I Survived A Flight In A Stunt Plane

Editor's note: Sun Herald Staff Writer Greg Martin flew in the Super Chipmunk airplane with pilot Frank Ryder. This is an account of his experience.

By Greg Martin
Sun Herald Writer

As the throbbing vibration intensifies, so does my heartbeat.

The tents and crowds along the runway turn into a blur, and the Earth drops away.

An invisible force begins squashing me. My legs feel like I'm wearing lead pants.

Nothing is visible through the plexiglass canopy over my head except blue sky.

Suddenly, the sun appears over the top of my head. It streaks downward toward my toes.

Then comes the horizon over the top of my head. The Earth lowers like a green and brown curtain before my eyes.

Then the ground slowly twirls counter-clockwise. As it does so, that invisible force washes over me again. I'm not sure whether I'm going up or down.

A glowing sensation wells up in my gut. I begin whooping like a happy idiot.

For a reporter, these sensations can only mean one thing: The air show's back in town.

It's one of the perks of being in the media business. In fact, it's my favorite perk.

It's also one of the perks of being in the air show business, says the pilot of my press ride, self-taught aerobatic pilot Frank Ryder of New Orleans.

"Every time I take off, I get that feeling of wow, I'm doing it again," Ryder says. "We in aviation live, sleep and breath flying."

Ryder and his 395-horsepower Super Chipmunk stunt plane makes up but one of eight Florida International Air Show acts to take to the skies today and Sunday at the Charlotte County Airport in Punta Gorda.

Most people may find the spectacle of the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds as their favorite performers. But for this reporter, Frank Ryder is now my hero. He personally showed me that he's earned his wings.

The ride began when his attractive public relations assistant cinched me into a parachute and seatbelt in the front seat of the two-seater mono-plane.

I was apprehensive once I heard the plane was built in England in 1951. I own an old English car which runs for about 100 miles before it needs mechanical repairs.

But little on Ryder's airplane hasn't been modified from the original DeHavilland Chipmunk plane that Ryder bought in 1971. For one thing, the four-cylinder 145-horsepower engine was replaced by a six-cylinder 395-horsepower Lycoming engine.

The wings were shortened a total of five feet to increase the plane's roll rate.

Landing flaps on the wings which were used to slow the plane down for landings were eliminated to speed up the plane.

"Now, it's very much a pilot's plane," Ryder says. "Like a fighter plane, it's very responsive to the slightest touch of the controls."

After I was strapped in, Ryder hit the starter and the three-blade propeller chugged into motion.

For the next 45 minutes, one incredible sensation melded into another as Ryder took me through a loop, a Cuban 8, a couple of hammerheads and a few rolls.

For what seemed minutes, Ryder held the plane perpendicular to the ground while I clicked off shots from a wing mounted camera.

"Whoo-hoo, that ought to give you a few good shots, ha, ha, ha," the pilot laughed gleefully into the intercom.

After a low-altitude fly-by of the air show grounds, Ryder asked me if I was ready to land -- or wanted to go have some real fun.

Before the right side of brain could interrupt, the left side shouted into the microphone, "More fun, more fun."

"Yeah, we did our job, let's go have some fun," he replied.

The next 15-minutes are difficult to describe. At the altitude we were flying, the sense of speed wasn't seen in relation to the movement of the ground, but through the sensation of G-forces.

There were moments when I was pressed into my seat followed by moments when I would have floated up into the canopy -- if it hadn't been for my seatbelt.

"I like doing things more slowly and graceful," Ryder said. "It's more like ballet than doing the jitterbug."

Finally, a voice from the air traffic controller at the airport came over the headphones.

"Ground boss to Chipmunk, have you had enough fun yet?" the voice set, implying that he had other pilots who wanted to practice their acts.

"We'll be right down," Ryder replied.

The next few minutes could only be described as riding a bobsled down vertical but rotating track as we spiraled from 2,000 feet to sea-level and landed. We incurred four times the force of gravity from centrifugal force during the descent, the pilot told me.

Ryder experiences between negative 5 Gs and positive 7 Gs during his performance.

Ryder said he taught himself aerobatic flying a year after getting his pilot's license in 1965. He now teaches other pilots the art of high-performance flying.

Ryder is also a self-employed electrical engineer. He said he briefly considered doing what most air show pilots do -- fly for the airlines.

But he quickly decided against it.

"Those guys make a good living, but it's not for me," he said. "I'd fly (the jetliner) for about 45 minutes before I turned it upside down.

"To me, aerobatics is flying," he said. "When I was a kid, loops and rolls was what flying was all about."

Return to the South Florida Air Show Page