease maybe get a glimpse and I called a friend of mine when I was there cuz I really wanted to do it up you know and have a car and he was gonna let me borrow his carreer GT but then it's like whoa yeah but it wasn't registered and believe it or not ended up letting me borrow his Ferrari f430 spider so a student mine from Gina's garage was good at videography and photo I'm like why don't you come along we'll do this great article it would be great thing and get credit for us so fly out to Vegas with the student we show up at the airport hopping a taxicab the next thing you know bright yellow Ferrari this is already like the coolest trip ever well the guy also has robosaurus that giant mechanical dinosaur thing that rips cars in half and blows fire and the guy that was working on it the memory for to pick up the fries like yeah we got robosaurus out you want to come check it out and hang out so I went saw this and I'm like we came to hang out with the Air Force this is already absurdly awesome in Vegas so next day we'll get ready early in the morning we get out there right into the hangar the Thunderbirds right out on the flight line all their beautiful red white and blue f-16s and they're already you know inviting me in to work with them well doing the fod walk for debris and such but we're prepping the jets just like you would racecars and the thing it's amazing is immediately it felt to me I'm like these could literally just be a fleet of Indy cars everybody is super precise and on point and professional but as crazy as it sounds even though we're an active air force base on the flight line I literally felt home like we were work I was working with buddies or a team on race cars and I spent the rest of that first day just going around and seeing different people's jobs because even with the Thunderbirds alone there's 140 people that work there and there's a pilots and everybody was there was happy and honored to be working there and working together and I'm like this this is cool and so the next day you know we get up early again and I'm more excited at the same time to I'm just like how is how is this happening and today's gonna be an absurdly even more special day like I'm gonna be working with them in the morning seeing all around they're teaching me all about their history and and going through it but they're actually gonna let me fly like up in an f-16 are you kidding me there's like a couple of two-seat f16 jets out there period they'll take up VIPs you know like celebrity sometimes there's some race car drivers and try to get him to pass out if you go like this so my first goal when I realized this was I saw Gerard Butler went up that actor I think he was in Sparta or something I'm like I have to beat him I don't care I cannot do worse than Gerard Butler he's starting the bar suddenly I'm in the middle of parachute training and we're talking with a pilot and I'm like this is this is not a joyride this is deadly serious they're literally putting me in the back of a combat aircraft that they take the pain off get rid of the smoke trail and it's combat worthy they're putting me in a cockpit with a G suit with no room in this thing with a stick here every switch every everything I have full access to everything and I'm thinking of myself they probably did a good enough background check on me they know every single feeling i have who put them in and went even let me be considering this and is this really happening I debrief with a flight surgeon for physiological things cuz this is I'm like how are you letting me do this right now I'm not I've not trained for this I'm in this cockpit and the pilots going over everything oxygen egress ejection seat like how to arm this thing I'm sitting on rockets literally like this this is a Mach 2 aircraft twice it's like everything going on wants to kill you at all times and the only way everything goes perfect is to do a job perfectly and I think every guy somewhere in the back of their head when they're flying in a commercial plane thinks so if the pilots both passed out could I land this plane I think we've all thought that but nobody's ever gonna say it it's never gonna happen right but I'm in the briefing with pilot and we're going to talking about all these maneuvers he's gonna do all the G all the physiological stuff and literally says to me so if you know what the manoeuvre we're gonna do is if we're going through it and suddenly I'm not recovering and the grounds coming up quickly and I'm not talking just seriously the heart attack he's like you know how to fly get a straight and level get us back to civilization talk about it figure out get us to where we're close enough we can rear s cute and bail us both out and I'm like alright I got this the Thunderbird guys are the most consummate professionals the absolute diplomat ambassadors perfectly on point but I think I was excited and goofy enough in a way but like happy to be there that I got them to kind of laugh when are we're doing this so we're sitting