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Inside Airshows – Part 3: Tuskegee 3 – Audio Episode Show Notes

November 23, 2013 by 2 Comments

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These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedTuskegee3WithPreRoll3.mp3.  Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!

If you want to understand a subculture or an experience, a great way to do that is to take an outsider and plunge him into the place you want to know about, wait awhile, then drag him back to the surface and wring him out to see how it changed him.  It’s even better if you can get the guy to wring himself out.  You begin to realize that not everybody who writes about the majesty of flight does it because he’s a fighter pilot.  Some of us write because we’re not fighter pilots.

You also need to talk about the world in its own terms, using the lexicon of the world, sometimes without explaining the vocabulary to the uninitiated, except maybe through context.  If you’re a pilot, you’ll understand most of this.  If you’re not a pilot, that’s okay, because you’ll feel a little of the strangeness of this world and you’ll put it together in context and in realtime.  Just like I did.  In some ways, you’re in for a better ride than the pilots.

There are three things you need to know about me.

First, I’m a pretty average Joe.  I’m 46.  By any reasonable estimation, my life is more than half over.  I live in the suburbs.  I have a wife and two kids.  I run the rat race every day about as well as the next guy.  You wouldn’t recognize me if you ran into me in the grocery store.

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Second, I always wanted to be an astronaut.

Third, I realized a few years ago that it was entirely up to me where between that baseline and that dream I would live each day of the rest of my life.

*****

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Listen to this.

[ICAS hall noise.]

This is the sound of a magical zone in spacetime.  It’s a room with about 60,000 square feet of floor space.  It’s at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.  I don’t know what happens in that room for the other 361 days each year.  I’m not even sure that this room  exists for the other 361 days of the year.  But, for four days each December, it’s filled wall to wall with just about every airshow performer who’s active anywhere in the us and Canada.  This is the exhibit hall at the International Council of Air Shows annual convention.

Standing at the back of the hall facing the doors way across the room, the Thunderbirds and the other Air Force TAC DEMO and static display pilots and leadership are off to the left against the far wall.  The Blue Angels and the rest of the Navy and Marine Corps contingent are on the opposite wall.  The Snowbirds are in the middle on this side.  Sean Tucker, Mike Goulian, Skip Stewart, Patty Wagstaff, Bill Stein, Rob Holland, Billy Werth, Greg Koontz, Kent Pietsch, Andy Anderson, Bob Carlton, Gene Soucy, Scooter Yoak, Team Aerodynamix, John Klatt . . . every one of them is in this room right now.  Hanging out.  Booking next year’s appearances. Swapping stories.  Doing whatever superheroes do when they get together each year between seasons. [Read more...]

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Making Good on a Deal

July 4, 2011 by 1 Comment


This is a regular blog post. Looking for show notes or links to show audio or video? Keep scolling or check ou the archives in the sidebar. It’s all here!

On Sunday, I went to the Battle Creek Field of Flight Airshow and Balloon Festival in the more traditional sense. I spent Friday and Saturday at Hangar 1 on the field, embedded with The Hoppers, a civilian L-39 jet team, setting up cameras, offloading video, and riding on a couple of hops in the back seat. Sunday was about hanging out with the crowd and touching base with that element of the airshow experience.


I got to see Kent Pietsch fly his Interstate Cadet from the other end of the show line. It’s closer to the staging areas for the show aircraft and it’s a different view. Kent has long captured my imagination in much the same way that Greg Koontz or John Mohr have. In the “It’s not how fast, it’s how slow” vein of classic barnstorming. Hammerheads peaking at 200 AGL. Doing a steep turn at treetop level around the TACAN station. Picking up Tom Green from the top of a camper. Really wonderful control with light wing loading and low horsepower.


Then the F-15E Strike Eagle Demo. Cash and BUDA wringing out the jet in one of the best-orchestrated and executed single ship demos I think I’ve ever seen. This was the second show at which I’ve seen them fly and second, third, and fourth time I’ve seen the 2011 demo. It just gets better every time.

About the time the Eagle landed, my iPhone buzzed. It was a text message from Don Weaver saying that Don had the Berz Flight Training Pitts at Pontiac. Don and some others were practicing for next weekend’s IAC Michigan Aerobatic Open and, if I could get there, there was a slot for me to fly.

