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My grandmother said a long time ago,
"An idle mind is the devil's playground.
You need to have a goal, you need to have a purpose,
and you need to have a mission."
And, uh, one of my buddies said,
"Hey, let's go over and check it out."
And really it was just three guys at that point,
um, kind of getting together, fly in formation.
Having a little fun, going around,
see what we could do.
And then started getting a couple events
to go fly for.
The very first flight and the real Bandit Flight Team
was the Vince Gill concert at Pinehurst right over here.
♪
You have to get used to flying close to another airplane.
And then just putting your airplane
where it's supposed to be.
When you're up there flying, you're working.
It's great to be a pilot.
But without the grounds crew and the support staff,
this show doesn't get off the ground.
Coming up on 45, mark 45.
And it's more than just then these guys just flying over.
These guys have been giving back, doing the mission.
This is a lot of fun, but we call it serious fun.
We're real serious about it.
That total confidence and brotherhood
that you develop with just that ultimate trust,
you're trusting those guys with your life.
The Bandit Flight Team
is the most active flight team in the country.
Nobody comes close to doing what we do.
50 events a year, that's a lot,
and they don't get paid for their time.
So that's a huge dedication on their part,
but we have ground coordinators,
we have the pilots.
These are great people, really dedicated.
If we didn't have them,
I-- the Bandits just would not exist.
-Bob Ingle. -I'm Flash Baysden.
-Stephen Graham. -Hal Bowman.
-I'm Andy Stanaski. -I am Wanda Jackson.
-David Schlabch. -My name is Vince Tr yer.
-My name is Abigail Ingle. -I'm Cecil Boyd.
-My name is Greg Vouga. -My name is Haroun Azizi.
Jim Kilpatrick.
We actually got together,
started flying in formation in 2009.
Our first big formal event flying in formation was 2011.
When we came back from Vietnam
and landed and...
I had done, like I said, 250 missions,
and I had as many awards as anybody else, I guess.
I had 13 air medals.
The Distinguished Flying Cross
is the fourth highest in the country
and I had two of those.
And when I came back to the United States and we landed,
we were advised to take our uniform off.
"Do not travel in uniform."
'Cause a lot of people landed at Travis Air Force Base
and they had to go through San Francisco.
That was terrible,
that affected me for a long time.
Those Distinguished Flying Crosses that I had,
which I was pretty proud of,
but with the reception I got back in the States,
made me very leery of even bringing them out.
And I'll be frank with you,
those awards stayed in a cardboard box
in my attic for 25 years.
I couldn't bring them out,
and that's hard 'cause I was quite proud of them.
I think that...
spending a year in Vietnam probably changes-- changes.
I mean, I was just an 18-year-old kid,
so I can't tell you how--
How-- how I feel now versus how I felt then, but,
um-- and I was awarded the Bronze Star,
and I put all of my stuff, including that,
in a box and I stuck it in the attic
and I didn't take it out for a long, long time.
Finally, my wife said
"No, let's take them out. Let's show them."
So we did, we mounted them and we put them on the wall.
Now, I think our country understands
that you have to separate the warrior from the war.
The warrior's doing the same thing every war,
he doesn't make the policy decisions.
He's doing what his country asked for him to do,
and I certainly don't think I was a hero
and I can speak from my squadron mates.
They felt the same.
We just did what the country asked us to do.
But that reception-- and I think the country understands
it now and I think we're reading our military men
much, much better.
So you can see the-- what drives me
to have the Bandit Flight Team
flying for the flag and salute our military.
By flying over the national anthem,
we are-- we're-- we're paying our respects
to all the people that we've known before,
all the ones who didn't come home,
all the-- all of our buddies, you know.
And, um, it's always the flag.
You know, for me today in-- in this airplane,
I've always got a flag on.
Well, I went to a reunion
with some of my, uh, mates from Vietnam.
And one guy had this Russian yak,
and-- which I said, "What in the world is a Russian yak?"
He said, "Well, it's a Russian trainer."
And this is a Yak 52, uh, Russian trainer.
It's a 1986 plane.
Soviet Union was in operation.
They built the Yak with a five-year plan.
They put out an order,
the-- the planes were built in a-- a plant in Romania.
Because most people say, "Well, how the hell can you fly
a Russian airplane right over top of a stadium here,
flying for the flag?"
And we say, "Well, we won,
it's our airplane, we took it."
So I buy a Russian Yak
and I come here to the local airport
and I find that there's three others based here.
Um, there was one other-- at least one other guy here
and then they became two,
and then they became three and so forth,
other pilots who had formation capable airplanes
and-- and we would go out and fly.
Now, they were not military,
they were trying to learn how to fly formation.
I had a military background.
So I started working with them just flying formation,
having a little fun, going around,
see what we could do.
And really it was just three guys at that point,
um, kind of getting together, flying formation.
And so we all got together
and started flying larger formations
and then started getting a couple events to go fly for.
The very first flight and the real Bandit Flight Team
was the Vince Gill concert at Pinehurst right over here.
