VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — What's it like flying an FA-18? I headed to Naval Air Station Oceana to speak with the aviators who fly the Super Hornets and the team that keeps them ready to take to the skies.
F/A-18 pilot Samuel Magilke told me what it's like when he steps inside the cockpit of a Super Hornet jet.
"It's a dream come true!" he said. "Every time we go flying, it's like being a little kid again. It doesn't feel real as soon as we get airborne. It's like, I get paid to do this. This is awesome. This is not even a job, it's a dream!"
A dream job that he knew he wanted to do at a very early age.
"I think I was about 4 or 5 years old, I saw some naval aircraft flying overhead. I thought that would be a cool job," Magilke told me.
But before they head to the skies, there's serious prep work.
"Going through the training, it's hours of studying before you even go fly," Weapon Systems Officer Jake Brouker. "So probably like three hours of studying to an hour, hour and a half brief. Fly for an hour and a half, come back and debrief for sometimes up to four hours."
But before they take to the skies, the maintainers play a vital role in making sure the jets are ready. The maintainers do what their title suggest—they maintain the aircraft.
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Alana Saul is one of those maintainers.
"I'm actually third generation Navy. Both my grandfather and my dad were in the Navy and my dad was in for 27 years in aviation as well," she told me. "As soon as the age of 11, I knew the only thing I wanted to do is join the Navy and be just like my father."
And she loves her job.
"As an aviation electrician, I have electrical components in every part of the aircraft when it comes to landing gear, fuel, air intake of the aircraft—anything like that," Saul said.
I asked, is there any pressure?
"There can be—100%!" she answered. "Because you are entrusted as a maintainer that you're making sure that aircraft is going up for a safe flight, that your pilots are safe up in the air and trust your work. So there's definitely a little bit of pressure."
Another maintainer, Kevin Chapman, is an aviation ordnanceman.
"In the simplest terms, I play with bombs and bullets and missiles," he told me. "And getting to just deal with things that are inherently dangerous is exciting, and it just sounded right up my alley."
But Chapman points out that it's hard work.
"It's labor-intensive... we're lifting and putting these weapons on the aircraft by hand," he said. "Almost every piece of ordnance that gets installed on these aircraft is lifted by a team of ordnancemen by hand."
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The pilots and weapon systems officers, like Jake Brouker, realize it's a team effort.
"There's 30 jets any given day that we're getting ready to fly," Brouker said. "Takes a behemoth effort to get them, doing the maintenance day in day out, night check, day check, they're working their butts off."
"We can't do it without them," Magilke agrees. "They are purely the bread and butter that keeps the squadron going."
And what helps keep the Navy going? Training future aviators.
VFA-106 is a training squadron. Brouker welcomes this opportunity.
"I love the teaching aspect," he said. "Just imparting the experiences I've had, giving them the best foot forward when they get out to the fleet."
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Magilke enjoys the teaching aspect too.
"I absolutely love this," he told me. "Love teaching the new generation... we do the best we can here to get them ready for everything, from personal stuff to flying the jets."
Since VFA-106 is a training squadron, once the pilots complete their training here, they will be assigned to an operational squadron—a squadron that can actually deploy. They could end up staying at Oceana or they could be assigned to a naval base in California or one in Japan.
