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Hey, what's going on? Welcome to software, radio. I am your host, Rad, and I have the special privilege to hang out and talk with Dino Gardner, Ranger photographer, you know, all around human and Dino. How are you today?

Hey, man, I'm good. Rad is good to be here. Thank you so much. Hey, we're very excited to have you on when I found out you're going to be the guest and I started to look into you and find out.

Okay, first of all, let's talk about top gun, this book that I found that you have. Okay, let's just dive into it. You're a photographer. I love photographers. I know some have stops, some, you know, macro lenses and some telephoto lenses, but my man.

In the years that you were doing photography in the back of these vehicle, these machines, you were needing to know the light, the speed, the film. I mean, you're doing a hand, right? I mean, tell me more. Let's hear it.

Well, first I taught myself a photography in the back seat of an F4 F14 A4 F15 F16 F18 because I had never taken pictures before except, you know, those little silly selfies we did in ninth grade with those Minolta cameras that are, you know, the wide ones, then like pancakes with the square flash on them and whatnot.

Yeah, man. And so, you know, I only wanted to fly just one time. I never set out to be a military aviation photographer. Never. It wasn't on any of my list. It wasn't in any of my dreams. And I just wanted to fly one time in the F4, the same aircraft, my dad flew in Vietnam. He was a Air Force fighter pilot. So I grew up in the atmosphere decades.

And the first gig I got was at the, well, first I saw Top Gun, the movie 26 times in the theater in Los Angeles. Of course. I was a scientist at the time, Biophysics at University of Southern California. And I was just enamored. I was floored by the movie. I mean, who watches a movie 26 times in a theater? You know, that's kind of stupid. It just pulled away. I mean, it cost maybe 50 cents. It did. It just sucked you right in. And I said, I want to do that one time.

What is that like 84? That one 86 summer of 86, summer of 86. And I said, and then after that, I said, I want to fly one time. So I called the Air Force is equivalent of Navy's top gun. And the Air Force, it was the fighter weapon school at Nellis Air Force base in Nevada. And I sent a polite letter and asked him if I could fly and take not take pictures. But if I could fly, do an article for a magazine. And they sent a polite reply. No, you can't fly in our air. But you won't come out. And I did.

And I'm glad I did because the common dawn to his full colonel, he gave me a tour and also an hour long lecture in a like a thousand seat lecture hall. And he and I were the only ones there. And he just very casually dropped this.

He said, Oh, yeah, I knew your dad and Vietnam. He took me on my first combat mission. Oh, wow. And so there's an nepotism got me a lot of access to.

Sure. Like top guys to all the places I went to, but I didn't ask for it. I didn't ask for it. I didn't plan on it. People just knew my dad. And then they knew people that I knew.

I didn't get to fly there at the US Air Force fighter weapon school. But Colonel ever, it's Colonel Russ Everts, the common dodge of the school wrote a beautiful letter of recommendation on my behalf. And I took that to other units.

And one of them said, yes, it was a California F4 unit and March Air Force base. And they said, yeah, sure, come out and fly. And so I went out there and went through altitude training. And they've outfitted me with flight suit and other things.

Like a G suit, right? Like that green G suit, right? That like, yeah, it's what it is. So it keeps your blood flow and everything. And you have like a way to pee, don't you?

Nah, you're only up there for a couple hours at a time. Okay.

Like those combat missions that, you know, that they fly and do tanker. Yeah, refueled refueling from tankers. But no, so got ready, got in the aircraft, the F4E.

And you know, that was exciting enough. And we took off the afterburners didn't light. The mandate is, if the afterburner doesn't light, just before takeoff, then you abort.

But my pilot, the major John Groff said, ah, fuck it. Let's just get out there. And we took off. And so we flew for about five minutes. And I thought, hey, that's going to be all the cockpit time that I get.

And I would have been perfectly fine with that. Sure. So we land. And the CEO comes out and he says to John, hey, man, I give you one job to do. And you know, you f it up.

And then he looked at me and he says, hey, come back again, saying a couple weeks and bring your camera next time. Wow.

Oh, but I forgot one important part. That first flight was delayed by a couple of weeks because the time that I was supposed to fly, you remember the actor Dean Martin, one of the rats.

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