So we did a few things like that
and then we got more formal, more intense,
and then we started developing strict procedures.
Everybody got formation, uh, we call "cards,"
but licensed to fly formation.
And it just developed and re-- we did an operations manual
and got much more serious.
And as we developed, a good friend of NC State
got me in contact with NC State,
and we did a flyover for them,
and that was kind of-- we got rolling from there.
Right, we want to have a team,
so we started putting guys together,
deciding what our name, who we are, that type stuff.
So we got together.
One of our guys came up with the name "Bandits."
The reason we have the name Bandits
is from World War ll.
All the movies, they identify--
Unidentified aircraft are bandits.
"Bandits at 12 o'clock high."
We probably heard that in the movies,
so we developed that name because that's us.
We're out there flying, you see six airplanes,
it's-- you say, "Bandits."
Wha-- Sure enough, you're right, it's the Bandits.
So that's how we came up with the name.
And then one of the guys got the logo.
We did the red, white, and blue
because obviously we're saluting our military,
and that's how that got formalized.
You have to get used to flying close to another airplane,
which is, uh, um, not normal.
Our reflexes are, get away, pull back,
don't get too close to another airplane.
It's-- it's pretty challenging at first,
but once you get used to it, it becomes a real thrill.
When you learn how to fly formation,
they-- they-- of course you have some ground school
about how to do it.
Um, then you go out
and the instructor shows you how to do it
and then lets you do it.
It's really not that hard.
It's a matter of seeing what the references are
for the other airplane
and then just putting your airplane
where it's supposed to be.
♪
So, um, if you can see on the airplane here,
we have some,
uh, various things on the airplane
that we can use to make a line of position.
And we standardize that on the Bandit team.
We have our little logo here on the front.
And we use that with the flap hinge here in the middle
that defines a line.
So we call that the bearing line.
And there are other references on the RV-8 that we use,
like the outer flap hinge on the prop spinner
is the same bearing line.
And then on the back, on the tail,
we have, uh, some references,
so you have two lines
and where those two lines intersect,
that's the proper position to be.
Up and down-wise,
you want to split the wing,
so you see the same amount on the top
as the bottom of the wing,
and that's the correct up and down position.
♪
And that puts you about 38 feet
from fuselage to fuselage,
and it gives you about, oh, five feet or so
of wing tip, uh, clearance spacing.
But the other airplane's behind you,
so it's not like the wingtips are right next to each other,
it's offset so that we're behind each other.
And that is the correct position to be in
when we're in what we call "fingertip."
♪
There are other positions we fly.
So we fly a, uh-- or, what we call a root
or in-root position,
and that is spaced out two to four ship widths,
so that's a little bit more relaxed.
So when you're just flying someplace
and we need to, uh, not have to concentrate the whole time,
we can fly out in that little bit more relaxed position.
Biggest issue that young pilots have
when they're first starting to fly formation
is they're just over correcting.
They're-- they're grabbing onto the stick
and they're moving the airplane
and it's dancing all over the place
because they're like, "Oh, a little too high,
oh, little too low, oh, a little too high."
You have to just calm down, light touch on the stick,
and just keep moving the flight controls around.
So when you think about, "Oh, I'm a little bit low
and I need to move up" and start moving up,
"Oh, I'mma get a little too high,"
you're always a little bit behind movement
where you're supposed to be.
But if you just keep stirring
the controls around a little bit,
moving the throttle, moving the controls,
and not think about moving them, just stirring them,
then you-- you see that you're a little bit low
and you just think, "I need to move up,"
and you just move up without even thinking
about moving the controls.
It's like driving a car.
So when you first started driving,
you're like, "Oh, I gotta turn,"
and you thought about turning a little bit, moving the wheel,
and, you know, "Oh, I gotta--"
Now you're, like-- you just drive, right?
So it's kind of the same thing.
When you teach somebody how to fly,
you show them the techniques, and after they've learned,
after a while they're-- you're not even thinking about it.
I-- I'm-- I never think about what I do
moving the flight controls anymore.
It's just-- I want to move the airplane someplace
and it goes there.
I think military organizations
are one of the highest standard, uh,
organizations that are around.
Uh, a lot of people think,
"Hey, that guy must be having fun,"
but really and truly, when you're up there flying,
you're working, and the same thing goes on here.
And so you're constantly looking at the cues
that we have on the airplane to get into position,
and you may be out an inch, you may be out a foot,
you may be out three feet, but you're constantly fighting
to get back in that perfect position.
And so that's really the focus of the entire flight
if you're one of the wing men.
It's all of this depth perception
and rate of speed, rate of--
The rate of closure on the other airplane.
I think some of the difficulties are,
you are focused on one position on another airplane,
and outside your peripheral, you may feel one thing,
but you gotta stay with your sight line
on that one position of the airplane
to maintain integrity in the formation.
That becomes somewhat challenging at first,
but once you get over that peripheral
telling you to do something else
other than what that standard point
on the aircraft's telling you to do,
it becomes a lot easier.
You'll hear this from all of the-- the Bandits,
the only thing you look at is the plane you're flying off of.
