A professional pilot reveals the most terrifying moment of his entire career

You might have heard about a little competition JOE is running at the moment.

We're asking you to send us either video or photo evidence of you pranking or winding up your dad in the most creative way possible, and you could bag the pair of you a VIP experience at the Red Bull Air Race at Ascot on August 13th-14th. The best-pranked dad will even get to take to the skies in the company of one of Red Bull Air Race's top pilots, with his (probably very funny) reaction filmed from inside the cockpit. You go viral, he'll go flying. Everyone's a winner. Ahead of the big one at Ascot, we caught up with Nigel Lamb, one of the most accomplished pilots in the history of the Red Bull Air Race - he won the title in 2014 - and the current Master Pilot representative of UK. Lamb has chalked up a (literally) dizzying 1770 displays in over 30 countries. We got the lowdown on the one, single, most terrifying moment...

JOE: What's the scariest experience you've had in your flying career?

Nigel: I’m a student in the Rhodesian Air Force and I'm in a Vampire jet: single-seater, no ejection seat, low-level, training battle formation. My instructor was with another student colleague of mine in another aeroplane; we were flying together. I have an engine fire warning light. I'm low-level in Africa, in the middle of nowhere. I followed the procedure, which is basically to bail out because there is no ejection seat. Except nobody knows how to bail out. The Vampire is a twin-boom aircraft, so the tail is not one tail. It has two booms going backwards, meaning anyone bailing out of one of those things is probably going to hit the tail plate. There are all sorts of horror stories. You have a plan and you have to just try and execute it. In my plan I hadn’t thought about being very low-level, so essentially I didn't have the speed or performance to do what I had thought was going to be the best way to get out. Anyway, I had to do a false landing. I actually landed in a very small field in the middle of nowhere. You shut the engine down in case the whole thing is going to blow up and then you glide down and you land, and I was just extremely lucky to go through some small trees before touching down. I slipped to a halt in this field and survived. I started off totally terrified. It’s all over in a few minutes but in the last few minutes I absolutely knew I was going to die. There was just no doubt that I was going to die. I hadn’t given up because I was still flying the machine, I was trying to survive, but I was absolutely convinced I was going to die.

So, after reading that, you think it'd be even funnier to send your dad up in a plane, right?

All you need to do is send us a video, or a Whatsapp/text message screenshot, or a photo of you pranking or winding up your dad. Either send us an email at RedBullAirRace@JOE.co.uk, or message us on Facebook. To grab your tickets to the Red Bull Air Race at Ascot, hop over to the Air Race site.