So There I Was . . .

It starts with a simple aviation truth: the procedures matter because the aircraft do not care about your confidence. Consequently, Fig & RePete walk through how a bad rejoin, a bad angle, and bad timing can stack up fast. They also talk through why four aviators got out alive, which is the best ending any bad day can ask for.Actually, the episode does not stay in one lane for long. […]

Brain joins us to talk about Marine aviation over the last 35 years. Consequently, the conversation turns into a time machine through flight school disasters, deployment memories, and the strange logic behind becoming a military test pilot.   We start north of Kandahar and immediately settle into the kind of storytelling that only happens after too much coffee and too many flight hours. Furthermore, there are stories about Bulldog, VMU-2, […]

Bonk, Top Gun, Marine MAWTS-1 and Test Pilot Stories kick off with him bobbing in the Pacific after less than 500 flight hours in total flight time! Actually, that’s just the warmup. This week on So There I Was, Fig and RePete sit down with Bonk, a former Test Pilot School graduate, Top Gun instructor, and MAWTS pilot whose career somehow became more insane every decade. One minute he’s failing […]

This week kicks off with Kemo back in the saddle, and it goes sideways immediately! Actually, this one starts fast. No warmup. No easing in. Just straight into stories that make you stop and go, wait… what? Kemo’s back. And if you’ve heard him before, you already know this is going to be ridiculous. If you haven’t—well, buckle up. This is one of those episodes where the stories don’t just […]

Doober comes back to tell of his acquisition of former US Marine Corps H-34 helicopter, YL-37. The helicopter restoration story starts with a mission that sounds simple. It is not. Actually, it quickly turns into a “wait, what?” situation. This episode picks up with Doober and the ongoing saga of bringing YL-37 back from the brink. The aircraft is not just old. It is stubborn. Furthermore, every step forward seems […]

This is part two with Al Cisneros, and this time, it opens in a hurry. No notice. Grab the jet. Haul critical intel. Get it to Saigon—fast. Actually, what starts as a straightforward courier mission quickly takes on weight. The tasking is urgent, the stakes are real, and the realization hits that this flight matters far beyond just flying from point A to point B. Furthermore, that opening story sets […]

This episode drops you straight into one of those situations pilots train for—but hope never happens. A routine mission turns serious fast when the fuel state stops being a number and starts becoming a problem. Not a “tight on gas” problem. A zero fuel over hostile territory problem. And now the math matters. Range, burn rate, options… none of them look good. As the situation unfolds, you’ll hear how quickly […]

Fig & RePete kick back for a raw hangar-talk session unpacking aviation’s razor edge: LaGuardia runway crash layers failing Swiss-cheese style, sim freezes hiding ghost jets, and C-130 crews lining up on the wrong damn strip packed with paratrooper Chinooks. Lessons learned? Night viz traps, CRM meltdowns, bozo announcements, and “shut up, navigator” tricks that nearly sparked war’s biggest fireball—plus hand-on-head foul-deck signals and trainee controller fumbles. Irreverent, technically sharp […]

The C-130 flight engineer is a disappearing breed. However, the stories remain. In this episode of So There I Was, DC pulls back the curtain on high-stakes aircrew life. We explore the Air National Guard culture and the “routine” moments that turn sideways. Why is the Flight Engineer being phased out? We discuss what is lost when a computer replaces a human eye. We also spend some time chatting about […]

Naval aviation stories rarely go as planned. This episode of So There I Was features Matt “Taco” Bell sharing his wildest moments… This episode of So There I Was delivers multiple “wait, what?” moments from Matt “Taco” Bell, from getting in trouble over a low transition (yeah… that didn’t go well), to realizing just how terrifying it is to be the instructors’ instructor in Kingsville, to being “in the barrel” […]