You don't know where you're are-- where you are,
theoretically, you don't know if you're upside down
or, uh, uh, in a 90-degree bank,
you're just looking at the airplane
and maintaining your position on the one airplane.
Number four or number two or number three,
those are a little more relaxing positions,
all you have to do is follow the guy in front of you.
But when you're out on the wing tips,
uh, number five or number six,
usually those guys have got responsibilities
with comms or with, uh, um, chase,
um, and it's also a more challenging position
to fly in the formation.
So we're typically in a delta formation,
and the further away you are from the lead,
if you can imagine, you have lead,
and then you have, uh, uh, either two or three,
in this case three, and then out on the wing
you have a-- a little bit more.
So lead'll move,
and then that movement is a little bit amplified
by number three, and then this guy's chasing
and so it-- it ends up being a whip.
Um, and so you really have to work hard
to dampen out some of that movement
when the formation turns.
It-- it's all about turn radiuses.
When, uh-- when the planes are turning,
you have basically a fixed point
that they're turning around, an imaginary point in space.
The further away from that point,
you're gonna actually have, uh, a larger turn radius.
And so if you're at a larger turn radius,
you're going a further distance
and you have to add power to keep up.
Your speed has to be, uh, faster.
And conversely, if you're on the inside of the turn,
you have to slow down as the, uh, formation has turned.
So it's really important for lead
to keep all of that in mind.
If he turns too sharp,
then the guys may not be able to keep up.
Either the guy on the outside
may have not enough power to keep up,
or the guy on the inside will be at flight idle
and-- and still moving forward.
And so lead has a big responsibility
to keep the, uh, flight safe.
Yeah, we-- one of the unusual things about our team--
Most of these kind of formation flight teams,
it's all the same airplane.
So, we have dissimilar airplanes,
and so therefore not only the Yak--
The two Yaks in the-- in the flight,
but the RVs have to adjust a little bit to deal with us.
And so, for example, flight lead.
Flight lead would probably go a little faster in times,
but they purposely go a little slower
just so the Yaks can keep up.
So to get one of your formation cards,
you have to study the manuals,
you have to learn all of the-- the maneuvers,
and the station keeping,
and everything that goes along with the formation flying.
Then you need to fly with other experienced people.
You have to get a check pilot to actually check you off
and approve you for the-- the card.
And, uh, those guys are really brave, you know,
sitting inside-- sitting in a backseat of an airplane
that's got a rookie, uh, formation pilot in it
and, uh, coming in to rejoin,
and there it is.
And so once they give you your check ride,
it's just like any other flying.
Everything requires a check ride.
Formation's no different.
Man, it's just total trust.
You know, when you're flying that close to everybody,
uh, you have to know that they're gonna be
where they're supposed to be.
When-- you know, when you're flying two or three,
you got planes all around you.
There's only, uh, one or two ways out of the formation
and you can't see everybody else
except the plane that you're looking at,
so that total confidence and brotherhood
that you developed with just the ultimate trust,
you're trusting those guys with your life.
♪
So the-- uh, the flight lead is a key position
because the flight lead is responsible
for everything that goes on in the flight.
As we talked about before,
everybody else is flying, you know, on--
On these references and they're flying in position.
They're looking at you.
They're not looking where we're going.
They're not looking at, uh, you know,
stuff that's out there, for other airplanes, whatnot.
The flight lead's doing all that for the entire flight,
so it's a very, very responsive position--
Responsible position.
The flight lead starts early.
When we get the tasking a lot of times,
uh, Jim, the chief, will give us the tasking
and we'll go to Google Earth and we'll plan it up.
We'll actually get coordinates.
We'll look at the venue, get the, uh, coordinate,
the run-in line with the venue,
uh, making sure that our coordinates match up.
And then we get all the coordinates
loaded up in the aircraft.
Then you have to look at your flight
and see what conflict you have
with air traffic control.
At NC State game,
we're in the airport traffic area.
We have to get clearance from them
to get in their area to fly over NC State.
So we have to coordinate that.
So that's one of the big things we have to do.
And then once you get the plan in
and get the times down,
and then we have a very detailed briefing card
that we send all our flight members.
So we have a checklist
and we print it out on what we call a "lineup card."
So one side of the lineup card has all of the--
Who's flying, in which position.
It has the-- the frequencies of the various places
we have to communicate with,
it has the-- the mission sequence,
the pictures of the formations we're gonna fly
all the way from beginning to end.
On the other side, it has the checklist.
So the checklist, we start with a-- a time hack,
so everybody's on the same time.
And we go through a lot of standard stuff,
like how we're gonna deal with airplanes,
you know, the-- by getting pre-flight done,
how we're gonna taxi, and all that kind of stuff.
That's all pretty standard.
Um, just basic stuff we do every flight.
And then we have a section about emergencies.
Now, that stuff we're not going to do on every flight.
We hope we never have to do it.
But we always have to cover it
so that if something were to happen in flight,
then it would be fresh in your mind
what you need to do,
like, where are the airfields that we can go to
when we're in our, uh, uh-- during our mission time frame?
