Heroes star flies at Luke
by Tech. Sgt. Susan Stout
944th Fighter Wing Public Affairs

11/20/2007 - LUKE AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz. -- Unlike his television character on the TV show Heroes, Milo Ventimiglia needed an Air Force pilot to help him fly.

The actor, who plays Peter Petrelli on the show, strapped into an F-16 and climbed high to the skies over Arizona Nov. 16 with the 944th Fighter Wing, a Reserve unit here.

The day before his flight, Ventimiglia attended egress training and received a medical examination to ensure he was fit to fly.

"While I was up there, everything helped," he said. "To know what was around the cockpit and what was coming - but you don't really know until you get up there. Once you're in the air, you understand what everyone was talking about."

Ventimiglia said he wasn't nervous at all. Perhaps it was the skill of his pilot, Lt. Col. John Wynne, that eased his mind.

"Honestly, my heart didn't even start to race the whole time I was in the jet," Ventimiglia said. "I felt very safe and very calm, in fact."

When asked about whether or not he got sick on the flight, Ventimiglia smiled and said, "I would say I felt the effects of G-force and some aerial acrobatics. My body is not used to that."

In addition to learning about the Reserve, the 944th Fighter Wing, and Luke Air Force Base, Ventimiglia also signed hundreds of autographs for Luke Airmen.

"I met a lot of good people," he said. "To see the world of the base and a community of friendly, talented people was really nice."

Source: http://www.944fw.afrc.af.mil/news/story ... =123076635

OU assistant Heupel flies with F-16 Thunderbirds

Sat May 24, 2008
By Scott Wright, Staff Writer

Chatting with other onlookers while her husband, Oklahoma assistant football coach Josh Heupel, cruised through the air at nearly 600 miles per hour, Dawn Heupel expressed some concern about how Josh would handle a force nine times as strong as gravity.

"He doesn't even do very good on roller-coasters," she told one spectator.

Josh Heupel wouldn't come clean about whether or not he kept his lunch down during an hour-long flight with the F-16 Thunderbirds as part of the Star Spangled Salute air show Friday afternoon at Tinker Air Force Base.

Heupel laughed when asked about his wife's concerns.

"She had good reason," he said. "I don't know that there was a lot of screaming, but my stomach became unnerved a little bit in the middle of the flight."

Heupel, who was the quarterback on Oklahoma's 2000 national championship team and now works as quarterbacks coach for the Sooners, experienced all the maneuvers that the fighter jets routinely perform in air shows.

And his pilot, Air Force Major Tony Mulhare, took him to the town of Apache, just north of Lawton, to simulate an air attack.

"I like to show the people I fly what the Air Force is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan," Mulhare said. "We got a chance to pretend we were in Fallujah, Iraq, and there were some people on the ground who had been ambushed and they needed our firepower as an F-16 to get them out of their situation."

Mulhare said the flight from Tinker to Apache — about 90 miles by car — took less than eight minutes.

"It beats driving," Mulhare said.

Heupel was awarded a certificate and lapel pin for being able to sustain 9 Gs, or a force nine times as strong as gravity.

"The black hole started creeping in on me. Everything started to get dark," he said. "It was a wonderful experience, once-in-a-lifetime experience.

"There wasn't anything I was scared about. I was just hoping I'd make it through the whole flight."

Source: http://newsok.com/ou-assistant-heupel-f ... le/3248094