In my attempt to document events during our day at the Orcas Island Airport, I neglected to talk about one special event. As I was watching Hallie and Travis ride the kiddie cars inside Magic Air‘s hangar, I heard a roar behind me. Whirling around, I caught a glimpse of a beautifully restored World War II-era fighter plane as it screamed just 20 feet above the runway on a fly-by. I was lucky enough to catch the plane on video as it made two more low-altitude passes.
The plane itself was incredible. Machine gun turrets were gleaming in the sun as it quickly closed the distance. I imagined what it would be like to be on the business end of those guns, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Intimidating isn’t strong enough a word!
The pilot was quite skilled, too, as he or she made precise adjustments in the plane’s approach. It seemed like I was watching the perfect melding of machine and man, like the plane could read the pilot’s mind. Beauty and lethality, expressed in rivets.
As it climbed into the sun for the last time, I exhaled long enough to notice the stupid grin plastered on my face. I couldn’t help it, I don’t think I could’ve not smiled! Those 60 seconds was by far the highlight of the day for me.
That plane never landed at Orcas for whatever reason, so I’m still unsure of the plane or pilot. Perhaps my shaky video will reveal more once I have some time to study it. I’ll try to post it when I’ve converted it for the web.
On a related note, I found myself looking up the kit planes I saw flown by the Blackjack Squadron over the airport. The planes are Van’s Aircraft RV-3 and RV-4 sport planes, prop planes with performance so good that some ex-military jet jockeys liken them to fighter planes. Indeed, my jaw dropped as watched the squadron take off. Those suckers can climb! They make Cessnas look like Yugos.
As for the Blackjack Squadron, they’re an informal group of ex-military pilots who use their RVs for formation flying. They’re damn good, too. I happened to look up when the Blackjacks were flying a diamond pattern right over our house. They fly stuff like this at fly-ins all the time, from what I understand.
Legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager said the reason he walked away from so many disasters was because he always knew his aircraft backwards and forwards. The kit planes appeal to me for just that reason: the kit plane builder is intimately familiar with every single rivet. Kit planes also cost about 1/10th the cost of a factory-built airplane. You can buy an RV-4 kit for $15,000, according to the company website. The downside is the time and effort involved in building it, obviously. An RV-4 takes about 2000 “person-hours” to assemble.
It would be a lot of work to build and a significant upgrade from the standard private pilot’s license, but man wouldn’t it be great to own a rocket of a plane!
Probably wouldn’t want to fly it into the grass field at the lake though unless the make one with stol capability. 🙂
The RV-4 can take off with less than 800 feet of runway!