As I mentioned in my last blog, day 6 started out really, really early. But it was well worth it. I was going to fly on a KC-10. And even though it was my first time on the -10, I was more excited to be flying with the Gucci Boys from Travis AFB. For the past 3 years, I’ve been trying to coordinate with the Travis PAO to go up in one of their -10’s. And I had to fly 6,000 miles from Travis to make it happen. But it was well worth the effort. The Gucci Boy’s from the 349th AMW gave us one hell of a ride.

Gear stowed, wheels up by 9am, and we were off to the northern Chilean Air Force base of Iquique. It was a two hour flight to rendezvous with our gaggle of Chilean F-16’s, so I slept on the way up. For those of you reading my blog, you know that I flew down to Chile on the UASF’s other tanker, the KC-135. The difference between the two is like night and day. The KC-10 is a modified DC-10 commercial airliner and retains it’s commercial airline seats for the passengers, unlike the KC-135 which has nylon webbing for seats. It was like flying in ‘first class’. Not to mention we had a common airliner bathroom as well as a galley with a microwave. ANd because of this opulent luxury, the men and women of the -10 live the “Gucci Lifestyle.”

Our 9 hour flight was simple. Fly the two hours up to Iquique, enter a race track pattern, refuel the Chilean F-16’s, and return to Santiago. Our aerial refueling track is in the shape of an oval, similar to a racetrack. The KC-10 flies 25 miles straight, makes a left hand u-turn, 25 miles back the other way, and then another u-turn to the left. The plan was to orbit this fixed refueling track and wait for the F-16’s to join up with us.

The Chilean F-16’s will be participating in a joint US Air Force - Chilean Air Force military exercise early next week. But before they can fly these simulated air to air battles, they need to qualify and be able to join up with the tanker to get gas. So in the 5 hours that we were on orbit, the Gucci Boys were expecting four flights of four F-16’s to come and make contact. With each F-16 only taking on 2,000 lbs of fuel, they were using this time to practice aerial refueling.

One of the most impressive parts was how the KC-10 and the Chilean F-16 were able to hold formation and maintain boom contact while in the steep left hand turns at the end of the racetrack pattern.

In the end we had 12 F-16’s show up, and offloaded 24,000 lbs of fuel. Our two Boom Operators and flight crew were instrumental in helping the 7 media folks on the flight in getting some awesome shots. The highlight for me was being able to shoot four F-16’s in an in trail formation. Boomer did an awesome job coordinating the aircraft so that each was in the prefect position for the shot. Form up in an in trail formation. Lead aircraft, drop down about 100 feet. Dash 3, move forward a little bit. Dash 4, come left 5 feet. And just like that we had the makings of a rare and unique shot.

On the way back we were able to request the overhead break for landing. Tower helped accommodate us and we put on one hell of a show!

And just remember NKAWTG! Nobody Kicks Ass Without Tanker Gas!!

Looking forward to flying with the Travis boys real soon! Maybe this time it’ll be a bit closer to home.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 4:06 pm and is filed under Moffett Field, Aviation, Air Shows, Photography, Adventures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.