And if something happens to an airplane,
how we're gonna handle it.
So, we-- we have all that section.
And then we have the meat of the mission section,
which is to say what are we doing today,
and how are we going to conduct that,
and what are we gonna do,
and how are we gonna accomplish it?
And then the other thing we always have to do,
if it's a big event over 30,000 people,
which would be the football games and NASCAR,
they make a temporary flight restriction.
Aircraft cannot fly over that event without authorization.
So we have to go to the TSA, make an application,
I have to show them every pilot,
where they were born, their social security number,
uh, an aircraft, where it's registered.
A lot of data has to go to them.
They come back and give us an approval
to go into that area.
So it starts usually a couple of weeks out
and then the week of,
we have to fill out our lineup card
to make sure we got the players in the right spots,
the coordinates are on the card,
and then, uh, the briefing is on the card as well.
And then the day of,
we're usually making the weather call,
uh, with the team chief,
and then we get together and we brief it up.
We tell everybody what they're gonna do precisely
in the formation.
Got me in the lead, um, by myself today,
we've got-- Ben's number two,
making everybody look good and in position.
Flash, you're gonna match him.
Jim, we've got you at number four
on the right side with Dan,
Um, Andy, you're number five on the left side,
back in the pit with the backup lead
in the columns, okay?
And here's the thing, I'm not exactly sure--
I know they're gonna be on this side of the runway.
We'll come back perpendicular this way,
circle first time 304,
keep it going, second time, 040.
Leave fairly tight,
make sure everybody's exiting the circle,
and I'm going to go straight down the runway,
uh, on 22 this time.
Offset, just slightly over the people.
Any questions with that?
And then the execution part of it
is the difficult part.
Uh, we get up there, we get into a holding pattern.
We've got a route of flight, we know our timing,
we're working ground speed versus winds
and all that other stuff to be on time.
And then you've got to get the s-- the formation
in the right formation,
30 seconds prior, lined up on the venue.
Smoke on.
If you've got any pyro or colored smoke,
it comes next.
And then if we're doing a bomb burst in a circle,
you're organizing all of that and adjusting that,
and then leaving the venue from the circle
and getting everybody joined back up
and getting them home safely.
♪
And look up in the sky and make some noise.
Let's hear it for the Bandit Flight Team
from Raleigh, North Carolina...
I'm trying to sound calm on the radio,
I was probably fooling everybody.
The planes look cool
and I just wanted to know more about them.
It's this formation team, they fly over NC State,
and I think that they would be great
for the opening of the Lineman Rodeo.
Plus, who doesn't love formation?
It's great to be a pilot,
but without the grounds crew and the support staff,
this show doesn't get off the ground.
Mark three minutes 'til flyover.
Copy three minutes.
The Bandits learned early on
that the ground controller was essential.
Uh, and that we wouldn't do anything
without a ground controller
to have that interface with the venue.
So those guys are just critical to the success of our flyover.
We're trying to hit the mission within four seconds.
Couldn't do it without them.
The national anthem,
we want to be right over the field
when they say, "Home of the brave."
We give ourselves four seconds, that's our window,
that's the goal line to midfield.
And we hit it about every time.
That's how sophisticated it is.
Yeah, uh, I went to NC State,
um, so my first event
was actually supposed to be a football game,
uh, but then the FAA shut down
all the flyovers at the time,
actually all the way to the event.
And so about a year later,
uh, ended up, uh, at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
It got rained out on Saturday, they pushed the event to Sunday
so the other coordinator had to leave.
So I was thrown into it automatically
and that end up being my first event coordinating.
I was extremely nervous,
um, because I had only shadowed a couple of times,
so doing it at a NASCAR event,
televised, front of tens of thousands of people.
I'm trying to sound calm on the radio,
I was probably fooling everybody.
Um, but it went over perfectly.
Afterwards, I was like, "This is nothing."
And it's been history ever since.
We were at a fly-in in Beaufort
and I saw them taxiing together
and I knew that they were gonna be flying formation
and I had not seen that before.
So the planes looked cool
and I just wanted to know more about them.
Well, my dad has been part of the team
for about four or five years now,
and I decided to take up flying about 2018,
so then I was like, "Why not?"
Sometimes, I plan an event,
sometimes Stephen plans an event.
Yeah, uh, once I know about where the venues at,
uh, time of day,
um, I kinda actually go on Google Earth
and look at the event 'cause I need to figure out
where do I want to be positioned
to get the best radio signal,
uh, where the performances are gonna be at,
um, just try to figure out
where to pos-- position myself physically,
then start working on the timing,
make sure I know how long the anthem's gonna be,
and start building up my time sheet.
We take an active role
in dealing with people on the ground at the event
to actually come together with the schedule.
Uh, from that point, obviously, we need to know the venue,
um, we need to know the direction of the flyover,
what looks the best,
and we need to know
if there's live music or if it's recorded.
We need to know when the music starts, that's--
You know, always starts with the national anthem,
so if it's a live singer, or if it's recorded,
it makes a big difference in timing.
