Steve and I took off in the T-6 this morning, went down to Terre Haute, and met up with Jordan Brown and crew in the air. We flew formation to Peru, IL. Jordan was #1 in a DC-3, JP was #2 in a T-6, I was #3 in a T-6, Jordan’s son was #4 in a Twin Beech, Mark Novak was #5 in a Comanche, and David someone was #6 in a Twin Bonanza. So how cool was all that, you know??
We get here, and set up for rides. I have one right away, and then nothing, for hours. I go back over by the plane, which is far away, and suddenly Kathy says we have one, and from then on I had like 4 more in a row. The two of us ended up doing 11 T-6 rides in just a short time, before the airspace shut down for the night show. I had two non-pilots, one new student pilot, one 350 hour Cub pilot, and one young lady, the photographer Greg’s niece, whose private checkride is in 10 days. We all had a blast. On the last one, I took her upside down, and she was just super thrilled with the whole thing. It was a great day, minus the shifty winds making landing in front of everyone every time a little stressful to me. I didn’t do overhead breaks because I didn’t want the attention before I came in! Lol
Aeroshell performed at dusk, and we watched from our T-6. They fired up like 8 TBMs at once and ran them up hard, so that the sound vibrated in your chest, and the fire spat from the exhaust. A beautiful sight.
After that we went back to the hangar, where there’s food and drink for the performers, and Jon and I sat and talked for awhile. Aeroshell team was in there at a table. I’ve been in the same room with them a few times over the years, not that they’d know it. lol. Then Kim asked if I’d met them and I said no, so she took me over and introduced me to Steve G, the lead of the team. And we all talked for like 40 minutes. And that was cool. I hate to admit it was cool, but it was cool. He was super down to earth and friendly. I met the others too, briefly. I felt a little fan-girl-ish. I don’t really care about most other performers, I can’t even think of one I’d be that excited to meet. Except them. And they were nice. And that’s fun.
And then a T-6 guy came up and invited me to the briefing tomorrow morning at 8:30 so that I could fly with all the T-6s in the show tomorrow, in formation. It’ll be my first airshow where I’m in formation with everyone else, not tail end Charlene or a stinger behind everyone else. And there are a lot of T-6s going up, so that’s going to be a big formation. I’m sort of stoked. Nervous, but stoked.
So I’m back in my hotel room trying to wind down so I can get some sleep. May need extra drugs. Except I didn’t bring extra drugs because being drugged up would be worse than being tired. So I hope I wind down soon. ;). My pulse today was up pretty high several times too. Working hard in the formation, and hoping not to botch up every landing I made in front of a crowd today, which was a lot of them. lol
I hope people got photos, because I didn’t, really. And there is a lot of opportunity for good photos!
This was a fun day.
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