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Ohhh yeaahhh. The RIO. Reason number 15,431 to fly a single seat fighter. But I'll buy you drinks all night long. Bush is President, the stock market is climbing, and with any luck I'll be killing a few more Islamic whackjobs with my landbased, single seat, single tailed, single engined killing machine before I hang up the ol' g-suit forever. Life is great, and buying an old Tomgrape driver a few drinks is never a waste of money.

I gotta address this RIO thing once and for all.

When you fly a jet that does not use a computer to keep your ass from losing control, sometimes one must perform the art of flying with such skill and grace, that it requires an eyewitness to help describe it to those coming into the art or working on their craft.

Now, you know we have our egos, and sometimes we tend to be too busy, or too in rapture over our last outing to come back down to earth and share our wonder with our fellow man. Hence, you have the RIO.

The RIO's primary mission is to come back with a cool head, and describe the brilliance going on in the front seat. The absolute mastery of the air, the precision of the push to waypoints, the dead on stacking and sep in the pattern, the vapor explosion my snap into the break, the intuitive throttle corrections holding a perfect glide path and alpha down to the now expected OK3.

You see, by this time, the pilot is usually overcome with emotion, concerned that this kind of perfection is fleeting, and wont last until my next section, too lost in awe to describe the man-machine connection resulting in yet another LSO standing-ovation; it is quite a personal moment.

This is where the RIO steps forward while I regain my composure and shares with the world at large why his front seat is the baddest man alive.

I hope I wont have to explain this again.