So we ask, "When is it starting?
How long is it?"
And that tells us our first target time.
And there's always a second piece of music.
Uh, sometimes they speak
between the first and the second pass.
So we have to coordinate how much time
does the team need to turn around, for example,
because six planes flying in formation,
it takes three minutes and 30 seconds for them
just to turn around and get back to the same point.
Uh, if they're coming back from a different direction,
that's a factor.
For my timesheet, we got, um,
obviously a countdown starting at about
an hour out for each pass.
Uh, we also have a countdown for the anthem.
So we know roughly how long the anthem should be,
when it should be starting, when it should be ending.
Also, we have a countdown for the second pass
if there's one.
And, of course, that can be very fluid.
And also throwing their radio frequencies
just in case we ever have to switch over
to another frequency.
I have everybody in the flight, their positions,
so that way, if I need to call somebody out,
I know who's in that position to call them out.
Obviously we have a tripod which everything attaches to.
We got, uh, poles to boost up the antenna plate,
which, got an antenna plate
that has four small antennas on there.
And that also is where our big main antenna connects to.
And that antenna plate just helps increase the plane
for the radio frequency.
Uh, we also have multiple timers,
'cause you always want to have a backup just in case.
Uh, we have two radios, again, just in case one goes wrong.
And then we have just the hookups for your headset,
we-- um, for that extra batteries for the radio.
There's a lot.
That's about-- that's about the best way to describe it.
It's-- it's not the same for every event.
Well, sometimes some people decide
to start early, or they extend their music
a little too long and we have--
Often us ground controllers have to say, uh,
"You might want to delay, they're extending,"
or sometimes they don't start on time.
There's a lot of things that can go on
that cause quite a bit of a fuss, I would say.
And then we learned shortly thereafter
that it was really nice to have a ground controller
as what we like to call lead ground controller
in the lead aircraft,
working a separate timing and helping the flight lead
with timing and the avionics setup as well.
Um, and so we have now always assigned
a ground controller to fly with the flight lead
and help with orchestration
of coordination with the ground and mainly timing.
It's basically to be
a secondary voice in the backseat
to make sure that the lead pilot
has everything they need to be successful.
Ten seconds to national anthem start.
Are you-- Is that possible?
Yeah, that's possible.
Okay, ten seconds
to national anthem start.
Typically we're listening
for the controllers on the ground,
and I help the flight leader
by telling him his ground speed and calculating,
"Okay, you need to push it up or slow it down."
And typically with the time there is on our scopes,
it tells us, like, a time of ETE or ETA.
And it tells us how we try to match
the time with our clocks that we have
with the ground controller below.
Yeah, so it's just a standard timer,
but this one has three different times
it can keep track of, which works out great for us.
Because the first one is set to the initial TOT,
the second one is set to the national anthem,
and the third one is set to the second flyover.
And what's so special about
having the national anthem i-- on there
is that once the national anthem starts,
nothing else matters.
And we can use that time
to give the guys the most precise timing
they can get to be over the stadium on time.
Coming up on 45, mark 45.
Two miles out, we got a 60-degree turn,
go out four miles for our start point.
Why do you do a 60-degree turn?
We do that because we're not jets.
The jets can push the power up if they're behind
by ten, or 15 seconds, or 20.
Let's say they start early.
Oh, my goodness, now we're behind.
What do we do? We can cut the corner,
go 60 degrees, so we can cut the corner
and make up the time.
On the other hand,
we're coming in, they start late.
We can go away from the target and then eat up time.
So we found out that helps us a lot to adjust our time
at the last minute to make our flyover time.
... standing, coming over
the target now. Good job, guys.
Uh, the Russian Air Force,
the Soviet Air Force, uh, really didn't need
as man-- an-- as many as they had-- had ordered,
so they'd fly them 500 hours,
park the plane, and get a brand new one.
So when the wall came down,
there were a lot of 500-hour Yaks sitting around
at, uh, various fields in the Soviet Union.
And they were sold all over the world
at fairly inexpensive prices.
The Russians at that time, they didn't have any money.
So they were selling these airplanes cheap
and also, uh--
But they weren't flying them much because they had
no money to buy gas and fuel and maintenance
and all that kind of stuff.
They put, uh, US instruments in the front,
so instead of meters per second
and, uh, Russian instruments,
I've got, uh, US instruments in the front,
They rebuilt the engines,
so zero time on the engine, 500 hours in the airplane.
The airplane now has about, uh,
850 hours,
and, uh, the engine, 500 hours less than that.
A Yak's a lot easier to fly than it looks like.
You know, it's a big,
uh, tall on its landing gear plane.
It-- it looks, uh, uh, fairly challenging,
but it's really a-- a very straightforward
airplane to fly.
It's-- it's not heavy into controls,
but it's not light either.
And I like that because it's got a good feel to it.
With the right attitude, it takes off on its own.
Uh, you set the speed correctly on landing,
it will, uh, land nose up fairly gently.
You-- you know, on takeoff and landing, good visibility.
Fully aerobatic.
