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<\/a>Students from Seatack Elementary School: An Achievable Dream Academy took to the Naval Air Station (NAS) Oceana air base Friday morning as the base was preparing for the 2015 air show.<\/p>\n\u201cWe would like to congratulate you on becoming naval aviators for the day,\u201d said Lt. Kristen Erpenbach as she welcomed students to the base\u2019s CNATTU theatre. There, the students would get to see of jets in flight, with the footage taken directly from the cockpit of the plane. Students oohed and ahhed as the jet took off from an aircraft carrier, flew over oceans, and zoomed across around mountains.<\/p>\n
He then dressed out in a pilot\u2019s jumpsuit, and highlighted the various equipment built in \u2013 including the vest that becomes a flotation device if he is ever in water.<\/p>\n For the record, it takes a F\/A-18 just .7 of a second to go 60 miles per hour.<\/p>\n It was the kind of speed that two Virginia Beach teachers got to experience firsthand earlier in the week.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m an English teacher, but I have no words right now,\u201d said Princess Anne High School teacher Carrie Gantt as she stepped out of a F\/A-18 Hornet Tuesday afternoon. \u201cI told Jeff that when I\u2019m 99 years old I\u2019ll remember this.<\/p>\n Jeff is Cpt. Jeff Kuss, pilot of U.S. Navy Blue Angels jet No. 7., who took Gantt and Sanae Kenner, Japanese teacher at Salem Middle School, on 45-minute guest flights neither will forget.<\/p>\n \u201cWe flew inverted<\/em> over the Atlantic ocean for 45 seconds,\u201d exclaimed Gantt while demonstrating with her hands. \u201cHow many people can say they\u2019ve done that?\u201d<\/p>\n They had to get airborne first, and Gantt\u2019s takeoff from NAS Oceana runway No. 5 began with a 17,000-foot vertical high performance climb that guests, including Gantt\u2019s husband and mother,\u00a0watched from the ground.<\/p>\n \u201cThey probably haven\u2019t taken off the \u2018fasten your seat belt\u2019 sign yet,\u201d remarked one viewer.<\/p>\n Waiting for Gantt\u2019s return to solid ground, Kenner said she was \u201cexcited and ready\u201d for her turn. \u201cEli\u2019s briefing really helped us know what to expect,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Blue Angels jet No. 7 crew chief Eli Lang was praised by both teachers for his preflight briefing to explain positive and negative g-force, and more importantly, how to brace for the maneuvers and cope with any physical effects they may experience in flight.<\/p>\n<\/a>Students then got to hear from pilot-in-training First Lt. Jason Ashley. Ashley told the students his desire to be a pilot grew from his childhood obsession with the movie \u201cTop Gun.\u201d He watched it so much, \u201cmy mom probably hated it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>Ashley is a student like they are, he pointed out. He has a lot of reading and math work to do and has to report to Erpenbach, his \u201cteacher.\u201d In fact, the two worked with Andrew Stark, a third-grade teacher at Seatack, to work through a couple of math problems for the students. The questions included asking students to estimate the amount of fuel a jet needs as well as how an F\/A-18 can go.<\/p>\n<\/a>Flying inverted, breaking the sound barrier and other aerial maneuvers were all part of the fun for guest riders who sat in the back seat of the F\/A-18 flying at supersonic speeds.<\/p>\n