You can climb to 30K with about half your fuel, then glide for a considerable distance. It only takes a few seconds of re-igniting the motor to regain the lost alt, then rinse and repeat. The main problem is, it takes too long to re-ignite the motor. This was an instantanious ignition, but is modeled like turbines with a spool-up period. Also, you can keep the "candle" lit, but just pull the throttle all the way back. It still burns fuel, but much more slowly. I had no problems landing it off line, but that might not be the case if you're trying to set it down at a field under attack. Finally, to prevent people from using it, just kill one fuel tank at their base. This drops the available fuel at that field from 125% to 100%, making drop tanks unavailable. Due to a modeling oddity, the 163 is treated as if it has drop tanks. Disabling drop tanks at their field disables 163 there as well.