It's stressed to, uh, seven positive
and four negative G's,
and you can fly it inverted,
uh, negative G's, for about a minute,
which is a limitation on the engine.
This airplane has a-- all of the Yak 52's
and actually the Yak 55's,
M-- what's called an M14P.
It's a Vendeneyev, it's made by a Russian company,
and the name of the engine is a Vendeneyev,
and it's 360 horsepower.
Burns about 15, 16 gallons an hour in regular flight.
And aerobatics, do-- pulling some hard aerobatics with it,
it's probably burning more like 25 gallons an hour.
But-- but it's a regular engine, it has nine cylinders.
That means 18 spark plugs,
so, every year, when you do
the ins-- maintenance inspection on it,
18 spark plugs, they're not cheap.
Fortunately, we've got a good part source
in-- in the United States.
There's a woman who has a-- a shop in, uh, Arizona
and got all the parts, pieces, rebuilt the engine.
So we've got good maintenance.
I came home and told my wife,
"I think I'm gonna build an airplane" and she said,
"Don't you think you ought to get
your pilot's license first?"
♪
The plans are really good with these airplanes
and the-- and the support network
out there is tremendous.
Uh, you can get on the internet and have an answer
to any question you have
within minutes, if not sooner.
Um, and a lot of-- and a lot of cases people say,
"Hey, I'll just run over there and show you how to do it."
And so they'll run over and there's just
thousands of people building these things.
So building the airplane really isn't that difficult.
I tell most people that anybody can do it
as long as they have--
As long as they have some basic handyman skills.
You learn how to rivet.
It takes you a few hours
to learn how to rivet pretty good
and then you just do it 12,000 times.
And the airplane I fly and built, uh, is the RV-8A,
the Van's aircraft.
Um, and it's the A-model which means
that the nose gear is up front where it should be.
Uh, the tail guys may disagree with that,
but, uh, I think the tricycle gear is the best model.
So I fly the RV-8A.
We helped with some fiberglass work,
um, a little bit of that.
Mostly try to learn a lot about
what goes on in the engine.
Um, just a-- riveting, pop riveting,
doing stuff like that, um, doing-- using the deaver tool
and using that and just a lot of
different little eclectic skills.
The RV-4 is like flying a corvette.
I mean, it is so responsive, so fast.
It's got a lot of engines
so the thrust to weight ratio is-- is great.
That thing has so much power
for a little airplane that it's incredible.
It just wants to keep going up if you point it up.
The stick is so sensitive that it's just--
It's just point and shoot.
Wherever you put it, it's gonna go.
And it's responsive with the push tubes
that it has in it.
If there's no delay, no stretch, anything on it,
so it's just-- it's automatically responsive
no matter what you're doing to it.
For me, my wife and I have a rule.
I will not fly in an airplane I built.
So I went to a professional builder who built this,
it's a-- called RV-14.
It's the latest model. And that's what I have.
I love it. It's fully aerobatic.
It'll do loops, whatever you want to do.
It's got a smoke system which we use on our events.
And the other thing that I like about my aircraft
is its side by side seats.
Only got two seats, but my wife and I
use it a lot to travel 'cause it cruises 190 mph.
But I still wanted to scratch that itch a little bit
to where-- to get out and fly formation and high performance.
Uh, Spock knew a guy who was selling this airplane here.
And he said, "Hey, I'll get in touch with him
and see if he really wants to sell it."
Uh, when he got in touch with him-- he's a former
F-15 driver, so, uh, we knew each other
through the association of just being around base.
And when he loaned this airplane to me,
I bought it quickly.
Uh, you don't get a lot of these RV-8A's around
and when I did acquire it, I'm like-- I knew exactly
what I wanted to do: join the Bandits.
Oh, that's a trade secret. I can't tell you that.
No. No, really, it's not that complicated.
It's normal in the, um, air show business
and we have special oil that's clear
and we buy-- we got tanks of it,
called smoke oil,
and we have tanks inside the aircraft and we load it up.
I have about a five-gallon container.
And that smoke oil, we inject into the exhaust,
and the exhaust vaporizes it and makes smoke.
And that's how it's done.
Now, a lot of people say, "Can you have colored smoke?"
Because some jets can. Well, the jets have the exhaust
at the end of the airplane and they inject
their-- their oil out the back and they put a color in it.
But ours is up front engine where the exhausts are.
So if we put a dyed color in there,
it would dye the airplane that color.
So, naturally, we can't use color smoke,
we just use white smoke
which just comes out of the clear oil.
And a hawk comes
straight through the front windshield.
We have procedures in case
something happens to your airplane,
how you pull up and out of the formation.
Everybody knows what it is.
So we really do practice for that
to make sure that it doesn't turn into something that--
Some catastrophic event.
We also designate one of the aircraft
to be a chase in case we have any kind of issues or problem.
They will go with that aircraft.
We cover any type of emergency we might have.
We go over all the airports near us
where you can go if something happens.
And that training has to do with going back
and repeating the maneuvers over a couple of times
to see that everybody's kind of fresh with it.
