Maal gave him a thumbs-up, slid down the ladder, and removed it.
Wyatt released the brakes and let the F-4 creep forward. Adding throttle, he picked up speed, turned onto the taxiway, and headed for the end of the runway.
The Citation lifted off before he reached the end of the taxiway.
He locked the brakes, lowered the canopy, and ran up the engines to max power, watching the instruments closely. The aircraft rocked and strained against the brakes. Tail pipe temperatures and pressures appeared perfect. He backed off the throttles, checked for airplanes in both directions, then rolled out onto the runway.
Without stopping, Wyatt turned onto what should have been a centre stripe, and slapped the throttles forward.
Almost instantly, the acceleration pressed him back into the seat. At 160 knots indicated, he eased the throttles past the detents and into afterburner.
The Phantom leapt to the chase, hoisted her slim nose, and climbed for the stars, folding in her gear and flaps.
“Ah, Yucca One, you disappeared on us.”
Wyatt read the pertinent information off the HUD. “Base, I’m climbing through angels two-five, making six-zero-zero.”
“That’s exactly what I thought you were doing,” Kriswell said. “Tell me about it.”
“The cockpit’s a little disorienting,” Wyatt admitted.
“Hell, I’ve got over a thousand hours in Eagles, and the HUD seems to read correctly…”
“What do you mean, ‘seems’?” Demion broke in.
“Give me a while, Jim. What’s bothersome, it still feels like an F-4, and I automatically look down at the instrument panel, but the instruments aren’t in the right places anymore. Christ, they’re not even instruments.”
The familiar round and octagonal gauges had been replaced by digital readouts and a pair of cathode ray tubes. Wyatt figured each of the pilots would need about ten hours of flight time to become accustomed to the new layout and to learn to rely on the HUD for important data.
He levelled out at thirty thousand feet on a northerly heading.
It felt good.
He eased the stick over and did two rolls.
“Yucca One, Bucky says cut that out.”
Leaning to the right, he looked back and down and finally found the Citation flying several thousand feet below.
“She’s flying just fine,” Wyatt said.
“Follow the script,” Kriswell ordered. “Damn it, you wrote the script.”
For the next hour, Wyatt followed the script. With Barr monitoring him, he put the F-4 through a series of manoeuvres that gradually increased the stress on key components. He finished up with two intentionally staged stalls, and pulled out of each one easily.
“Bucky says you pass, Yucca One.”
“That’s nice to know. I’ve got two pages of notes on my knee here.”
“How bad?”
“Minor things. Adjustments on the stick. Rudder trim is a little jerky. The starboard throttle has a sticking point at seventy percent.”
“Hell,” Kriswell said, “any kid can live with those. Don’t be so damned picky.”
“I apologize profusely.”
“That’s better. Let’s try the navigation.”
They tried the TACAN first, using radio stations in Rapid City and Omaha to set up the directions. Then Wyatt cut in the NavSat system which used three of the eighteen satellites in the Global Positioning System (GPS) to triangulate his position above the earth. Combined with the radar altimeter, the electronics could pinpoint him to within a few yards of longitude, latitude, and altitude. With the right CRT in the instrument panel switched to the navigation mode, his symbol was displayed in the centre of the screen and superimposed grid lines gave him a graphic interpretation of his geographical position. At the top of the screen, his position was displayed numerically: 43-05-19N 98-45-57W.
The HUD readouts provided him with the crucial digital data. At the top, his heading was provided: 265. In a box at the right side, the altitude of 32,465 was shown. Along the bottom were his fuel state and his speed indication, currently 461 knots.
Through Kriswell, Wyatt learned that Barr, flying right alongside him, confirmed the navigational information.
“Let’s go to video, Yucca One.”
“Roger the video, Base.”
The sophisticated camera mounted in the lower nose cone behind a small Plexiglas window could capture true video, enhanced night vision, and infrared imagery. He brought up the true mode on the left CRT, using the small control box added to the side of the throttle console.
There had not been space enough to give the camera lens rotational or vertical movement, and it was mounted solidly. The screen showed him blue sky, and Wyatt dipped the nose until he picked up a patch of earth surrounding a tiny blue lake. With the thumbwheel, he magnified the image. The lake zoomed up at him.
“Got myself a lake, Base.”
“Integrate.”
With one flip of a toggle switch, the computer copied the true video image and added a simulation of it to the HUD. On a clear day like he had, the simulated image matched what he was seeing through the HUD, anyway, but at night, or in heavy weather, the computer would provide him with an enhanced picture he would not normally have.
He used two adjustment knobs at the bottom of the HUD and shifted the computer image on the HUD until it matched his real view. If he shifted his head too far to the right or left, the superimposed image slid off the actual one.
“Looks good to me, Base.”
“All right, Yucca, that’s enough of that for today. Let’s do the first pass on the search radar.”
Barr peeled off and ran away toward the south to act as the quarry.
Wyatt raised his nose to regain some altitude, then coasted along, giving Barr time to hide. Jotted a note on his fuel consumption. Viewed the faraway surface of the earth, which had a beige tinge to it. Noted the cloud formations, stratocumulus and cirrus, building in the west. Thought about buzzing a couple cars on Highway Two, which cut catty-comer across the state, but decided against inducing any heart attacks.
After ten minutes, he switched his radar to active which, in a combat situation, provided the enemy with radar emissions which could help pinpoint himself as a target. Selecting the 120-mile search scan, he eased into a mile-wide orbit and made two circuits.
One target presented itself immediately, and judging by its course and altitude, he wrote it off as a commercial flight headed for Sioux City. He couldn’t find the Citation.
Barr wouldn’t make things easy, of course, and Wyatt didn’t believe for a minute that he had maintained a southerly course after they had parted company.
The Citation had radar, primarily utilized for weather detection and anti-collision, but it would be sufficient for spotting the F-4 if it got close enough.
In ten minutes, at their combined speeds, if he had continued south, Barr could be close to 150 miles away. And out of radar range.
Wyatt didn’t think so.
He switched the radar to passive.
Below on his left was the town of O’Neill, with the Elkhorn River passing to the south of it. Wyatt dropped his right wing, brought the nose over, and spiralled downward, picking up speed to 640 knots and straightening out on a heading of two-hundred degrees.
After five minutes, he began a wide turn to the right and drained off speed. The radar altimeter reported the Phantom at twenty-six-hundred feet AGL. The town of Atkinson was several miles ahead on his right oblique.
The Elkhom River was clearly delineated by the meandering greenage that passed from west to east. Wyatt reduced his throttle settings some more and began a right turn that would align him with the river.