fandomhigh | Flight and Flying [Friday morning, Flight Club shed]

The flight simulator had been reconfigured again--this time to something that should seem a bit more familiar to Earth-based students: The F-16 Flying Falcon.

Anakin clasped his hands behind his back and began speaking when the students had assembled in front of him. "This is one of the aircraft used by the militaries of this world," he began. "It's good in air-to-air combat as well as air-to-surface attack, can go more than 850 kilometers before it needs to be refueled and can withstand up to nine G's--pretty high tech for this world's standards."

He opened the simulator door and gestured to the controls. "As you can see, it's configured differently than the systems we've been using in the last few weeks, but the joystick and the trigger button are located in the same place. The F-16 just isn't as sensitive as the starfighter--you'll have to yank harder at the joystick to get the same reaction."

He was completely oblivious to any kind of innuendo that might've been found in that statement. "You'll also be dealing with the Earth's gravity, so turns won't be as fast, and if you make the plane go up too quickly, the machine's been equipped to simulate G forces, so you might pass out. That's not exactly what I had in mind for today, so please, um, don't do that."

[OOC: SP from me until around noon PDT...]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You are looking for five targets located in a mountain range. They vary in size from a several story-tall building to a small car. The average pilot can make it through the run in about 12 minutes.

Z was kind of cranky when she made her first run. Her emotions affected her performance, however, and she finished the run in a little less than twenty minutes. "Darn it!" she said as she pulled off her helmet, revealing a truly spectacular case of helmet hair.

She kind of enjoyed the blowing stuff up, though. Reminded her of the abandoned warehouse district back home.

Anakin waved his hand up towards his hair. "You've got...um...thingy."

"It does that," Z explained. "Lemme try again?"

Her second run was kind of vicious, but she shaved six minutes off her time. "Woo!"

"Better," Anakin said with a smile. "You've ever done this before?"

"No, but I've ~~jammed the coin slot and~~ played a lot of arcade games back home. Some of them are sort of like simulators."

Anakin looked sceptical. "Really? They let younglings play around on something this complicated?"

"No, not quite. But the aiming and shooting part is pretty much the same, and some of the better, newer ones from, like, Eltar simulate g-forces." Of course, she had to actually pay for those, because the Eltarans had better tech than a coin slot.

"Eltar?" Anakin repeated. "Which quandrant is that in?"

"I'm afraid I have no idea," Z admitted. "It's kind of...central?"

That didn't help Anakin at all, but he wasn't about to admit it. "Oh," he said, nodding. "Of course."

Zack finished the run in a little over half an hour, but he at least managed to hit all the targets.

Of course he'd blown up half the mountain range as well...

Alec was halfway between treating this like a real mission and gleeing over the fact that he wouldn't be punished for doing whatever the hell he wanted.

So, because barrel rolls and loops were a lot of fun when you meant to do them, he managed a time of 11 minutes, missing none of the targets - though there was also a very sad mountain missing a large part of its peak for no other reason than YAY BOOM.

The fact that he was actually pretty good at this stuff went a long way towards cheering him up after the Stealth and Deception debacle of Wednesday. One would barely know him from the mopey bummed out bro of two days before by the gleeful way he went about the strafing run.

Although he came within a few seconds of it, he just couldn't beat his time of ten minutes. And really, that mountain goat? Shouldn't have looked so much like a small car.

Bridge actually wasn't too bad at this, finishing the run in just over ten minutes. Sure, Sky probably would have done better than Bridge if he were here. But he wasn't. So there.

Twenty minutes later, the targets had been hit, the mountain had holes in it, and Alanna was beginning to turn green. But at least she didn't run into the mountain!

Peter found and destroyed four of the targets in 19 minutes. It took him another 12 to find the fifth, the small car. His strafing needed work, so it took another three to blow it up.

Flight and Flying [Friday morning, Flight Club shed]

Exercise 1: Air to Surface

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