Brian Whatcott wrote:

On 23 Oct 2005 20:20:50 -0700, wrote:

You're right, John. Back in '74, when Jimmy was just beginning his
career, I scratched from the last of 2 performances he was due to
perform at the first Dayton International Air Show.

During his first performance, he included several ground-up maneuvers
in his act even though he wasn't certified for ground-up maneuvers.
When I told him he was scratched, he got real ****ed off at me and left
the show. Knew then the guy wasn't going to be around long.


Long ago, I saw a sailplane doing a routine at an English airshow.

In a loop, he came within 6 ft of the ground. I was astonished.
I expect the pilot was too, that he survived to fly again another day.

Brian Whatcott

And in like vein, did you see the ThunderBird pilot ejecting from
his, I think F-16 after he had almost finished a 'split S' (?).
The writeup said that he had practiced these maneuvers many times
at an airport nearby which had considerably lower field elevation
and as a consequence didn't gain enough altitude before rolling
and pulling through the last half of the loop. It looked like he
was about 20-30 feet above terrain when he got out, the smoke and
heat waves from the engine appeared to be going nearly straight
up so, although the a/c was level it was descending almost
straight down,

The writeup mentioned that the a/c impacted the ground .8 seconds
after the ejection! (that's point eight seconds)

Pls excuse any errors in nomenclature...I'm a heavy metal type
person (fighters aren't my forte)
--

-Gord.
(use gordon in email)