11 New Day, New Jet Fail with Honor, and Bounce Back from Adversity I didn't flip the switch. It was as simple as that. We all have our unflipped switches in business--things we forget to do, mistakes we make, deals we don't close because of something dumb we did, and straight-up bad decisions we made--but this one was a whopper. The little switch in ques- tion had put my entire flying career in jeopardy, and now I was suddenly down to my final shot at becoming a fighter pilot in the United States Air Force. How could I have been so stupid? I had rehearsed the move a hundred times, but when I lifted that T-37 jet trainer off the ground and raised the gear handle, I left the landing lights down--a key mistake that cost me big-time. If you exceed 135 knots with the landing lights deployed, you can damage them and cost the Air Force a few thousand dollars while the jet sits in the maintenance hangar awaiting repairs--not a good thing in an extremely busy flying squad- ron. My instructor pilot (IP), Capt. Scott Perko, caught the 131