I had enough content from the Battle Creek show. And I had even handed off in-cockpit video of the Hopper flights to the local TV station. Mission, for all practical purposes, accomplished.

I packed up, headed through the trampled grass, said goodbye to the Battle Creek media chair, and pulled out of the parking area.

The world has more than its share of aviation enthusiasts. I know. I’m one of them. And I’m as competent an enthusiast as you’ll ever meet. Climbing in, on, and around jets with hot seats. Setting cameras, knowing the angles. Troubleshooting technical issues. Being a very-low-maintenance rider who needs only the safety brief and is never a distraction in the back seat. Being a guy who has a better than average chance of being able to land the jet if the front-seater ever took a nap.

But, at the end of the day, I’m something of a poser. I post gorgeous shots of myself looking stern and competent in the back of the jet. I look good. But the fact of the matter is that my hands are in my lap or holding one or more cameras. I purposely crop the shots so almost every shot leaves the shot ambiguous as to whether I might be flying the jet.

I don’t have a problem with that. And I’ll keep doing it. No shame there. But, driving home in the car all alone with myself, it’s hard not to think about the disconnect between the guy in the pictures and who I actually am and what I actually do. It’s not guilt, exactly. But there’s a sense that I spend this time basking in the glow of others and then hope that some of that residual glow makes it into the podcast or the blog.

But this year is a little different. This is the year that I put my skills where my mouth is. On Thursday, I go to Jackson (KJXN). I’m not going to be there looking for a ride with another pilot. I’m going to Jackson to fly.

The IAC Michigan Aerobatic Open is slated for Saturday and Sunday. And there will be practice times on Thursday and Friday. One of the entrants is flying the Primary sequence in a Pitts S-2B. That guy is me.

The Primary is not complicated. You can fly it in a minute or so. 45-degree upline to level, one-turn spin, half-Cuban, loop, 180-degree aerobatic turn, and slow roll. It is by no means anything that would impress even the average airshow crowd. But I will fly it. In a box. With people watching. Some of whom will be judges.


Don and I launched in the Pitts at about 7:30. The sun was low in the sky. We turned west toward Ray Community Airport, where we’d be dropping off the aircraft after the flight. About two thirds of the way there, I cleared the area, then flew the sequence. Good spin! Stopped right where it was supposed to. Even better Cuban. The loop needed work. The aerobatic turn was pure joy, performed (as I like them) with more G than is strictly necessary. The slow roll was a train wreck (as usual). I went over the maneuvers that needed work until I was reasonably satisfied with that session. Then we proceeded to Ray and got some dinner with Rod Rakic before flying back to Pontiac in Don’s Archer.

I’ll probably have at least two more practice sessions before I fly for the judges. I’ll be ready. For now, it was a good flight and a great evening. And a step along a path that I’m only just beginning to tread.

I’m flying in the competition for a number of reasons. I’m flying for the challenge against objective measures that has drawn me to ratings and endorsements. I’m flying because it’s a perfect next step in my evolution as a pilot.

But no reason is as important as this: I’m flying because it’s no longer acceptable to be a poser. Because it is no longer enough to show up for a military media/fam flight with the manual memorized. Because it’s no longer enough to know the vocabulary and pass in conversation as one of the bros.

Because it is time to take the controls with my hands and feet and do this above a field surrounded by upturned faces.

This weekend, I go find out.

It’s just the IAC primary. No one that I admire in the airshow community will be especially impressed that I flew the Primary, even if I fly it well.

But the guy who drives back from airshows all alone in the car will want to know about it. He’ll care. And he’ll look me in the eye and know that I took up this challenge, even when I could have avoided it for any of hundreds of reasons.

That’s because I made a deal with him. If I firewall the throttle, rotate, climb, fly my ass off, and leave everything I have up there in the box, he’ll no longer have reason to think that it’s all a veneer. He’ll know that I reached up into the wind for the real thing and either caught it or tried as well as I’m capable.

There are worse deals one could make.

I’m not Kent Pietsch. I’m not Greg Koontz. I’m not Dawg, Puck, Mildred, Skids, GH, Cash, BUDA, Bloke, Slick, or Snort.

But on Sunday, I expect to be, if only in the most basic sense, a competition aerobatic pilot. And no longer a poser.

See you this weekend. I have a deal to make good on.

