I have a couple hours of front seat stick time in one of those Huey Cobras. I was in an aeroscout platoon in Ft. Hood and one of the Cobra pilots needed to make a maintenance flight one Saturday morning and needed someone to sit in the front seat. I almost broke my arm volunteering. He knew I had a lot of stick time in the scout birds, so as soon as we cleared the airfield he turned it over to me. Those things had ventilated seats long before MB or BMW. He set the radio on a good rock station and let me fly where I wanted. The only time he took the controls back was once out by a lake when he saw a deer, at which point he took the controls and nosed us over hard to make a low level strafing run at the poor deer. No guns, of course, but the deer was still not amused. And then he took over as we approached the airfield for landing. Very. Cool. Day.
