Take every flight simulator, roller coaster and bungee jump in the world. Sprinkle in a few Evel Knievel jumps, a Hitchcock movie, and maybe even a swim with ravenous sharks.

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Since taking his last flight (above) as a Marine Corps aviator, Stout has taken a defense industry job and become an accomplished author.

And you still won't be within a cluster bomb of matching the 99.9 percent pure adrenaline rush Jay Stout, BS '81, felt every time he strapped into an F/A-18 fighter jet.

And that's just during peacetime. In combat, emotions are magnified a hundred times.

It's almost like a preflight check. Stout's forehead beads like a beer glass. His hands get clammy and his stomach churns like he's swallowed an Evinrude. His heart pounds so hard and so fast, he looks down, half expecting to see it thump, thump, thumping right through the flight suit. The metallic taste in his mouth, he knows, is excess stomach acid. But it sure tastes like fear to him.

Thirty-seven times during his Marine Corps career, Lt. Col. (ret.) Stout slammed the throttles forward and launched himself into a place where few have ever gone — on a combat mission at the controls of one of the world's finest fighters. Stout flew as part of Operation Desert Storm. And before each sortie, as he sat poised on the runway to ride the rocket, a $20 million computer with wheels and wings capable of pushing a pilot seven times the force of gravity, his last thought before takeoff usually was: "Dear Lord, please don't let me screw up in front of all my buddies."

Like most kids growing up in Danville, Ind., Stout was intrigued by the powers and the freedom afforded by flight, especially after his father took him for a flight in a single-engine Cessna when Jay was only 4.

"Everything looked so neat, orderly and tidy way down below us," Stout recalls.

So when he graduated from Purdue with a degree in agronomy, instead of looking to the ground for a career, he turned to the sky. Stout became a Marine aviator with a unique skill.

"When we were going through basic training, crawling around in the dirt, I could tell everybody else what kind of soil we were in," Stout jokes.

It was all part of the training for that first combat flight, a flight many train for, but few ever experience.

"I had been a Marine Corps pilot for 10 years, going through every scenario possible," Stout says. "But on my first combat mission, I was terrified."

That first mission was at night with a radio blackout. Some 50 planes were part of the attack formation. And if he had any trouble finding the target, at least there was plenty of enemy fire to light up the night sky.

"Fortunately, your hands just kind of take over. Even though you are scared, somehow your hands know what they have been trained to do. Eventually, it turns into a great adventure safari. You find your target and drop your bombs, like you are supposed to do. It's almost like a hunting trip," Stout says.

Staying in the Marines and flying forever, that was the size and shape of Stout's dream. But that's not possible. Faced with taking a promotion that would have included a Pentagon desk job, Stout retired from the corps after 20 years so he could stay in the skies as a pilot for Delta Airlines.

"Working for the airlines seemed like a pretty good gig," Stout thought. But then, after flying in combat, the degree of difficulty on just about anything else pales by comparison.

"I figured I could fly 15 days a month and get rich on easy street."

Stout was a 727 flight engineer for six months. Then 9/11 changed everything. Stout and other recent hires were let go.

He went to Kuwait as a pilot and flight instructor for the Kuwaiti air force. A year was all he could take. Sure, the money was good and the flying was great.

"But if you aren't used to it, Kuwait can be hot, miserable and generally unpleasant," he says. Stout also suffered from heartache and longing for his wife, Monica, and two children, Kristen and Katherine, who had stayed behind in San Diego.

Stout returned to the States and took a job as an analyst for Northrop Grumman, a defense contractor with $30 billion in revenue. Ironically, for a pilot, Stout works with Northrop Grumman's unmanned air vehicles.

"Sometimes I feel like a traitor," he jokes.

The Stouts live just five miles from the Marine Corps Air Station at Miramar, where, any time of the day or night, a jet junkie can look skyward and see a pretty good show.

But not Stout.

"I try to avoid it as much as possible," Stout admits. "It just brings out too many emotions." And as a fighter pilot, Stout was taught to keep his emotions and his lunch on the inside.

"I feel like a lot of star quarterbacks after they retire. They would love to get back out there in the game, but they know it isn't going to happen."

With the exception of commercial flights, Stout no longer flies. No Cessnas, hang gliders, kites … nothing.

"Flying in the Marine Corps was like being given the keys to a Maserati. To fly anything else would be like going from a Maserati to parking cars at the rental lot."

But even though he no longer flies, at least he can write about it. Stout recently released his fifth book, Hammer from Above: Marine Air Combat Over Iraq."

"In 1991, nobody had really written a first-person account of combat flying," he says. "I thought I could do it as well as anyone else."

He wrote his first book, Hornets Over Kuwait, in about four months. It took another six years for the book to be published.

"I did just about everything the wrong way with that book. I wrote it and printed 12 copies and shipped them out to different publishers," Stout recalls.

"I got every kind of response, from 'You suck,' to 'That's really interesting, but we don't do those kinds of books.'" He finally got a publisher, and the books have been flowing ever since.

"Writing is more than just a hobby," Stout says, "although it doesn't quite provide enough money to allow us to live the way we would like. I'd like to be the next Stephen Ambrose, but then again, a lot of people would."

He's also got a couple of books in the works, one on the massacre at Goliad during the Texas War of Independence and another, a follow-up to his latest book, detailing the Iraq insurgence.

His expertise in military aviation has landed Stout an occasional spot on Fox News, reaching millions of viewers with his comments.

And in those long, nervous seconds before the little red light on the camera flicks on, Stout says he feels a little like he is back in his fighter. "And I say to myself, 'Dear Lord, don't let me screw this up in front of all these people.'"

Contact Stout at jayastout@usa.net