Anybody ever given a ride to an Aviator of another service?
We took some Air Force folks up in the Hawkeye a few times. We did a bunch of work with the F-16 CJ folks in the Gulf so they did an exchange thing with us during the down times and we gave them some rides.
Hawkeye folks love to give rides to the people that we are controlling. It makes sense for them to see the capes and lims of the aircraft first hand. Having a fighter guy watch AICs from our perspective opened their eyes quite a bit since they know knew what we were seeing and what we had to go through to get a call out. They were usually more forgiving of our new guys on the radios after that.
The F-14, F-18 pilots had a real problem with landing on the boat in the back of the bus. They were nervous as hell every time. I think it was a mix of them not having the controls, not being able to see anything, and the fact that they have no way out if things go wrong.
As far as Enlisted "Good Deal" rides, I never had a Skipper that would let them fly off of the boat. It kind of sucked for them. The only reenlistment rides we ever gave was usually during FCLP's, so they would get to bouce a few times and that would be it. I never agreed with that. I always thought we should at least let them ride along on one of our OPTAR flights and do the VFR tour of San Francisco or the Grand Canyon or something and let them take the wheel for a little while.
But, alas, I was not in charge.