Reddit mentions of Vipers in the Storm: Diary of a Gulf War Fighter Pilot

You're a special kind of stupid, aren't you? You just trolling or are you for real?
Ever heard of this BOOK

Or how about this ONE?

Take a hike

http://www.amazon.com/Vipers-Storm-Diary-Fighter-Pilot/dp/0071400400/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1292056711&sr=8-3

Buy Fighter Combat: Tactics and Manoeuvring. It is the PhD-level thesis on air-to-air combat. Eat it up. You will be heads and shoulders above your peers if you can demonstrate a solid understanding of the concepts in that book when it comes to recruitment time.

Also, keep in mind that being a fighter pilot isn't particularly glamourous. You get to fly the coolest jets in the world, but 99.9% of the time, when you're deployed, the flying is boring as shit. Naval aviators? Take off, bus to a tanker, get gas, fly in a racetrack for 3 hours, get gas, fly in a racetrack for 3 hours, fly back to the boat, land. Sleep for 8 hours. Do it again when you wake up. Every six days. For 3-4 months.

Watch Jetstream and Speed & Angels.

Get your private pilot's license, glider's license, or recreational -- whatever you can afford. The sooner you get yourself into a cockpit the better. At the very least, try and go up in a high performance prop that's capable of at least 6Gs and get the instructor to do a full aerobatic routine with +6/-4 load. Some people take Gs better than others; you'll want to know if you're susceptible to fainting or throwing up. (I knew someone at the top of his class at flight school, right up until they started doing G-loaded maneuvers, at which point he started hurling at around +3/-2. He ended up getting kicked out as he couldn't kick it.)

Get into fighter simulators like Falcon 4.0: Allied Force, or the new Falcon 4.0 release from Benchmark Sims. They'll give you a far better appreciation of what's actually involved being a fighter pilot than any book or movie. (Took me about two weeks of reading manuals and practicing before I was able to lock on to a bandit in Falcon 4 from BVR and shoot it down. Learning the concepts of fire control radar and subsequent operation of said radars will be very enlightening, and again, will put you ahead of your peers.)

Engross yourself in the details. Get obsessive. Read and re-read Fighter Combat. Know the strengths and weaknesses of every fighter/attack jet currently flying in every air force. Know what a high yo-yo is. Know what your beams are, and how to notch them. Know about gimbal limits. Learn about jammers.

Eat up as much information as you can. Understand every concept being discussed in this thread about BVR tactics.. Learn as much as you can about the F-22, F-35, China's J-20 and Russia's PAK FA. The latter two are going to reach IOC around the time that you'll probably be strapping up in a J-35. Read all of the articles here and be able to make informed decisions about what you're reading and how that fits into your world view..

Watch this video of an F-16 pilot evading six SAMs over Iraq during Desert Storm and make sure that's something you want to do with your life.

Buy FSX and the VRS Superbug. Learn how to fly carrier patterns. It's one of the most challenging yet rewarding thing you can do on a simulator. (You'll want a HOTAS setup for the best effect.)

Read Vipers in the Storm for a very technically-oriented account of one F-16 pilot's Desert Storm deployment.

Read the official CV NATOPS publications (google it). Download and read the Air Force's F-16 Air Combat Command 16v5 manual. It's just as juicy as Fighter Combat.

Pick the aircraft you want to fly and know everything about it. Cut out pictures of it and put them on your wall. Know the emergency red book procedures off by heart. Buy the cockpit cut-outs that students use to learn all the switches and memorize them. When it comes to recruitment time and they ask for your three jet preferences, put that jet down three times, because there's no way you're going to fly anything else. Just, nope.

Know about the 10,000 hour rule (google it) and start chipping away. Immersing yourself in the world of fighter pilots now will pay off in years to come. When it comes time for your recruitment interview in 3-4 years time, you'll be so far ahead of your peers that you should be a shoe-in. Make it clear during your interview that being a fighter pilot is all you want to do. Have a list of every single aspect you've learnt (like red pages, BVR tactics, basically everything I've mentioned here), and get them to quiz you on the hardest ones (or ask if you can demonstrate what you know about the hardest ones).

And whatever you do, don't ever visit this site: http://www.becomefighterpilot.com/fighter-pilot-video.html. I purposely didn't make it a link. It is absolute horse shit. I know, because I bought it. A year ago. (And I'm 30 and have long since given up my chances of being a fighter pilot, which I regret on a daily basis.) It basically consists of: "get good grades, be a good person, do your homework".

No tl;dr for you! Print this shit out and do everything on it. Ping me in five years when you pull your first break turn at corner speed.

...

Know what a break turn is and why you would need to do one at corner speed.