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Frame Grabs from the JATO Ride in the Blue Angels’ C-130, Fat Albert

June 6, 2009 by Leave a Comment

This is a regular blog post. If you’re looking for show notes or links to show audio (and there’s lots of that here!), please check the other posts.

The highlight of the day was a jet-assisted takeoff (JATO) ride on the Blue Angels’ C-130, known as Fat Albert.


I shot video of the flight, as well as the briefing before and some of the interior of the aircraft.

The in-flight video is a little blurry. I clamped the camera to the rail just above my seat and pointed it at the guys on the other side of the aircraft. I wish I had thought to clamp it over on the other side to get footage of myself, but I didn’t think about it until everyone was buckled in. Notwithstanding that, the folks on the other side were just fine as subjects.
The rail vibrated pretty badly throughout (and thus did the camera vibrate), so much of the video isn’t usable. But the zero-gee parts came out fine. This frame grab is from the top of the initial JATO climb, at which the pilot pushes the aircraft nose over and floats the occupants.


At the conclusion of the flight, they bring Fat Albert to a pretty abrupt stop and open the rear cargo door simultaneously. Everybody gets tossed forward, but not as hard as you’d expect. And, when you look out the back door, you see just how little runway they used to get her down and stopped. We’re talking a couple of thousand feet here.

The entire experience lasts only 12 minutes. It seems much longer. Among the new sensations on this flight are aerobatics with only limited outside references. There’s an approx. 18” window on the opposite side of the aircraft and you can sometimes see outside references (and sometimes not). When you can see the ground, it’s very close and it’s moving at around 350 knots.

I have audio, video, and stills that I’ll be turning into a full episode soon. Just wanted to get some of this material up so that you could see it right away.

Many thanks to the Indianapolis Air Show and to Fat Albert Airlines for this spectacular ride!

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Air-to-Air with Billy Werth of Grayout Aerosports at the Indy Airshow

June 6, 2009 by Leave a Comment


This is a regular blog post. If you’re looking for show notes or links to show audio (and there’s lots of that here!), please check the other posts.

Matt Kryger of The Indianapolis Star was kind enough to send me some pictures from yesterday’s photo flight with Billy Werth of Grayout Aerosports. I’m the guy in front operating a couple of cameras and an MP3 recorder.

Like I said before, this was a great flight so several reasons, the most compelling of which was that this was my first time being in formation. Both the photo ship pilot and Billy did a great job of making sure that everything happened to put the Pitts in the best possible position for the shoot. That involves, among many other things, flying the right attitude, putting the sun in the right position, keeping the photo ship’s shadow off of the beauty airplane, and other considerations.

If Billy was challenged by any of that, he sure didn’t show it. A great couple of pilots on this flight and I really enjoyed getting to see it happen.


This shot graced the front page of the Star today. You can’t recognize either Billy or me in the picture, but Billy was credited in the text, so he received due notoriety for the shoot.

Stay tuned for more from the Indianapolis Air Show. And follow the show on Twitter as @IndyAirShow.

I’m here all day tomorrow covering the show before beating a hasty retreat back to Michigan to see what has piled up on my desk. It’ll be Sunday, so I’ll be in the red Airspeed shirt wandering the ramp with MP3 recorder and camera in hand and deranged fanboy look in my eye!

[Update 8 June 2009] Also, check out video from the flight at the Indy Transponder at http://indytransponder.blogspot.com/2009/06/indianapolis-air-show-coverage-6-jun-09.html

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Frame Grabs from Photo Mission with Billy Werth

June 6, 2009 by Leave a Comment


This is a regular blog post. Looking for show notes or links to show audio? Please check out the other posts.

I got up on a photo mission with Billy Werth of Grayout Aerosports yesterday. I was front seat in Billy’s Pitts S-2C as The Indianapolis Star ’s Matt Kryger shot stills and video from the open door of a Charokee in the formation.


Really cool flight. It’s my first experience in a formation. We got close. I mean really close. But that’s what you can do with two really competent pilots. Billy and the photo platform pilot have clearly done this before and they know what angles and attitudes work best. We started out with some straight and level (despite the fronmt-seat placard in Billy’s aircraft that warns (“Intentional Straight and Level Flight Prohibited”) and then did a little inverted flight.

Billy warned me that the fuel filler cap sometimes leaked a little during sustained inverted flight and, true enough, I got a little 100LL on the inside of the windscreen. Good thing I’ve been doing the acro conditioning! I think that the acro around the photo ship along with a snoot of 100LL would have done the average media guy in.

And, when you’re in the beauty aircraft, your tolerance is kind of a limiting factor of the photo mission. You sure don’t want to hurl or have to end the flight because the photo team and the beauty pilot (and the public relations folks) are all counting on being able to do the entire flight and get all of the photos. I’m happy to say that I did it with no problem.


Matt Kryger, a staff photographer for the Indianapolis Star shot the photos and the video from the photo ship and I grabbed a few shots of him as well.

Great flight! Thanks to Billy Werth and everyone at Grayout Aerosports for the opportunity! Audio and video of this flight to come!

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