VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.—A little over a year ago, I was lucky enough to take a short ride in a Folland Gnat trainer—a nimble little two-seat jet maintained by Rick Sharpe of Houston’s Vietnam War Flight Museum. I had a great time and learned a lot about how unsuited my inner ear is for aerobatic maneuvering, but what I wasn’t expecting was the e-mail that landed in my inbox the day after the story ran:

Lee,

Enjoy your articles and I saw the article on your recent flight in the Gnat. As I read what you wrote, it occurred to me that you might be interested in the large video game we run down here at NAS Oceana in the F/A-18 simulator. If that sounds like something Ars would be interested in, I could look into setting that up for you. Drop me a line if you are interested. Sparky

CDR Matthew W. Smith

CVW-7 Operations Officer

My jaw dropped. I read and re-read what had to be a mis-sent invitation or a series of typos. Me? Jump into a modern fighter simulator? Something I’d be interested in?

I nearly broke my fingers speed-typing my response. Hell yes, we were interested in an F/A-18 simulator! Who wouldn’t want to play what was essentially an awesome 360-degree video game in a high-fidelity fighter jet cockpit?

VIDEO: A trip through the NAS Oceana flight line and into the Navy's F/A-18F simulator, by Ars video producer Jennifer Hahn.

The trip actually took the entire year to arrange. The Navy is the Navy, and the wheels of bureaucracy turned slowly. But finally, at the tail-end of October 2014, my photographer and I met Navy Commander Matt "Sparky" Smith at a Starbucks just a few miles away from Naval Air Station Oceana.

NAS Oceana is home to 337 Navy aircraft split into 19 squadrons, with the bulk of those aircraft being either older F/A-18A and -C Hornet models (142 of them in seven squadrons) or newer F/A-18E and -F Super Hornets (172 in 11 squadrons). The Hornet and Super Hornet are the US Navy’s primary carrier-launched fighter aircraft, taking over a multitude of roles that used to be served by the F-14 Tomcat long-range fighter interceptor, the ground attack-focused A-6 Intruder and its tanker variant, and the anti-submarine warfare-focused S-3 Viking.

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson



Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

The Super Hornet differs enough from the older model as to essentially be an entirely new aircraft, and that’s what I was going to virtually fly. My photographer was actually looking forward to the trip even more than I was—Rick is a private pilot, and he was thrilled at the idea of getting to add "F/A-18E" into his logbook. For my part, I had a lot of questions about the technology required to deliver a high-fidelity simulation—what kind of hardware did the simulator run? How accurate was it? And, of course, could a guy like me raised on a diet of video games actually sit down and successfully fly a for-real supersonic fighter jet?

Wheels up with Sparky

Commander Matt Smith is a hell of a guy. The Ohio native is compact in that way that pilots and aviators tend to be, and he’s got a solid handshake and a relaxed demeanor that can switch from joking to Naval Aviator Radio Voice instantly. Smith is currently serving as the Operations Officer for Carrier Air Wing Seven, but he’s been flying since March of 2001, first in S-3 Vikings and then in Super Hornets since 2005. He’s flown four combat tours supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom from the Nimitz and Enterprise. He’s also a long-time Ars reader (hi, Matt!), which is how the invite to try out the simulator landed in my inbox in the first place.

The drive through NAS Oceana to the sim building took us past neatly mowed lawns studded with the usual (awesome) assortment of preserved aircraft posed carefully on pedestals. When we entered the sim building, a pair of rookie aviators with lieutenant bars jumped to their feet and acknowledged Smith (without saluting—Navy folks don’t do that indoors on land, apparently). Smith’s call sign is "Sparky," and I asked the two rookies if they’d been stuck with their own call signs yet. Apparently you don’t get a call sign until you’re assigned to a squadron and do something embarrassing enough to be worth memorializing.

We had to turn in our phones and laptops before we were allowed past the lobby, and once inside we were ushered through wide cinderblock hallways bedecked with squadron logos—including the famous and instantly recognizable skull-and-crossbones of VFA-103, one of the two Super Hornet squadrons belonging to the Navy’s Carrier Air Wing Seven. The sim building we were in had a number of different sim "bays," each containing one or more cockpit simulators; plaques by each bay’s door showed either a green "UNCLASSIFIED" or a red "CLASSIFIED" label, depending on what kind of simulation equipment was in use in each bay.

My photographer and I found ourselves in an unclassified sim bay that had been specially prepared just for us—in other words, all the secret stuff had been put away prior to us bringing in our cameras, microphones, and notepads. We would be flying in a previous-generation F/A-18F Super Hornet simulator, one without a hydraulic motion base that used lower resolution graphics than current-gen models. The cockpit mockup also reflected a previous-generation Super Hornet configuration, with more screens and more complex instrumentation than the latest and greatest block models offered.