And if not, we go do it some more, you know,
so, uh, safety's our number one thing, I mean...
This is a lot of fun, but we call it serious fun.
We're real serious about it.
We were doing a flyover over Dorton arena
in, uh, Raleigh, and, uh, we were coming over
in a six ship formation, delta formation,
and we were just about over the target.
Uh, we were getting ready to turn on smoke
and a hawk comes straight through the front windshield.
It blew out about 75% of my windshield.
It came between my head and my son's head,
and my son was with me that day.
He was three years old at the time.
And it came right between us
and ended up in the baggage compartment of the aircraft.
I immediately pulled out of the flight
and, since we were so close to the target area,
I had my finger on my smoke button,
so I immediately turned on my smoke just from the flinch.
And, uh-- and so I was trailing smoke.
We were pretty close to Raleigh, Durham.
I announced on the, uh, radio to Raleigh
to clear their runways, I'm coming in.
Really couldn't hear much, because the wind was so violent
in the aircraft, but we landed safely,
and once we got on the ground
I could talk to the tower controllers,
and they were telling me, "Pilot, shut down your engine,
get out of your plane," and I was like,
"No, just tell me where to taxi."
The reason they were saying that
is because I was trailing smoke, they thought
I was on fire. And so, uh, they were rolling the fire trucks.
We landed safely, um, everything
turned out about as good as it could possibly turn out.
Yeah, um, it was an NC state fly-by
and we were holding right there off of Highway 64
and the intersection of US-1.
And we always coordinate with Raleigh approach control, uh,
so they have a squawk and they can see us
and deconflict with obstacles and aircraft.
And they called out traffic
that didn't have a squawk.
So this drone was large enough
for them to get a radar ping off of.
That tells you how big it was.
They said, "You have traffic one mile co-altitude,"
and I'm looking and I don't see it.
Again, it's very small, but it's still
very large at the same time.
And then when I do pick it up it goes right by me
in our formation and near misses three of us
as it goes in between us.
So we filed a report with the FAA and Raleigh
right there and, remember, they're not supposed to be
above 400 feet, and he was at 1,000.
And we almost had a near mid-air with a drone.
♪
My grandmother said a long time ago
the-- you know, "An idle mind is the devil's playground.
You need to have a goal, you need to have a purpose,
and you need to have a mission."
So our organization, uh, does hands-on community service.
It's basically food, toys, house.
We build houses if you're injured in combat operations,
or houses go to the family of the fallen.
Uh, we're in the Guinness Book of World Records
for largest toy drive,
we're in the Guinness Book of World Records
for largest food drive.
In other words, everything we do
is hands-on community service.
So what happens is in the past
we had-- we had been nominated, our organization,,
for the US Presidential Volunteer Service Award
for missions that we had done.
This comes from the White House.
And then we noticed some of the groups around us,
especially the Bandit flight team, um,
that we need to nominate these guys.
We'd only known them for so long, you know,
only for, you know, so many years and said,
these guys have been giving back, doing the mission,
uh, flying for the flag as part of their-- their motto.
Uh, and not only have they flown for us,
we've also put wounded warriors,
gold star families, spouses, you name it,
and have flown with this-- with, you know,
they say ride-alongs, I guess you would say,
like the police do.
They've done these ride-alongs and-- and these guys,
um, didn't have to do this, and realize that these guys
don't get paid to do this.
They're using their own aircrafts, their own fuel,
and they want to give back in some sort of way.
And it's more than just--
Than these guys just flying over.
To see the look on someone's face afterwards
when they've gone up with these guys,
this euphoria that happens to them,
and you bring someone like a-- a fallen wife
on that aircraft, or if you fly the ashes
of someone's relative,
that's-- that's important to them.
And not only did they get this award
from the White House, but also two US Senators
stepped in from North Carolina
and also gave them recognition.
So we are very grateful the-- for the Bandit flight team
that flies these flights for the flag,
that flies these missions for our hero homes
for Operation Coming Home, for the fallen,
and also for combat-injured troops.
And we will see these guys again on December 22nd
when they're gonna fly for a gold star family,
a green beret that was killed in combat operations,
and we're giving away the house to the wife and daughter.
And the Bandit flight team not only is gonna fly over,
they're gonna do the missing man formation
with his ashes.
♪
And we want to thank you guys very much.
We're eternally grateful for you guys.
Thank you very much, Andrew.
We really are very honored to receive this award.
It means a lot to us and it blends right in
with our motto, which is, "flying for the flag."
That's what we do,
saluting our military men and women,
so we are so honored to receive this award.
We did not even know we were nominated.
We just got a call that we had been
presented this award
and that was from you, Andrew, you nominated us and put us in.
We certainly appreciate that. It came quite unexpectedly.
We looked forward to flying with your group,
saluting our returning members,
and you did such a wonderful job
of donating houses.
This will be house number 24.
So we're looking forward to that.
And like I said, we are very honored
and thank you very much.
♪
National anthem is about to start.
So for the ground controllers,
uh, you don't need to be a pilot, um,
for-- obviously, if you're gonna be on the flying side,
you need to be a pilot and you need to have, uh, a plane,
and we have requirements on the planes.
