Early on the morning of 10th April 2008 they picked me up from my hotel in the centre of Nizhniy Novgorod, formerly the closed city of Gorky, 400km east from Moscow, Russia and drove me to the aircraft building plant Sokol.   I was met by a team of professionals who told me that 500 people had been at work preparing for the day’s activities. They gave me a briefing, checked my blood pressure, which was a little high, and after signing the paper work I was suited-up.  We were escorted to the airfield where I was to take my first flight in a MiG-29UB jet fighter.

The following pages explore this “once in a lifetime” experience...