Imagine the biggest, fastest roller coaster that you have been on, and multiply that by 1,000!  That is what it is like to fly aboard Fat Albert Airlines, the United States Navy Blue Angels’ Flight Demonstration teams’ C-130T support aircraft!  And last week, I had a chance to fly aboard during the NAF El Centro Airshow practice day.

Growing up in the Bay Area and under the approach path to NAS Moffett Field guaranteed me two things. Seeing Navy planes flying all the time, and knowing once a year, the USN Blue Angels come through town for the annual airshow.  The main goal of the Blues is to promote naval aviation, and due to them, I developed my love of all things flying. And 23 years after seeing my first demo, I finally had a chance to fly on one of their iconic blue and gold airplane. And if you think the 6 F/A-18 Hornets are the only ones that can put on a show, you’re sorely mistaken!

The day started early with me getting to NAF El Centro and watching the practice for the annual airshow. At 1230, I was to report to the Blue Angels administration building and meet with Public Affairs for my flight. As I walked up, Blue Angel #4, Lt. Mark Swinger, just happened to open the door, said hello and welcomed me in. My voice crackled and eventually words came out of my mouth and the Lt. escorted me to their waiting area.

There I stood in a room where the Blues Angels, Americas rockstar’s of aviation, sat and relaxed. Next years prospective pilots were standing there just chatting away,  a couple of Blue Angels postcards on the coffee table, old airshow posters framed and hanging slightly crooked adorned the wall, and a small microwave similar to the one I had in my dorm room was in the corner. Instantaneously I reverted to a 7 year old kid about to meet a superstar, because to millions of people across the world, that is exactly what these men and women are. They represent larger then life superheros that do death-defying maneuvers, calmly, poised and above all, the epitome of cool.  And there I was, a 7 year old with eyes as wide as saucers, a grin from ear to ear, standing in their fortress of solitude.    And after a couple of conversations, it was time to head to the vans and go out to our blue and gold aircraft for our flight briefing.

We were met by Gunnery Sergeant Ben Chapman and he gave us a walk around of the aircraft that is responsible of flying more then 40 maintenance and support personnel, their gear and enough spare parts and communication equipment to keep the 6 F/A-18 aircraft flying.  Fat Albert is staffed by an all-Marine Corps crew of three officers and five enlisted personnel and flies more than 140,000 miles each season.

And right before we boarded Bert, Major Brendan Burks gave us our main briefing and described the flight profile and conducted the crew briefing. Now that was cool! I love pilot talk!

And then it was time to FLY!! I got to sit in the cockpit and witness the demo from that vantage point. One thing that amazed me was how many switches and buttons there were. In the cockpit sitting in the left seat was Capt Edward Jorge, right seat was Maj Brendan Burks, Flight Engineer GySgt Ben Chapman, and Navigator SSgt Joe Ally. In the back we had Loadmaster SSgt Tommy Zureck, and two JATO Dogs AT2(AW) Meredith Ansley and AM2(AW) Marc Cobb.

And with all the preflight checks taken care of, it was time to taxi and line up on Runway 30 for the Demo. And yes, that is a Hula Girl on the panel. How cool is that???

Da! Da-da! Da-na-na-na-na-na! Hit IT! And with that, we leapt forward and started our take off roll. With the engines already reved up, we were pressed back into our seats.  At 130 mph, Capt Jorge and Maj Burke slowly pulled back on the stick and got us airborne and GySgt Chapman called out our altitude above the ground as the gear was retracted……6 feet, 5 feet, 4 feet, 4 feet…..and built our airspeed up to 180mph!  180 miles per hour and only 4 feet off the ground!!!

And with that the nose was yanked back into a steep climb 45 degree climb to simulate taking off from a hostile field and evading small arms fire.

And at the top of our climb at 1,000 feet, the pilots pushed the stick forward and we entered Zero G weightlessness! Anything not strapped down floated in the air. As you can see in the images below, Navigator SSgt Joe Ally is floating up out of his seat as a laminated checklist floats by his head.

Then it’s time to yank and bank! The C-130 is by no means a small aircraft, but when put into the skilled hands of these US Marine Corp pilots, it danced in the sky. At times we were doing 60 degree banks no more then a hundred feet off the ground as we returned to show center for our passes.

The first pass is the Parade Pass where we came back at 200 feet and give the crowd a nice flash of the wings and then roll into a right turn and go wings level

 Then roll into a right turn and go wings level.

And setup for the Flat Pass which is 370 mph at 60 feet off the ground.

Then roll right once again for the Min Radius Turn where we setup to come right towards the crowd at 100 feet, and right before we pass the crowd, we pitch up 20 deg nose up, left down wind to the Push To Land.

As Maj Burke described it, “Push to land is basically simulating us going into a hostile environment…staying as high as we can to avoid small arms fire, and then we are going to push the aircraft 25 deg nose down and land at about 1,500 feet. 25 deg nose down is about 8 times what you would feel in a standard jet liner. It’s going to be kind of a firm landing today. I’m going to pick a point and that’s pretty much where we are going to land so if we get a soft landing, that’s great, but if not, I don’t really care because I am trying to land exactly where I point the nose of my aircraft. We are going to get this 100,000 lbs aircraft to a stop in about 1,500 feet. You will hear the anti-skid breaks and smell them a bit too which is completely normal.”  The folks on the hay bales sure must have had quite a site as we dived right at them. Maj Burke joked that we might have caused a few of the photographers to jump off the bales.

And with that the flight was over, and SSgt Joe Ally climbed over me and hoisted the Red, White, and Blue as we taxi’d back to the ramp.

Then the entire crew lined up for a few photos with the lucky passengers. The maneuvers that we did were no different then the ones done in the fleet. Being able to hear the communications during the entire flight, I saw first hand the cooperation between all the aircrew to make this a safe flight. To the average spectator on the ground, this may have seemed like “dangerous maneuvers” but to those men and women on board, this was just another day in the Corps.

My sincerest thanks to Capt Edward Jorge, Maj Brendan Burks, GySgt Ben Chapman, SSgt Joe Ally, SSgt Tommy Zureck, AT2(AW) Meredith Ansley, AM2(AW) Marc Cobb, Capt Tyson Dunkelberger, and especially MC1 (AW/SW) Joseph Reynoso for helping this 7 year old achieve a life long dream.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 at 3:14 pm and is filed under Adventures, Air Shows, Aviation, Life, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.