Aeroshell Aerobatic Team - T6 Ride!

Image via Wikipedia

So I was lucky enough to start my conversations a few weeks back with the folks at L3 Avionics in order to discover costing and availability of the Trilogy  Electronic Standby Instrument for the Lancair Evolution avionics package.  Mark Linsley has been extremely helpful by answering my questions and was kind enough to ask me if I would be interested in going on a practice flight with the Aeroshell Aerobatic team on Wednesday morning.  My response was along the lines of "Uhhm, yeah?!?!  Are you kidding me?!?!"

Wednesday morning rolls around and we are down there at the Aeroshell booth awaiting the turn.  The four T-6's sitting there on the grass on the side of the taxiway just begging us to come for a ride.  We sign our lives away, they strap on our parachutes and get the briefing on the flight.  Steve in #3 gets the pleasure of me as his passenger.  As we are briefing, he tells me "OK, if you have to jump out, here is what you do.  This lever (pointing to the seat-belt link) releases the straps.  You open the canopy and jump right for the back of the wing.  When you are clear, you see this D-ring (pointing to my D-ring on the parachute)?  You pull that with both hands.  Any questions?"  Nope.  Nothing from me.

The planes start and we taxi out to the runway.  We do all of our preflight runups and the the team lines up on the runway for the takeoff.  This is just over the top.  I don't know if the plane was making me quake or it was the excitement.  We take off in formation.  I am shocked at how well these big planes stay together and we head out to the east as it was slightly overcast and the clouds were breaking up in that area.  On the way over Steve and I chat up one another as we head to the training area.  I ask the crucial question, "Steve, how much time do you have flying the T-6 in formations?"  Steve's reply was "Oh, somewhere close to 8,000 hours."  Hmm, methinks I was in good hands....

We were able to do some formation loops and rolls, and I was way too amped to even consider video-ing the aerobatic flight, however one of the other passengers got video when we were in the aerobatic mode.  We got a little negative G as we started the dive into the first loop, and as we came out and swung back to the bottom, we were touching somewhere close to the 4G mark.  I couldn't stop grinning, even if my cheeks were stretched down into my lap.  We did some other rolls and loops and it was over way too soon.  A real video from the ground of the show they put on is below:



So as soon as I can get my hands on a Cessna 150 Aerobat (Cessna 150 Aerobat Training Manual) and spend some time reading Basic Aerobatics and watching Aerobatics II: Flying the Maneuvers and Aerobatics: Flying the Maneuvers (VHS) and then I am going up again. Hmm, I wonder if I can get Sean Tucker to take me up (and make me puke - uh, no doubt)?