Yeah, being the narrator is cool.  You get the ears of everyone at the show for 15 minutes each day.  And, if you really rock that mic, you occasionally get asked to pick up another performer and narrate for him or her, too.

It’s also cool to get up and fly the demo liaison and media flights, whether solo or in a formation.  Watching the guy in the next aircraft over work out the camera angles and try to get the right light.  Or watching the face of the guy in your own aircraft when you hand over the controls on a single-ship ride and and let him or her fly over his home town.

The team looks really good up there.  It’s not hard to be impatient about getting to the FAST card checkride.  But then something happens that makes it kind of worthwhile.  You walk across the ramp and see a guy enthusiastically taking pictures of the cockpit of one of your team’s birds.  All of that stuff on the panel is cool as hell and he’s taking shot after shot of it.

And, yeah, that’s the bird that you flew here and the bird that you’re going to fly back.