on the runway he goes full military power clicks it over full afterburner wall on the brakes smoke on and just goes for everything it's worth right off the line off when it first takes off it's like a really good exotic car to like 60 miles an hour 100 miles an hour 100 miles an hour comes around hundred knots in that area it starts pulling harder like now you're in a pretty serious race car then 150 knots no time up in the air and ground effect planes yell altitudes at you like this it is pulling hard hard we're doing three 250 knots 400 miles an hour-ish and still accelerating and it's pulling harder like an IndyCar the whole time and I'm just like hit I'm like oh yeah I'm in the seat yes let's go he's like laughing at me cuz I'm like yeah like this he's like okay cases G's gonna pull up and he give me give you a fair warning cuz you gotta take in a full breath and like squeeze for everything it's worth and so they're just gonna go literally pop a thing up out of ground effect off the deck 500 miles an hour we're doing like I don't know 434 and 40 knots it just cranks it back to four and a half five g's to go dead vertical dead vertical 500 miles an hour I've not done this that's double the speed of a Veyron and we're going straight up the things got one two one thrust weighs 30,000 pounds make 30,000 pounds of thrust apparently so the first thing I noticed is I felt like it was this weird interstellar moment and my body is blurring I'm like oh like this and you pull up and that's mo where it gets okay and I just freak out like yeah we going to the moon baby like the sky looks dark and it's just shooting up and I'm I'm giddy like because it's better than any racing thing I don't have to worry about doing anything except not bumping something so I'm just having the best time in the words I go I Casey it was a quick climb to 15,000 feet 0 to 15,000 feet he pulls back to inverted like this he's like a so you get a good view of Las Vegas I'm like yes sir what up Las Vegas he's kind of laughing at me so we head out kind of over in the Death Valley area they got a test range and it's beautiful the glass comes down like this you can see right out and on the way out for like 20 minutes he's like all right Casey patreons stick you're playing flat out lets me fly it okay and so I'm like alright so what's heading so it's got analog gauges here I got a projection the heads-up display start figuring out quickly things like we're it's about sixteen thousand three hundred feet he's like just keep it under eighteen thousand I'm like yes so we don't go if I already know if light plane is like yeah so just cuz I knew things that started like letting me do more like this I'm like all right I'm just going to kind of put it in the bank and do a coordinated turn where you try to maintain altitude which is about impossible for me in this thing because this flawless fighter plane that might as well be a star fighter it's just like just anything insanely intuitive I know it sounds crazy but like the best car the Best Exotic is perfectly intuitive but they never are this was and so I'm just like alright make a little snappier so I'd be like over here boom boom like this and he wants to navigate figure out the navigational more we're talking about it it's like alright man you pull it I'm like you mind if I pull into this thing a little harder and I'm like I just wanted I just kind of lay into it you know what I mean so I just put it like 90 degrees and get back into or I feel like I'm in that inception moment or you can feel the wings buffeting and like my body's blurry like like this and he's like alright case not that was like four and a half five Jeep oh I'm like yeah just you know feeling good and he does a couple of things he's like you want to roll it I'm like yeah so he's like just get it about seven degrees up attitude get yourself off the stick there and just way into it I'm like can do like this and I'm like yeah here it comes I just lay it over I could have just wailed on it but you know I don't want to do something stupid and it's just the most like magically perfect thing almost like a simulator of video game how how is this happening how and you've seen everything they did an airshow lubes Cubans do like a 270 degree roll to you know turn the other way and everything crazy we did everything I mean you know the rolls the knife edges everything like that was cool just the buffeting of the wings everything just the tenacious is that airplane digging in but I gotta be honest like 20 or 30 percent of the way through this after he's doing things I'm like I'm done like trying to breathe through this mask in these G turns first you start squeezing for all it's worth your blood pressure to keep your blood in your brain and the g-suits good for about another GG and a half a help and I think they say like normal people are kind of good for like 4 G's sustained or something like that and yeah we're we're way beyond that there's a moment where we go to do you burn or like