Um, it has to be, uh, a completely clear
canopy over-- over top, um,
generally a low-wing, you know, type of thing,
not a high-wing, uh, aircraft.
Uh, we have certain engine requirements,
and then there's the additional training,
but we do have some people that were just
good civilian pilots that we brought in
and we provided them the formation training
and the training of the team
to be able to make them formation pilots.
But if you want to be a ground controller,
you don't need to be a pilot, but...
enjoying flying is a definite bonus.
Two and a half years ago, I switched over
to become a commercial pilot.
I quit selling circuit boards for 20 years,
because this is really my passion.
I just love doing this stuff.
If you want to do something
and you have the passion to do it, you can do it.
Stay involved.
Um, when you're involved, you'll figure out
exactly what it is you're passionate about.
I-- I'm a lucky guy, I say it all the time.
I get to work inside my passion,
so when I go to work, we teach the young members
of the Air Force how to employ the Strike Eagle,
how to train the Strike Eagle,
and that's a passionate job for me and I love it.
The most important thing is knowing what you wanna do.
No one's gonna help you
do something you don't want to do.
When you're passionate about what it is you do and you try
to be the best at what you are, then other people see that
and they want to climb on board with you
and they want to help you achieve those goals.
So once you figure out that you know exactly
what it is you want to do,
everything else becomes, uh, just a goal-getting point.
Small goals first, then large goals,
and they may even change along the way,
but hit those small goals,
build that confidence, you know what you can do.
You may not have an airplane,
but you can go to the airport and find somebody
that does have an airplane that'll take you up and fly.
Um, Haroun, Abigail, I mean,
all of our ground crew,
a lot of those people don't have airplanes.
And so they've come on,
they've been able to find a position
here in the Bandit group.
We all take them under our wing,
we take them up flying.
Eventually, many of them will get their own airplane
and we'll train them up to fly as Bandits.
The Bandits have definitely influenced my decision
to be a pilot, and as--
I guess refined it, in a way.
So I decided to take a gap year, actually,
from high school, um, from that summer of 2018.
I started flying in May
and then I went on a mission trip,
so I had to take a two-week break,
and then I soloed right afterwards.
So, in general, it does,
I would say, take quite a bit of maturity,
but also, it takes a lot of guts.
I would love to be a missionary pilot.
That is something that I have laid--
Been laid on my heart since 2016, actually,
and I didn't think, again, I would be a pilot.
But to get there, well, I mean,
I'm looking at being an airline pilot.
I'm also looking at joining the guard unit.
I have looked into being a CFI,
which I hope to complete again by 2022.
Um, that is something that has inspired me,
but also, again, the end goal to all this,
the reason I want to be a pilot is so that
I could be a missionary pilot.
I'm proud to be a first generation American
that was invited to work with this team.
I think that this is one of the best, um,
volunteer jobs I've ever had in my life.
And to be honest with you, being able to see the world
in a different perspective, whether it's over an event,
or just flying to an event,
is something that I cherish every single day.
If you find a team that is local to your area,
I would recommend, uh, reaching out,
you could go to their websites,
they should have contact information,
say that you want to volunteer.
And then from there they should be able to provide you
with some opportunities that you'll be able to.
They need people like ground coordinators
and other people who are going to be those
kind of key personnel that keeps the wheels going.
You know, you think about it, you're talking about
a time commitment and a financial commitment,
and being away from your family.
So it's really something that you have to be committed to
and-- and really want to be a part of.
Always comes to mind is age.
Age and flying.
"How much longer can you do this?
What business have you got flying formation
when you're 86 years old?"
Uh, I claim to be,
as far as I know, the oldest active formation pilot around.
I can't prove that, but, uh, it may or may not be.
Uh, and people don't ask the question,
but there's always this unspoken question about,
"How long can you do this?"
I don't really worry about it very much.
I plan for the next month, the next mission.
Hopefully the next season.
I know, when it comes time to quit,
hopefully I'll know that.
But also I'm flying with nine other guys
who won't hesitate to tell me when it's time to quit.
The Bandits are just a great group to fly with.
I-- I really enjoy the guys that I fly with.
I enjoy doing the events and it's--
It's about much more than just flying the event.
We just have a good time together.
For us, we enjoy the flying,
it's a lot of fun, it's what we call serious fun,
because it's a very serious thing.
We never take it lightly, we never take it for granted.
We always keep it serious,
but it's fun at the same time.
Now, some of the events are super meaningful,
because they have so much meaning
for the people on the ground.
For us, when we do the flyover,
it's not like business, it's like fun business,
if you would, but it's-- it's always kind of the same for us.
We're doing the flyover, we're conducting the mission,
you know, it's like, uh--
It's like you have your game face on, we're doing our thing.
But for the people on the ground,
and-- and if you've been there for the people on the ground,
you'll see what a--
What a really special thing it is.
♪ O'er the land ♪
♪ Of the free ♪
♪ And the home ♪
♪ Of the brave ♪
♪