<<
Back to main Flying Stories page ......................................................Back
to main Flash website
Books
Debbie Gary
November 10, 2003
Front Row Center 2
The Marchetti plunges through the air like a stiletto with tip tanks.
At 100 feet, it levels off doing 190 knots, trailing thick, white
smoke. Buckled inside, I tense my stomach muscles and pull back on
the control stick. Gravity, multiplied by five, squeezes me deep into
my seat. Now I release the pull. The Gs lighten up and the wings are
as vertical as the tall buildings downtown to my left. One, two, three,
I count, then, slap the stick hard to the left. We roll.
Under the tail, Burke Lakefront Airport revolves, spinning the air
show crowd, the city and the Navy blue waters of Lake Erie around
it. Stick right, then center and the roll stops. One, two, three.
I count again. The airplane shivers as it runs out of energy and airspeed.
I kick full left rudder. The wing slices the horizon and the nose
cartwheels from straight up to straight down. One, two, three. Left
aileron again.
It is Labor Day Weekend, 2003, in Cleveland, Ohio and the show begins:
up, down, left, right, dive, pull, roll and snap. My airplane and
I are gymnasts on our tiny mat of air above the runway. We hurl each
other into the sky and back again. We skate, we dance, we paint and
tumble. I listen to the rhythm of the engine and keep time like a
metronome: one two three, one two three. The runway pinwheels under
the nose. Right aileron to stop it. Stick center, then back with a
firm pull for a tight curve to miss the ground. But not too tight.
The Marchetti wing grips the air like tires on loose gravel. If it
slides, we hit the ground. So I pull hard as we dive, but not too
hard. The muscles in my arm connect to the wing through my fingers
on the stick. The muscles flex, the wings flex, and the plane curves
upward, just above the runway. Cracks in the pavement race past at
190 knots again. Pull for a shark’s tooth turnaround, then an
avalanche and a whipstall, rolls that stop on knife-edge, kinked loops,
hexagons and merry-go-round turns.
The flying is as serious as speeding bullets, and air show pilots
are as focused as swat teams. The earth rushes toward us. We dodge
and it retreats. But, we are also like children on rope swings, playing
in the G forces. First we are heavy, then light. Our stomachs plummet,
then soar. This delights us. We are happiest when we fly, nervous
ahead of time, perhaps, jittery until the engine cranks. Then everything
drops away like the earth in our vertical climbs and we are at home
in our airplanes.
Air show flying is a job for passionate pilots, people who need to
squeeze the most out of their experience. We love entertainment, the
more the better, and we constantly ask ourselves, How can I take this
over the top? How can I improve my act? This is what Jim Holland was
wondering the summer of 1971 when he phoned me up and offered me a
job. “I was thinking of doing a dual act,” he told me,
“and thought that having a woman in it would make it different.
Would you be interested?” Of course! There had never been a
woman formation aerobatic pilot, so this would give Jim Holland Airshows
a novelty advantage. I was a fulltime glider instructor, and knew
nothing about aerobatics or air show flying, but he was a teacher.
He had three weeks to train me.
After 11.3 hours of instruction, he soloed me in his Citabria. After
2.1 hours of solo, I flew my first air show in Warren, Vermont on
October 2, 1971. This is Debbie Gary, he said over the mike as I flew.
She has just completed my basic aerobatic flying course and this is
what she learned. If she can do it, you can do it. I was terrible,
of course, but I was undaunted. This was home.
I loved everything about air shows-the crowds, the noise, the tension,
the drama of flying close to the ground, the risks. I loved the journalists
who flew with us for stories, their nervous excitement. I loved the
volunteers and the spectators with their festive moods. I loved the
cross country flying, under the clouds, around the cities, over the
mountains, through the valleys--a feast of scenery, a whole country
from above. I still love all that.
My first couple shows were solo flying, of course. Who could follow
a new aerobatic pilot around a loop? As I progressed, Holland began
to fly on my wing, still coaching me. Pull up smoothly, I can’t
follow if you’re rough. You’re gonna have to add a crab
angle so we don’t drift toward the crowd. Reduce the power on
the back side, I’m losing you. As I learned he moved closer,
inching his wings toward mine.
For two years he continued to coach me. I flew lead in our air shows.
He flew lead going cross country. I practiced constantly.
By the end of June 1973, when Kelly Aeroplane came from England to
North America to form a team similar to their Rothmans sponsored four
plane formation aerobatic team, I was seasoned and I was ready. They
hired me.
