Meet U.S. Air Force Capt. Aimee "Rebel" Fiedler, F-16 Viper Demo Pilot! ✈️🛩🇺🇸★🔥

Captain Amy Fiedler, callsign Rebel. I'm the pilot and commander of the F-16 Viper Demonstration Team based out of Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, South Carolina. So when I was a little kid I wanted to be an astronaut. That's originally how I got interested in aviation. I read in a book as a young kid that if you wanted to be an astronaut you should be a military pilot first and that's a good way to get to NASA. So at a young age I had my sights set on flying an airplane someday and so I was able to get some flight training and I soloed when I was 16 years old. So I graduated from South Dakota State University in 2013. I was a flight instructor at South Dakota State. I did that for my junior year, my senior year, and then a year after full-time. Eventually, yes, I did move on to the Naval Academy. It was called the Navy Annapolis Flight Center. We had a lot of students that were back training with their GI Bill, guys who were switching from the Navy into civilian aviation. So something about the F-16, I tell everyone it's my favorite part. It's also the hardest part of the F-16 is we're air-to-air capable and air-to-ground capable. So the amount of knowledge that we are responsible for as pilots, you can't even imagine. If I started listing all of the systems we have to know, all the weapons we have to know, all the tactics we have to know, it's a lot of studying. Most of us spend our like 90 percent of our life in a vault on a computer studying all of our publications because we have to be absolute experts in all of those different areas to include the weapons and even just the jet itself. It's a very complicated system, you know. We have the digital flight control system. We only have one engine. So being an expert on all the different areas, it's the hardest part of the F-16, but it's also my favorite. My first year in the air show world was a little bit like my second year in the air show world because I spent a good portion of the first year as a safety observer on the team. So I was able to do nine air shows, which was amazing because by the time I took over the team as the pilot, I had already made really good friendships and connections in the air show community. Obviously the responsibilities are a lot different when you're the commander of the team. My favorite part, it's going to be my favorite part the entire time I'm in this position, it's high-fiving the next generation. Seeing them light up and get so excited and tell me like, I'm now thinking about a career in the military or a career in aviation, that's the best part. So I think that's going to continue to be my favorite part and you know my favorite part after I'm done with this job is going to be anytime I get to inspire someone or see them kind of light up about aviation. So last year when I was training with them, it was challenging at first. We have such different power capabilities and just look at the wings on the plane. We are such different aircraft so the differences in our power and the way our wings help the jet fly, it was challenging to learn how to fly with them. But now you know I have a little bit of experience under my belt so I'm really looking forward to this week because now it's more about the fun. You get to go fly with your buddies you know and these guys that fly the Heritage aircraft, they're all amazing pilots, they have amazing experience, they've been doing this for such a long time. So getting to fly with them, you know I feel kind of like the kid sister that gets to hang out with the cool big brother but it's just absolutely so much fun.