I was the CEO at Top Gun when we had up 16 ends, a really fast airplane when they met a hornet and a guy decided he was gonna

Try to leave in an F-18 with single center line. You're in trouble. They'd have 240 overtaken, so you had to turn and fight

to the show. I'm your host Vincent I.L.O. and joining me in studio today is retired US Navy Captain Tom Trotter. Trotts, welcome to the

Fighter pilot podcast. Great to be here. Jello. Great to have you. Let's see our first foray into video is episode 155 with

bones and then I'll lo and behold I have a chat from him and some number I didn't recognize, which was you. So apparently you two guys know each other and

Here you are. We know each other. All right. Well, maybe we should get to that later, but everyone seemed to enjoy the bones episode and he's kind

Enough to supply us with this studio at his FBO at Gillespie field and he's not bad for an Air Force guy. Yeah, that's right. Well, I am really looking forward to this

discussion today because I think we can talk about the F-14. We can talk about the hornet. We can talk about Top Gun. We can talk about being an

Airwing commander and whatever else comes to mind. So these are all experiences you've had. Yeah. All right. Well, let's start at the beginning.

Where are you from? Where'd you go to school? What'd you do with the Navy? And if you want to talk about what you're doing now a little bit, that's fine too.

Let's start with Pueblo, Colorado. Pueblo, Colorado is kind of in the prairies. It's not up in the mountains with a ski areas. But close. It's got a very nice climate, but it's a long ways to

Mountains. So I grew up in Pueblo. Two things happened in Pueblo that were motivators. There was one called the CFNI. It was the second largest steel mill in the entire nation owned by the

Rockefellers at one time. And the other thing that happened there that always was fascinating to me was we had no computers, no simulators, united, trained in Pueblo. So they did a

GCA box pattern around the airfield with 707s, 727s, DC8s, all day and all night. And the city of Pueblo would get a few bucks every time they touched

out. So I knew that I probably didn't want to become a steel worker. And I love flying. I would tell my dad, I need to go out there and watch the airplanes. So I grew up in Pueblo, went to high school, were lower middle income, kind of. And my parents said to me, real early on. You got two choices. You're either going to learn a trade out of high school, or you're going to get a scholarship and you go to the military. So my brother was three years ahead of me. He ends up

getting a point in the naval kettle. He was a really smart guy, submarine or nuclear power. Me, I was probably chasing girls a little bit too much, skiing a lot, having fun. I want to go and I have a cat me the worst way. The Naval Academy looked at my SATs and they go away. So then all of a sudden I was an alternate to the University Colorado ROTC. I say, what's that? My brother had these little Polaroid pictures of airplanes. And I go, the Navy owns airplanes. The Air Force Academy is close.

And Carl Springs says, I thought there was only guys with airplanes. No, they got these airplanes. I got to fly into this little jet called the TA4. Oh, man, I got to do that. So lo and behold, I made it off of the alternate list and became a choice for the University of Colorado.

So four years of the University of Colorado ROTC, boom, come out of there month later. I'm in flight school. No sitting around and waiting. They go, hey, orders, graduate May, jump into flight school. One year later, I've got my wings.

Now I get finished with flight school, did okay. And they go, what do you want to fly in which coast? So I go, I want the Tomcat. I had a poster and we all envy the Tomcat.

So number one guy got his choice. I was fortunate enough and I'll tell you why because I was very average. I barely got out of T2s. But I had an instructor that was a fighter pilot.

Eric Vander cleave for something like that. So this dude was Vietnam fighter pilot taught me everything. He was amazing. Exactly what do in the A4.

I was just, he goes, we're going to kick ass. You're going to be better than all these other guys. No problem. I'm going to show exactly what to do on the approaches this net.

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