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Indy 2010: Arrival

June 11, 2010 by Leave a Comment


This is a regular blog post. Looking for show notes and links to episode audio? Check out the other posts. It’s all here!

A meandering trip this morning and early afternoon through Dayton and then over to the Mount Comfort Airport. A stop at the Waffle House, 25 minutes hung up in a gawker jam, lots of podcast listening, and then the parking lot at Indy Aero.

It’s that time of year again! Time for the Indianapolis Airshow! I attended the event for the first time last year and I’m enthusiastically back.

Thursday before a show is one of my favorite times. The ramp is relatively bare. But the energy is building. A fleet of golf carts awaits volunteers and staff. The rows of vendor tents are going up. Indy Aero, the FBO, is starting to buzz with activity (red shirts everywhere!). People like Billy Werth who were new friends last year greet you with familiarity that far exceeds the time that life has thus far let you spend together.


It’s a special time when a performer aircraft are arriving every half hour or so and golf carts and tug whiz around like crazed gophers. But, at the same time, right next to Kent Pietsch’s Jelly-Belly-liveried 1942 Interstate Cadet and Billy Werth’s Pitts S-2C, 30-hour student pilot Jon Ebbeler is preflighting his aircraft for a few trips around the pattern.


I strolled through the hangar and got some drool on Mike Goulian’s Extra 330, one of the Horsemen’s P-51 Mustangs, and the Red Eagle II.


Then I strolled the ramp with Liza Eckardt from Fence Check. Although mostly unpopulated, parts of the ramp were beginning to take shape. The A-10 Thunderbolt IIs of the U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command East Coast A-10 Demo Team had arrived and the maintainers were getting the birds show-ready. Although he was busy, I got Maj Johnnie “Dusty” Green to talk energy management and aerobatics on camera in front of the aircraft as a possible sequence for the Acro Camp movie. The A-10 has no afterburners, so energy management is very important to both combat maneuvers and the airshow demo profile. With no blowers to fall back on, the energy you have is basically the energy you have and you have to manage that while supporting the ground operations and potentially being shot at.


By the time we got the rest of the way around the ramp, all three of the Horsemen aircraft were on the ramp and preparing for a flight to warm up and work out some elements of their demo. The ASB.tv package at the show is pretty impressive. The Horsemen, Mike Goulian, and announcer Rob Reider form a pretty impressive core of airshow entertainment.

I got the chance to sit down with managing partner Kurt Kratchman at the ICAS convention in December and talk about everything from the airshow operations to other properties like Mike da Mustang to the online presence (which, by the way, includes the innovative BlackBox presentation engine).

And, of special interest to me and other aviator-musicians, composer James Horner has scored and directed the music for the Horsemen’s demo. You’ve heard Horner’s stuff. To name just a few of the 100-odd scores he’s worked on: Braveheart, Apollo 13, Glory, A Beautiful Mind, The Perfect Storm, and Avatar. (And Apollo 13. And Apollo 13!) You get the picture. Horner is tight with the Horseman and gets to ride along with some frequency. There’s a short film at ASB.tv called Write Your Soul that goes into the backstory.

Kurt, Ed Shipley, and others from ASB sure seem to have a broad and deep set of properties in the airshow and lifestyle vertical. And I think what they’re doing has the seeds of revolution for some areas of new media. I’m perhaps pretty decent at thinking deeply about the present infrastructure and shape of new media. I think I play well with that. But I look at ASB and see a gathering critical mass of . . . something. I don’t know what and I’d be foolish to speculate. But there’s a lot of talent and resources in very close proximity. I’m watching ASB.tv pretty closely and can’t wait to see what happens.

Anyway, the time hack for this post will likely be in the ridiculous hours of the morning, so I’m going to go ahead and post this. Media credentialing is at 0800 local and I intend to be there. Bleary-eyed, but there!

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ICAS Convention – Day 2 – Part 2

December 8, 2009 by Leave a Comment


Day 2 of ICAS successfully completed!

This is the first day upon which the exhibit hall was open and I spent most of the day making my way around the hall with Rico Sharqawi of Wilco Films. It can get to the point where it takes an hour to go 50 feet. In a good way. It’s running into people you know and people you’re meeting for the first time. And really connecting about their particular take on aviation and how to convey the excitement to audiences.

Rico and I are planning to do another debrief tomorrow morning. We’re finding that it’s a great idea to just empty our pockets of business cards from the day before and go over the people we met and talk about some of the synergies that we have with these folks. Or just the amazing stuff that they do. Looking forward to that.

