1. Never do anything for the first time, that you
have to do absolutely perfectly to
survive.
2. Unless you have
to.
3. Train like your life depends on
it - it does.
4. It is not true that
everyone is trying their best to kill you, but it's useful to act as though
they were.
5. The three most useless
things in naval aviation are: Runway behind you, altitude above you, fuel you've
dumped, and girls you used to know.
6.
Wait, that's four.
7. Murphy was an
optimist.
8. If you can keep your head
while everyone else about you is losing theirs, you're not seeing the full
picture.
9. Speed is life - more is
better.
10. AAA is bad and SAMs are
bad, but the ground has a Pk (probability of kill) approaching
1.0.
11. You can only tie the low
altitude record, you can't beat it.
12.
Push forward on the stick and the houses get bigger. Pull back on the stick and
the houses get smaller. Keep pulling back and the houses start to get bigger
again.
13. If you fly long enough, you
will eventually have to cope with a major emergency. You don't get to pick which
one, so you have to be ready for all of
them.
14. Priorities (in descending
order of importance): aviate - navigate -
communicate
15. If in doubt, wind the
clock. It might not help much, but can't do any actual harm either, and it keeps
your hands busy while you figure out what you should be
doing.
16. You are expected to bring
the jet back when you're done with it. If you can't do that, the least you can
do is stay alive and explain to the rest of us what
happened.
17. One way to tell if the
landing gear are not down is that it takes full power to taxi after landing. A
better way is to use the landing
checklist.
18. When you're out of
altitude, airspeed and ideas, the most important thing is: Never give up - ever.
19. You don't want to fly with someone
who has a habit of saying, "watch this!" or "it's probably just the gauge," or
"just throw it in the back there."
20.
Fight to fly, fly to fight, fight to win. Finishing second means you
lost.
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." - John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Ceasar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friederich Nietzsche
