Sudden Malfunction
Perhaps to make it up to Li Zhi, Xu Feng had let him fly his "first wife" ever since.
The three pilots besides Xu Feng, including Li Zhi, began taking turns on patrol. Occasionally, they could form a two-aircraft formation, but that happened very rarely.
A month after Li Zhi arrived at the Chicken Coop, the pressure of patrol duty at the base still hadn't eased. There were enough pilots now, but not enough fighters!
There was no further word on the reequipment, either. Or perhaps there was, but Xu Feng didn't know about it.
"Chicken Coop, Three-Yellow Chicken is ready for takeoff!"
It was Li Zhi's turn to patrol again. Patrols were extremely monotonous, and to conserve fuel, pilots couldn't even perform complex maneuvers.
In his previous life, he had envied pilots and thought they were incredibly cool. Only after becoming a real pilot in this life did he learn that looking cool came at a price. For pilots, there was far more monotony.
And a qualified pilot had to adapt to that monotony!
"Field pressure 1025, southerly wind force three, gusts force four. Cleared for takeoff!"
Rumble!
Almost the instant the tower gave the takeoff order, the fighter's engines roared.
After a short taxi, the fighter climbed into the blue sky.
Having been cooped up long enough, Li Zhi decided to have some fun with the pilots on Peacock's side today.
Perhaps they had come off worse in the last confrontation, or perhaps their masters behind the scenes had spoken, but Peacock's aircraft had been very "cautious" lately.
They never took the initiative to provoke Dragon Country's pilots. Even when Dragon Country's fighters entered their so-called identification zone, they merely watched from a distance, without even issuing a warning.
Of course, what Li Zhi didn't know was that they had crashed another two aircraft near the border that month, and the pilot of one of them had failed to eject.
To satisfy their vanity, they had carried out what they called independent modifications after obtaining the fighters from their masters behind the scenes.
They had replaced many of the fighters' components, which was also the main reason for their heavy non-combat aircraft losses.
In the first half of the year, they had claimed to have completed modifications to the fighters' ejection systems, giving Peacock Country its own ejection technology.
Yet in less than two months, two pilots had failed to eject when their ejection systems malfunctioned, losing their young lives.
On top of that, friction with Dragon Country had left one of their pilots still unable to return to Peacock Country, putting Peacock's military under considerable pressure.
They had been forced to order Peacock's soldiers near the border to keep a low profile and refrain from provoking Dragon Country for the time being.
Although this maintained a false peace, it also deprived Li Zhi and the others of a great deal of fun. Teasing Peacock's pilots was one of their few forms of entertainment!
"Warning, left engine power reduced!"
As Li Zhi flew toward the border, his aircraft's flight control system suddenly sounded an alarm.
Li Zhi reacted quickly, immediately shutting down the left engine and running a self-check to see whether it had caught fire.
"Self-check complete. No abnormalities detected!"
The self-check ended quickly, informing Li Zhi that nothing was wrong.
Could the flight control system have raised a false alarm?
False alarms from fighter flight control systems were relatively common. Li Zhi tried restarting the left engine and reported the situation to the base.
"Bird's Nest, this is Three-Yellow Chicken!"
"Bird's Nest copies. Go ahead!"
Even faced with an unscheduled call, the controller in the tower remained calm.
"My aircraft's left engine just showed an abnormality. No abnormalities were detected after restarting it!"
Every issue with a fighter had to be reported. With such a huge chunk of metal floating in the air, anything that went wrong could become a major problem.
"Three-Yellow Chicken, this mission is canceled. Return to base immediately so we can determine the cause!"
The tower took a while to reply to Li Zhi, probably because the controller had consulted Captain Xu.
"Returning to base immediately. Three-Yellow Chicken copies!"
Li Zhi wasn't surprised by the tower's decision. If something went wrong near the border, the consequences wouldn't be so easy to control.
Li Zhi made a wide turn and began retracing his route.
"Warning, left engine power reduced!"
The flight control system sounded another abnormality warning. This time, Li Zhi also sensed something was wrong: the fighter's power had clearly dropped considerably.
Li Zhi repeated the same procedure as before, restarting the left engine and running a self-check, but once again, no problems were found.
The aircraft's power also returned to normal, as though what had happened before had been Li Zhi's imagination.
"Warning, left engine power reduced!"
Before long, the flight control system's abnormality warning sounded again!
This time, Li Zhi didn't restart the left engine. He wasn't sure whether the malfunction had been caused by restarting it so frequently.
Li Zhi chose to shut down the left engine outright. Although this cost the fighter some power, it wouldn't prevent him from landing normally.
The Eighth Master used engines independently developed by Dragon Country in the previous century. At the time, they still lagged somewhat behind the world's advanced technology.
To make up for their lack of power, the Eighth Master was equipped with two engines.
By the time the Jiaolong 10 came along, engine technology had advanced by leaps and bounds. Despite having only one engine, the Jiaolong 10 still completely outclassed the Eighth Master in power.
Thanks to the Eighth Master's twin-engine configuration, shutting down one engine wouldn't prevent Li Zhi from landing normally.
Sure enough, after he shut down the left engine, the flight control system issued no more abnormality warnings, and the fighter drew closer and closer to the base.
"Left engine fire!"
Just when Li Zhi thought nothing else would go wrong, trouble quietly struck.
For some unknown reason, the left engine, which had already been shut down, inexplicably caught fire.
Clearly, something was wrong with the fuel system, causing it to continue supplying fuel to the shut-down left engine. Otherwise, the left engine couldn't have caught fire without fuel.
Li Zhi didn't panic when the engine caught fire. Instead, he activated the left engine's automatic fire suppression system.
Fighter engines all had an independent cooling system that could quickly reduce engine temperature and extinguish an engine fire.
Hiss!
The cooling system began releasing large amounts of oxygen suppressant into the left engine. The fire was quickly extinguished, but the threat remained.
Because of the unknown malfunction, fuel was still being supplied to the left engine, and it could reignite at any moment.
"Left engine failure!"
One bad development followed another. Previously, Li Zhi had shut down the left engine himself, so the flight control system could still run self-checks on it and detect abnormalities at any time.
Now the flight control system was reporting a left engine failure, meaning it had completely lost control of the engine. It would no longer receive any abnormality information from it.
Li Zhi could only look back from time to time to see whether the left engine had caught fire again.
All Li Zhi could do now was pray that the fire in the left engine hadn't affected the right one!