Idolofreak
Well-known member
I was gone all weekend flight marshaling for the Tarkio, MO Air Show. I have to add that to my favorite things I've ever done. I was there for Civil Air Patrol with seven other cadets and two seniors. I'm a Staff Sergeant and I've done lots of flight marshaling before, but this was by far my favorite time ever doing it. Sean Tucker was flying around when we got there. For those of you who don't know, he's the best air show pilot in the world. He's mostly famous for flying close formation with the USAF Thunderbirds and the US Navy Blue Angels, and his two best stunts. My favorite one of his stunts is where he climbs his plane to about 800 ft. AGL (Above Ground Level) and brings it to a HOVER. He usually holds it for like ten to fifteen seconds, but on Saturday he did way better than when he did his practice run (Which I watched and got on video). He held it for like a minute on Saturday, and usually you can see his plane budging, but this time it almost didn't look real it was so good. My second favorite stunt he does is the low speed, low altitude photo pass. He slows to like twenty-five-ish mph and flies his biplane sideways in front of the crowd! What's really cool is that when he goes by he gets the crowd to do the wave over the comlink (They wirelessly link his radio to the loudspeakers and he asks the crowd to do it). Anway, there were already some WWII planes there when we got there (Three P-51's, some T-6's and T-28's, and an F-4U Corsair). There were also lots of stearman biplanes and a couple of WWII trainers, plus lots of general aviation planes (Cessnas, Pipers, Stinsons, etc.). By Friday afternoon there was an OV-1 Mohawk, an AC-47 Spooky, a B-25 Mitchell, way more stearman planes and WWII trainers, and the top five air show pilots in the US, obviously including Sean Tucker. Around 1:30 or 2:00 pm, the F-18 did it's practice run where it went transonic a couple times, and around 4:30 the A-10 did its practice run. The best part there was when it came right over the flight line at almost full thrust and only like forty feet AGL. There were a bunch more practice runs after that, and then we went to bed at camp at about 11:00 pm. Saturday morning from like 8:00 am to 12:00 pm was just one GA (General Aviation) plane after the other. The traffic was just nightmarish. I'd send one plane down to the parking spots, and I'd turn around and there'd be like five more planes coming my way. There were so many planes landing that the taxiway was actually backed up like rush hour traffic. So the air show started around 11:30 am with a B-2 Spirit flyby, then lots of aerobatic performances. Sean Tucker flew at like 2:30ish and the F-18 performed a little before that and did a Navy heritage flight with the F-4U. Me and the cadets did some Air Force search and rescue simulators, and when we came out the A-10 was flying around. The jet truck did it's 375 mph run when we were signing up to do the sims.
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