Aaron Tippin gave a performance after the exhibit hall closed down for the day. Good performance with footage of him flying his Stearman on the big screen. Even though it was in the big ballroom, that makes for a cozy venue here at ICAS. Probably 200 people gathered around the stage in front with others hanging ou tat the tables in back.


I guess that’s just another thing about ICAS. I wandered right up to the stage several times after changing cameras and never had a problem getting there. Nobody throwing elbows. Nobody being a jerk. Everyone giving room to the guy shooting video for the big screens. Jut a great crowd.


The sessions kept going today when the exhibit hall was closed. I pretty much hung out in the halls to soak in more of the vibe of the event and to meet additional people. I’m actually in danger of running out of business cards if you can believe that.

I find that, in talking to people, they want to know about the show and about what I do as much as I want to know about them. ICAS seems to level out the interactions. Outside of ICAS, it’s the hero-fanboy relationship at the airshow fence. Here, I get the feeling that if you’ve come to the effort to come to ICAS, you must be serious. No posers here. Or at least not many. And you can stand around and have a beer with Greg Koontz or Gene Soucy or Theresa Stokes or the Misty Blues (all-woman skydiving team), or Scott Lane and the list goes on.

Jay, one of the pilots from Speed and Angels bought be a Leinie’s. Just out of the blue. It’s that kind of community. If you’re there, you’re serious about aviation and airshows. It’s just assumed.

I’m still finding that I have to explain what a podcast is, but people are interested and actually want to know. It’s really had the effect of refining my elevator pitch, if nothing else. I need to get across what I do and the audience for whom I do it. All in about 60 seconds in a crowded and exceedingly noisy room. It’s a challenge, but I think the message gets across. And it’ll ultimately benefit the whole new media community if we get the word out about the depth of the coverage that we can do.

I neglected yesterday to go over the presentation that came immediately after the new media panel. Announcer extraordinaire Rob Reider moderated and Roger Bishop served on the panel. They covered how to leverage video for the airshow experience, both for big screens on site and for distribution to remote audiences. These guys can wire and aircraft for video and sound in about an hour and set up the ground stations and production trucks to assemble the programking in a really immediate way.

It might seem simple, right? Sure, if the aircraft is only going to fly straight and level. But straight and level isn’t very exciting. If the aircraft is going to yank and bank, you need to have antennas with a line of sight to the ground systems at all times and that means antennas that aren’t blocked by the airframe itself. Suddenly, you’re talking whole new levels of complexity.

I saw the video production for the on-site presentation at the Indy Airshow this summer and it was great. You really have to involve the performers, the announcer, and everyone else to bring it off. It adds a whole new level of complexity because everyone’s now thinking about not just the pure acro visible along the crowd line, but the added elements of the video. Now the audience gets to see inside the cockpit and outside from the perspective of the performer and the aircraft. And you have to think about how to make that compelling – not just to an aviation fanboy like me, but to the average airshow attendee.


The mixing and getting to know people continued after the Aaron Tippin show. Mainly down at the bar near the elevators in the lobby, but in other places as well.

The above shot is not intended to be great art. It’s not. It’s just to give you an idea of how crowded and great things get.

I spent an hour or so up in the Air Show Aces hospitality suite. The Air Show Aces are Kent Pietsch, Gene Soucy, and Warren Pietsch with announcer Danny Clisham and wingwalker Theresa Stokes. These folks can put on a almost two hours’ worth of airshow all by themselves by combining their skills and resources to form 12 discreet acts. Unreal. You guys know how much I love Gene’s Show Cat and the noises it makes. And the rest of the acts are great, too.

The picture above gives you a good indication of what it’s like. Wall-to-wall people, most of them pilots to one extent or another, and everyone talking or shouting across the room. I saw that John Mohr had brought up two guitars (my kind of scene!) but the party was too thick to really break them out and I didn’t have enough energy left to wait until things dissipated. So I retreated to the room to edit some audio and get stuff ready for recording the show tomorrow.

Hard to believe that I have to leave at noon tomorrow to head home. Wednesday is going to be ugly. I’ll review a few deals tomorrow on the plane and try to be ready to return to normalcy, but it’s not going to be easy.

More soon from ICAS 2009!
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