Is this even possible?
This guy I know, ex-Canadian air force (or so he claims) says he was an aeroengine technician. He's quite a guy for the stories, I must say. Here's one that sounds like a whopper. He says that when he was stationed in Germany a few years ago, he was testing a fighter jet's engine and when he saw this German guy riding by on a bicycle, wearing his lederhausen, he fired up the afterburners and knocked the German head over heels off his bike. The guy laughed about it. I didn't think Germans wore their folk costumes outside of Oktoberfest, but aside from this first clue that the guy is full of crap, is that even possible that you could knock somebody off a bike by firing the afterburners? It kind of begs the question of how could a civilian be that close to a fighter jet (duh, I thought military bases were secure sites). Not to mention if somebody was that close to "afterburn", whatever that is, wouldn't they have gotten, umm, burned?