We were the Carling Aerobatic Team, sponsored by Carling-O’Keefe,
based in Toronto and, though we were confined, mostly, to Ontario
we flew 74 air show displays in one season. It was short-lived, but
glorious, a pilot’s dream. I flew the slot position. When the
team ended in early 1975, Bob Bishop and Corkey Fornof invited me
to join them on the Bede 5 Jet team, based in Newton, Kansas. I flew
the left wing position, until the end of the season. Then I bought
my own Pitts S-2A, joined Art Scholl Aviation as an aerobatic instructor
and began my run as a solo performer.
It was 1976 and the Pitts was king. Charlie Hillard had used his
to win the 1972 World Aerobatic Championship, Art Scholl flew his
to win the Nationals. I used mine to answer the questions, How can
I have more fun? What can I do that I’ve never done? The flat
spin was still fresh, the torque roll was a toddler and the lomcevak
was a lonely only child. This was the calm period before gyro-mania
began. The ultra-unstable competition machine was, as yet, unborn.
You could fly a state of the art air show in six Gs or less. I covered
North America from Abbotsford, British Columbia to Tamiami in Florida,
from the Reno Air Races to Reading, Pennsylvania.
In 1977, I added the Bellanca Super Viking to my repertoire. It is
a four-seat passenger plane, designed for straight and level flight,
for cross countries and instrument approaches. But, it is also the
Mercedes of light planes, with a tubular steel frame and legendary
wings, intricately built from 3,600 separate pieces of wood. Bob Bishop
and Jimmy Franklin had already blazed the Viking aerobatic air show
trail. Both of them could ride it like a rodeo bull. But, savvy businessman,
Jim Callier, the new president of Bellanca, wanted a different message.
The 120 pound feminine touch says grace, beauty and light to the touch,
so, he hired me. A year later, we fell in love and married.
Children followed marriage and the Battle of the Babies began. Every
advantage I had ever had as a woman in a predominantly male field
diminished in nine short months. I agonized over ways to transport
my baby in the Pitts. Could we build a cradle or a sling in the front
cockpit? Could I reach the baby if it cried? Would I know if it cried?
Would the baby go deaf from engine noise?
The Viking that Bellanca had built in Experimental Category for my
air show had been returned to Normal Category and Jim left the company,
so the Viking was no longer an option, but a Super Decathlon was.
With a special wide back seat it could carry one pilot, a husband,
a stroller, Richard Scarry books, Care Bears, a small Igloo cooler,
three dozen Huggies paper diapers and the baby, herself. Performance-wise,
it was a big step down from the Pitts, but mother-and-child-wise,
it was the perfect air show machine. Or so it seemed.
The problem was identity. Air show pilots think they are their airplanes.
Bigger engines are like bigger biceps. Sleek lines are like a slim
body. You would gladly trade your 50-year-old’s physique for
your own at 25, but nobody wants to relive their adolescence. The
Decathlon was me at age 12 ½. It was the second plane I flew
for Jim Holland, a giant step above the Citabria, with its symmetrical
wing. It would do vertical rolls and outside loops, but, after a few
thousand hours in the Pitts, it was a few rungs down the sex appeal
ladder, a great friend, but no romance. When my second child was born,
I sold it.
The SIAI Marchetti, however, is the great Italian lover. It has both
sex appeal and character. It is slender and fast and has such magnificent
lines that you never get tired of looking at it. Compared to the Pitts
and more modern competition machines, it only has a modest amount
of power, 260 hp, for its gross weight of 2430 pounds. But, it has
grace and beauty, well balanced controls and a 170 knot cruising speed.
Even more important to me in 1989, when I bought my first one, it
had room for mom and two kids. It really was the perfect air show
airplane.
Between that Marchetti and this, I flew a few other air show planes--the
Bud Light Microjet, which is a souped-up version of the BD-5 Jet I
flew on the Bede Jet Team; an agile CAP 232, which I lost to a brake
fire on the ground; and Jimmy Franklin’s big, black 450 hp Mystery
Ship with Carol Pilon on board as my wild wing walker. And, I already
have my eye on my next airplane, a Pitts Model 12, a 360 hp masterpiece
designed by Curtis Pitts and built by the Kimballs in Zellwood, Florida.
I love them all, but I still adore the Marchetti, because it is irresistible.
So, here I am at Cleveland, back in a vertical climb with a snap
roll, then headed back to skim the earth and watch the city and the
dark blue water rush by. When I was young and skinny, some journalist
once asked me how long I planned to fly air shows and I said, Until
I’m 80. I’m a lot closer to that end of the scale than
I was 30 years ago, but it still seems like a fun idea. So, I roll
the Marchetti into a knife edge bank, fly the length of the runway,
and set up to land.
<<
Back to main Flying Stories page ......................................................Back
to main Flash website