a half loop and coming up I started to see great I'm like nope that's it was great but I'm like dying for breath and the thing is you got to take a full breath and like barely letting me out and keep trying to top it up because just the force will basically make you a exhale and turn your diaphragm to mush he goes to do this full 360 degree turn I think of like four and a half five g's maybe but it takes a long time but a part of a minute to do that the speeds we were going and so 180 degrees through it one okay and then a little bit more through it I accidentally exhaled a little bit too much and I'm like and I just remember getting through that I thought to myself man I don't know if I could do this I'm pretty cocky about stuff and generally with the right amount of work and mindset you can get through anything but I'm like oh my god dude you are basically Superman he's like no just out there representing everybody at best I can't consummate professional right super respect across the board and then the next thing you did that was insane he's like all right Casey we're gonna shoot through star wars Canyon I'm like yeah these are the droids I'm looking for there's literally a canyon in the Death Valley area where they shot Star Wars he comes in this thing I think it really likes 13 14,000 feet and we're coming down it like this I'm like so me Jesus is gonna be he's like oh you know not too many it'd be pretty good I feel like we're doing five hundred miles an hour like into a hole and he's gonna I'm like yeah and he rolls it over like this and I've seen it from YouTube where guys will go way out in the desert to spot fighter chance and I look over I see the photographers because we're ripping through a canyon the photographers are above us he's got the smoke trail on I feel like my body's burning but I'm a goofball back here it's kind of it's pretty violent and zipping around we're basically hooting around in a fighter jet this is the best thing ever but as genuinely otherworldly amazing experience and after the adrenaline wore off a little bit I started to feel a little nauseous I'm like okay yeah no get back there because right before I took off the one crew chief when he's helping me get in and everything like that he reaches in gets a vomit bag out it starts fluffing it up like kind of a mess with me like I figure they must have thought I was okay if they mess with me a little bit and he flus this big stupid vomit bag out before we go out I'm like no that looks stupid no way I just looked at him like he of little faith so I took the vomit bag real cool he like fold it up and put it back and some like I am not throwing up and the other thing is with the g-suits squeezing the heck out of you and I'm squeezin for everything it's worth I mean at the one point we did a full poll of 9 G's that's everything the aircraft's worth that's the maximum allowable of the aircraft and it was basically like I just went I'd squeezed for everything it was worth and it got like pretty violent and crazy and the pilot psychic okay see how was that those nine GS everything the planes got I'm like Oh feel like I entered another dimension I got for a minute to climb the other mountain the thing that I took away was one in many ways the racing world is exactly the same as military aviation racing driver and fighter pilot very much the same role so obviously one is entertainment one's more serious national defense and all but it's the same world with one huge difference that I will never forget the Thunderbirds of the Air Force when I got there I saw women and men all working I saw black white Hispanic loads of races what I saw was the cross-section of what America really is and they were all at the top they were there because who they were as a person and what they could do and I don't mean this as any cliche and I'm certainly not making a dime for saying it but it literally reminded me of why the United States as a concept is so important to anybody dreaming of a better tomorrow and I don't find that the same with the racing world because it's a competitive ego driven thing that's basically like a bunch of male Siamese fighting fish in the same fishbowl they had integrity they were doing something bigger than themselves and it was just professionalism across the board then Wiki trust a p3 paint protection with all of our cars to learn more about clear bra options and ceramic coating visit a p3 ATL calm

Channel: VINwiki

Views: 465,842

Rating: 4.9322305 out of 5

Keywords: Air Force, Thunderbirds, fighter jet, flying, VINwiki, Car Stories, Casey Putch, Ferrari F430 Spider, Yellow, Nellis, Air Force Base, VIP, Genius Garage, journalist, USAF, America, bucket list, experience, giallo modena, las vegas, nevada, philanthropist, diversity, dream shot, chance of a lifetime, star wars canyon, g suit, fighter pilot, air show, acrobatics, maneuvers, capability, flight surgeon

Id: 9r41dynBhGg

Length: 15min 21sec (921 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 27 2019