AirPigz Podcast #11: Flight Journal Editor & Pitts Fanatic Budd Davisson
Monday, May 17, 2010 at 08:04AM Listen right now thru this player
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Budd Davisson is the Editor-in-Chief of Flight Journal magazine
Budd also runs airbum.com with tons of aviation content from the last 40 years
Budd also has over 30 years experience giving dual in the Pitts Special!
Interview with Budd Davisson - 1:00:52
Budd Davisson has been writing about his amazing flying experiences for 40 years now, and he's still going strong! He keeps busy as the Editor-in-Chief of Flight Journal magazine, a fabulous publication and website with an emphasis on aviation history, including detailed stories on aircraft, people and events from military aviation.
Budd also runs airbum.com, a website full of his pilot reports and photography from the last 40 years of his work as an aviation journalist. It's a tremendous resource for all kinds of great avgeek info.
And if all that wasn't enough, Budd has been running a Pitts Special flight school for well over 30 years! He specializes in teaching people how to handle the Pitts in the landing phase, and in the process winds up making much better pilots out of them. He'll pass 5,000 hours of dual-given this year - amazing!
This interview was especially cool for me since I first starting reading Budd's great articles back in the mid 70's when I was a teenager. The type of aircraft he wrote about, and the informative, personal, and fun style of his writing made him by far the most influential aviation writer in my life.
Budd Davisson is sitting in the front seat of the prototype two-place Pitts Special back in 1973. Bob Schnuerle is in the rear seat with Bob Herendeen sitting on the wing, and then Tom Poberezny, Curtis Pitts and Gene Dearing. We talk about this fabulous photo in the interview.
Reader Comments (2)
Budd is my all time favorite aviation photojournalist. I too started reading his pireps and marvelled at his photographs back in the 70s in the pages of Air Progress magazine. His writing style evoked the range of emotions from extreme joy and comical visualizations to the utmost sorrow. Some of the more memorable things for me were his description of the climb preformance of an underpowered ultralight when he wrote that it "rocketed skyward like a homesick anvil." It took me by surprise and I had to re-read that line, followed by a half hour fit of laughter. And his tale of selling his beloved Pitts brought a lump to my thoat as he said goodbye to a long time friend. I never had the pleasure of meeting him in person, but getting to know him through his writing has been a sheer joy I will never forget.
I believe Gene Dearing was an engineer working for Curtis Pitts. He is probably retired now but wanted to know if anyone knows how I might contact him. Or please send him my email so he can contact me. There is something that he made a while ago that he would love to see.
Thanks,
Gene
geneferruzza@gmail.com