Flying Solo

That afternoon, above Chicken Coop Base.

"Boss Lei said you did very well at school. What maneuvers did you learn?"

"Basically all the common ones!"

Li Zhi was being a little modest. Instructor Liu Jin had admitted that he had nothing left to teach him, so it was hardly as simple as "basically all the common ones."

Even so, Xu Feng thought he was exaggerating a little. How much could a rookie fresh out of school have learned?

"Let's see you fly a couple first!"

Whether he was a mule or a horse, a little exercise would tell!

"Yes, sir!"

Li Zhi immediately began to climb.

The first was naturally the Cobra Maneuver, which Li Zhi was already fairly familiar with!

Extreme angle of attack, extreme g-force!

When the alarm sounded in the cockpit, it gave Xu Feng a fright. He hadn't expected Li Zhi to start with a post-stall maneuver.

The angle between the nose and the horizontal quickly exceeded ninety degrees, and the plane's speed dropped to rock bottom. It could enter a stall at any moment.

But Li Zhi didn't play by the rules. He didn't push the stick forward to let the weight of the nose bring the plane level; he carried on doing as he pleased.

The cockpit alarm never stopped, but it didn't affect Li Zhi's handling in the slightest.

With Li Zhi paying it no heed, the fighter finally stalled!

The nose flew backward for a little over a second before starting to fall. Because the nose was heavier than the tail, the plane plunged straight toward the ground.

The plane still had plenty of altitude, and since it hadn't entered a spin yet, Xu Feng could remain calm in the rear seat. He didn't interrupt Li Zhi's handling.

The forces generated as the wings on either side cut through the air clearly couldn't be identical, and the fighter began to show signs of rotating.

Rumble!

Naturally, Li Zhi wasn't about to let the fighter actually enter a spin. Hadn't he seen Xu Feng clenching his fists in the rear seat?

Driven by the engine's powerful thrust, the already falling fighter more than doubled its rate of descent.

Fortunately, as the wings cut through the air, they could now generate enough lift to raise the fighter.

As Li Zhi pulled up the nose, the plane leveled out at tremendous speed.

As the fighter leveled out, Xu Feng's somewhat worried heart could finally settle. But Li Zhi didn't seem inclined to let him off just yet, and his hands began making other adjustments.

Li Zhi was adjusting the flaps.

With a few movements, Li Zhi set the angles of the flaps, but the angles on either side didn't seem quite the same.

He had set the left flap to five degrees and the right one to negative five!

The two opposing angles instantly threw the lift on either side out of balance. As the fighter flew level, it began spinning like a top.

Anyone who had ridden in a car knew that the driver was unlikely to get carsick, while passengers in the back seat, caught unprepared, could easily get sick.

It was the same in a fighter. Xu Feng, in the rear seat, was completely unprepared, and after Li Zhi's series of maneuvers, he actually felt a little dizzy.

He felt as though he had just gotten off a roller coaster and been thrown straight into a tumble washing machine.

The only reason he hadn't thrown up was his good physical condition!

Fortunately, Li Zhi didn't keep it up for long and quickly adjusted the flaps back. The plane's attitude couldn't be corrected immediately, though, and it spun several more times before righting itself.

"All right, I have a rough idea of your level now!"

Seeing that Li Zhi wanted to continue, Xu Feng hurriedly stopped him. If he actually threw up, he would lose all face!

"Fly around as you please for a while. We'll start doing it for real tomorrow!"

Xu Feng hadn't expected Li Zhi to be so skilled. At his level, flying solo right away would be no problem at all!

As for attack training, they hadn't filed a request that day and had no drones to use for training, so they couldn't do it for the time being.

The main reason was that Xu Feng hadn't anticipated this. He had originally thought it would be at least half a month before they started training to attack targets.

Return fuel level!

Li Zhi's consecutive high-difficulty maneuvers had consumed a great deal of fuel, and after they made another two circuits in the air, the flight control system issued a fuel warning.

The fighter still had roughly forty percent of its fuel left, which was more than enough, but the flight control system still reminded the pilot to mind when to return.

Fuel remaining: 800.

After flying a few more circuits and using up most of the fuel remaining in the fighter, Li Zhi and Xu Feng finally chose to return and land.

The rest of the flight was routine, with no high-difficulty maneuvers, giving both the fighter and Xu Feng a chance to recover.

"Chicken Coop, Three-Yellow Chicken requesting permission to land!"

"Permission granted. Field pressure 1005, northwest wind, force three, gusts force four."

The entire base airfield only handled three or four fighters and the occasional helicopter delivering supplies, so there was no possibility of congestion.

"Division commander, this is the solo flight application Old Xu sent up!"

Every pilot needed approval from the division headquarters' commanding officer before being cleared to fly solo. After assessing Li Zhi's level, Xu Feng submitted an application to his superiors immediately.

"Li Zhi? If I remember right, he's been there less than five days. He's being cleared to fly solo already?"

Lei Hu wasn't alone in the office; his partner was there too and was rather surprised that Li Zhi was flying solo so soon.

"Hey, Old Lei, you approved it without even asking about the situation?"

Lei Hu smiled without speaking. He knew both Xu Feng and Li Zhi very well. He trusted Xu Feng not to fool him about this, and he also knew what Li Zhi was capable of.

And just like that, the Southern Military Region had its earliest-ever pilot to be cleared for solo flight!

As soon as Xu Feng received the news, he told Li Zhi.

But Li Zhi's solo flight clearance did nothing to ease the pressure on the base, because his own aircraft wasn't ready yet!

Perhaps because the base was at a critical point in an equipment upgrade, assigning them an Eighth Master that was about to be phased out would have been too wasteful.

As a result, Li Zhi's aircraft still hadn't arrived, and he could only share a fighter with Captain Xu for the time being.

"They say a fighter is a pilot's first wife, and a girlfriend can only be considered a concubine at best. I'm handing my first wife over to you now, so you'd better take it easy, kid!"

Now that Li Zhi was qualified to fly solo, Xu Feng wouldn't be going up with him.

Besides, Li Zhi's flying style really was a little wild, and it made him somewhat apprehensive.

"Don't worry, Captain Xu. I'll make sure to take good care of your first wife!"

"Get out of here, kid. Go get ready!"

After spending a few days together, everyone was fairly familiar with one another, so a little joking was normal. But if you joked with a superior, you had to be prepared to get kicked in the backside!

By the time Li Zhi had put on his flight suit and arrived at the hangar, the ground crew had already fitted the fighter with its weapons.

There was a target-practice mission that day, so the fighter was carrying quite a lot of weapons.