ACES Online

Chapter 3 - Eyes on the Road

The past ten days had been boring, if he was entirely honest. Of course, ''boring'' was a subjective term, given that the pair were flying Mach 2 capable jets on a daily basis, but the missions had been very simple. A small number of intercept missions, to force a number of aircraft to turn away, or a simple interdiction mission, to engage a tank column about 50 miles away, were the most interesting of the missions they'd undertaken over that time. The very small rewards from the missions allowed some modifications to have been made to the Phantom...

The first of these was a modification to the twin J79s, allowing a not insignificant increase in the aircraft's dry thrust output, and giving it a boost in its stats, especially in regards to its Speed and Agility. The second was a modification to the weapons systems, which allowed the Phantom to carry an internal cannon, the same M61A1 that was mounted in the stock gunpod, which was now mounted under the nosecone, and an improved array of air-to-ground ordnance, rather than just the unguided 1000lb bombs that equipped the stock aircraft.

The final modification was a purely cosmetic one - the aircraft now wore a four tone camouflage scheme. This scheme consisted of a gloss black underside, with dashes of red for the stencil data, with a brown and two tone green camouflage pattern across the rest of the airframe, with various sections towards the rear of the aircraft left in bare metal, due to their proximity to the extreme temperatures produced by the twin J79s. Admittedly, the scheme was more than a little bit of a compromise on Kirito's side - he'd wanted an all over black airframe, before Argo pointed out just how much that would defeat the idea of camouflage in the daytime.

As part of their attempts to ration the fuel until they could find a way to bring the base into full use, they'd decided to take turns flying the Phantom, acting as the RIO, or acting as ground control. Today, Kirito would be flying the Phantom, whilst Argo directed him from the ground, the Phantom's onboard radar needing work done, and thus, out of commission for the time being. Onboard for today's sortie were four Sidewinder heat seeking missiles, and a full load of ammunition for the 20mm cannon, but no Sparrow radar guided missiles, due to the radar's earlier failure and Argo being on the ground, meaning Kirito was reduced to Within Visual Range combat rules.

Climbing through ten thousand feet and passing 400 knots, Kirito undertook a brief control check on their Phantom. All systems looked clear, and he informed Argo of his status up there, ''Everything looks clear Argo. Just going to get a feel for the boosted controls, the skies are clear, right?'' He didn't want a repeat of the other day, when he'd narrowly missed someone deciding to go for a joyride in their F-104... it was only so long before someone died because of the lack of any degree of air traffic control, in his view. Admittedly, he hadn't planned on nearly being the person to prove that point, but the universe did work in mysterious ways sometimes...

Meanwhile in the control tower, Argo pulled herself from her reclined position on the seat, and tapped the aging radar set. One green dot, Kirito, and that was it. ''Yer clear, Kii-bou, skies look clearer than the water.''

Kirito muttered to himself about that not being difficult with their water supply at Fort Pleasant, but acknowledged Argo's description of the situation.

The first manoeuvre he planned to pull off was a simple barrel roll - nose up, roll the wings around 360 degrees, nose down, and return to level flight. Beginning the manoeuvre, Kirito applied additional power to the engines, bringing the throttle up to 80%, the maximum setting without putting the thirsty J79s into reheat, which enabled the afterburner and wasted a tonne of valuable fuel, and raised the Phantom's nose, before quickly pushing the stick to the left, the wings rolling as he did, whilst the nose began to drop too.

Pulling the stick back, the Phantom soon levelled out and Kirito began to consider his next manoeuvre. Considering his altitude, he decided on using a Chandelle, a fairly simple manoeuvre where the aircraft rolls into a climbing turn and turns back 180 degrees on itself.