Higher Ground: This Veteran Fighter Pilot in Command is a Take-Charge Type, Whether in the Air at 50,000 Feet or Garnering Support and Attracting Reservists on the Ground

By Theresa Bradley, The Miami Herald

May 28–Air Reserve Col. Randy Falcon strode the rain-slicked runway, helmet in hand, toward an F-16 fighter jet.

He leaned his flight log on a fuel tank and circled the plane, patting its shark-shaped fuselage, checking engines, inspecting test bombs and wings.

Falcon, 53, has done this pre-flight dance a thousand times in 32 years as a fighter pilot with the U.S. Air Force and Reserve, clocking nearly 4,000 hours in the skies above Alabama, Alaska, Bosnia, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and other places.

Now commander of the Homestead Air Reserve Base and its 482nd Fighter Wing, he still flies a required 60 sorties a year, drilling in air-to-air maneuvers or engine-less landings. Like all reserve pilots, he must always be ready to deploy.

“The more I fly, the better I feel,” he said. “To be able to kick that afterburner and to shoot up to 50,000 feet . . . It’s an opportunity for me to purge my brain.”

Falcon took the helm in Homestead in September 2004 after 22 years with New Orleans’s 926th Fighter Wing — an unusually long stint in one place.

Here he commands not just a wing, but the base, which was spared in a recent round of military cutbacks and whose air reservists regularly deploy to the war in Iraq.

The Homestead base, which teetered near extinction after Hurricane Andrew tore through in 1992, survived last year’s base closings, thanks to its good flying weather and an abundance of oversea airspace and vacant land surrounding its 1,000-acre site, staff said.

Key, too, was community support. Falcon courts local backers by speaking at business breakfasts and hosting politicians on tours and “orientation rides” in fighter planes.

In turn, neighbors lobby for the base, which pumps $92 million into the local economy, a Miami-Dade Defense Alliance report shows.

Assured of a home — and due nine new F-16s, which will require at least 70 extra service technicians — Falcon and his staff now face a new challenge: drawing pilots, maintenance and civilian support crews to South Miami-Dade.

They prefer to entice experienced reservists rather than train new recruits for the high-skilled jobs. A handful of posts have been open for more than two years.

As a result, Falcon and staff are forced to become head hunters: plotting competitive pay packages, tallying take-offs and giving prospects tours of the city as well as the base.

“The bottom line is, we’re trying to market this place just like any corporate community would market themselves,” Falcon told his staff during a meeting Wednesday.

Having first decided as a boy in Baton Rouge that he was meant to fly, Falcon needed little incentive to enlist.

A recurring childhood dream — of leaping from tree tops and swimming through the air — took flight when he rode for the first time in a tiny Cessna 172 with a high school aviation class.

“What I learned from that was that I didn’t like someone else being in control,” he said. ‘It was like a ‘Get out of the way, it’s my turn to fly,’ kind of thing.”

As an ROTC pilot candidate at Louisiana State University, Falcon earned a business and accounting degree and married Paula Rebelle, who had grown up two miles down the road. They have one son, now 28.

While serving six years active duty, Falcon trained to fly A-10s and F-16 Falcons. The plane matched his name and became his call sign.

In 1982, he joined the Air Force Reserve in New Orleans full time, flying scores of missions in the Persian Gulf War, Bosnia and Iraq.

‘Desert Storm was really the first time that many pilots had to make a decision: ‘Really, am I going to drop a bomb?’ ” he recalled. “Some people got overly aggressive” and some froze, he said.

Falcon has always flown single-seat fighters like the F-16, and prefers to fly alone.

“I don’t want anything to do with someone in the back seat,” he said.

But as commander of the 2,400-person Homestead base, he seems receptive, if firm.

Leaning forward at the staff meeting Wednesday in his green flight suit, he listened to 13 progress reports, asking questions about each one.

“We’re a reserve unit, but we cover all the infrastructure that’s normally conducted by an active-duty base, so he’s got his hands full,” said Vice Cmdr. Rob Polumbo. He “is very energetic and enthusiastic, positive all the time.”

Falcon credits his staff and the air time for his success.

That’s why, as the sun glistened on rain-drenched runways Thursday, he hopped a ladder up into the F-16 cockpit.

The canopy closed and engines flared as he and his wingman taxied out and took off in a rumble, hooking east over palm groves and Biscayne Bay. Then Falcon was gone.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Miami Herald

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