2010 Indy Air Show Pic Stream #2 - Media & Practice Day
Friday, June 11, 2010 at 03:56PM 
Kyle Franklin flies this big beautiful Waco in airshows all over the country, but interestingly, he and his wing-walking wife Amanda take the airplane apart and pull it down the road in a big trailer between most shows. It sounds like a lot of work, but it actually simplifies the process of getting the airplane where you need it. As you would expect tho, after it's all back together, it's time to double and triple check that everything is where it should be.
This pic shows Kyle as he was working his way around the back of the airplane earlier today when he was about 30 minutes away from flying in the practice show. He was making one last check to verify the airworthiness of the highly-modified UPF-7. I talked to him about the process, and he shared that it really has the advantage of essentially having him 'annual' the airplane every time he puts it back together. He's actually far more in tune with the airplane's structure because he's touching everything a lot before it goes back in the air. Pretty interesting stuff.
Here he's giving the wings, struts and flying wires a good tug to ensure they are properly installed and adjusted. Shortly after this pic he was making some sweet radial music and billowing out lots of smoke to fill the sky!
Red Bull Air Race pilot Michael Goulian in the ASB.TV Extra 330 a few moments before he fired up and headed out for his performance. He had a nice mix of unusual maneuvers in his show that had the Extra doing some fun tumbling and rotating, and his RBAR experience makes him very precise on all the lines.
The Horsemen all started their engines at the same time which of course was just off-the-scale-cool hearing their big Merlin engines all come to life at the same time. They taxied out right after this pic was taken but the A-10 demo was up next. Once the Warthog was done having some fun showing off its unique capabilities, the Horsemen put on a beautiful display of formation aerobatics in three authentic WWII Mustangs. We like to call this a 'good day' : )
Reader Comments (1)
What a fantastic blog for people who love aviation!!! Congratulations!!!
Please visit a portuguese blog which shows air pictures from Portugal taken during my flights:
Third Dimension - Air Pictures from Portugal
Thanks