LoPresti Newsletter Sept 2008

Wichita Air Festival

September 1st, 2008

After sitting and waiting for fog to lift, I was finally on my way to Wichita, KA for a unique event. The Festivals Committee of Wichita along with sponsoring aircraft MFG and others put on an Air Festival for the city. Given that a lot of these people are our customers, David LoPresti joined me there to narrate the Fury show and meet various people. David is a whirlwind; he never stops. Every time I turned around he was trading biz cards and talking to someone about LoPresti -- way to go Dave! From the minute we both got there things were popping. We toured the Mid-Continent Instruments facility, met with Don Grunke from Concord Batteries and were introduced to the show staff. Mid-Continent supplies the Fury's Gyros and, as I have said before, I can do point rolls with the Gyro Horizon they make. I never gave much thought to batteries until I lost the Fury's alternator last year. You see the Fury is electric; flaps, cowl flaps, landing gear, avionics, instruments, warning lights, the pilot, OK OK I'm just electrifying hahahaha. The Concord battery carried the load for the lost alternator all the way from Vero Beach to OSH and never missed a beat. I was impressed.

The unique thing about this show is the Festivals staff. Almost all of them worked for Hawker/Beech, Cessna, Boeing, Learjet etcetera. I gave a talk on Saturday morning and the person in charge was Lori who is the Production Marketing Manager of the Cessna CJ series. AJ, who was in charge of the air show performers, is an executive with Cessna; most were involved with major aircraft manufacturers. All of these companies had catered challises along the flight line for their employees and customers to enjoy the show. There was also a Friday night show, very enjoyable.

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Friday was a great day. The Fury and I danced three times. The first flight was for an NBC TV interview. The interviewer loved airplanes. He did an excellent job with his interview and that made the Air Festival people very happy. The second flight was called practice but was actually for a zillion children that the Festival brought out to encourage aviation. I talked to a number of them and yes, it worked.

What a great way to get kids interested in aviation. The crème de la crème of the day was the late evening show. The Fury and I flew at 7:45 to 8:00 PM. Man, it's the perfect time of the day to fly in August. The air was so smooooooooth and full of life. The sun was setting, the temps had cooled, ohhhhh yes a filmmakers dream delight. Golden Hour. The Fury and I played in front of the crowd with Ted Nugent's "Stranglehold" playing through my Lightspeed Zulu headset.

I didn't think the Zulu model could be better than my last headset, but it is. It weighs nothing and the sound, WOW! I actually fly my acro low-level show with the noise-canceling feature turned off so I can hear the engine and speed changes. With the noise canceling feature on you can't hear anything but the music and communications. Yes, I rely on the sounds of speed change, the engine and prop for my show. I very rarely look at the instruments during my acro show. I check airspeed and altitude in the top of vertical maneuvers and will glance at the engine instruments when inverted. Other than that, the Fury and I talk to and play with each other. It tells me what it likes and doesn't like and I tell it what I want it to do. Once I check the airspeed for gear speed, I very seldom look again. It's all feel from there to landing. The Fury is a great talker. Life is great!

Saturday before the air show briefing David gave one of our 4 light hats to the Air Boss, Wayne Boggs, the guy that controls the show. Wayne loved the hat and used it during the briefing, turning on the red lights to get the briefing started and the white to emphasis an important point or idea. The show performers got a kick out of it and yessssssss we got many request for the LoPresti lighted hats. I told them to go to the website, they could order them there, that we didn't bring many.

The show went off without a hitch; great show from beginning with the American flag jump to the closing with the F-22. Man, I'm glad the F-22 is on our side; I sure wouldn't want it hunting me. One variation to my show was at the end. I got to race an Indianapolis 500 car from the mid 60's. The Indy car was one that an old friend had raced, Bobby Unser. Bobby was there and it was great seeing him and Lisa, his wife. She is fun. Bobby, Lisa, David and I sat in our car and talked about racing and the Fury before he was introduced to the crowd. OH, who won? Well it was a set up race, naturally. They were trying to think up ways to make it work so we were together in front of the crowd. I told them that this type of thing wasn't my first redo and explained that I would tell them when to release the Indy car and I would join up on him and fly formation down the runway. I also said that when we did it on Sunday I would win. Hahahaha.

The Sunday show was a successful repeat of the previous two days. My morning, however, was full. I had every show performer there wanting a tour of the Fury. Patty Wagstaff, Juile Clark, the Aeroshell team, the Red Eagles and others including Bobby Unser got the tour. Several asked if we were going to put a team together in the future. I said, "That's a great idea, how many do you want to order and what paint scheme should they be?" I know there will be several Fury acts around the country when we start building them. They all agreed, Roy had it right with the Fury; everyone wants a Ferrari with wings.

I headed home after the last flight of the day and must say it was one of those magical flights. The weather was cool with a scattered cloud base starting about 3,000 FT and topping about 14,000 FT. The clouds were unbelievable, that is they were vertical columns and placed like a maze so that I could fly around and between them. I climbed to 9,500 FT and had the time of my life flying and rolling between them while playing my tunes from the Intuition IPOD system. Yes, I always stayed the proper distance from said clouds. I didn't want any surprises. I passed a dry front about 70 miles north of Dallas and, WOW, the temps changed. I went from low 80's in Wichita to high 90's in seconds. When I was 50 miles out I started letting down and let the airspeed wind up to 230 KTS indicated. About 20 miles out, a Cessna 310 was informed by the tower that I was at his 9 o'clock position and 1000 FT below him. He replied that he would watch for me so he didn't run over me. The tower replied, "Don't worry, you aren't going to catch him, he's doing 250 KTS across the ground." The only thing I heard after that was from the 310, he said “WOW, that thing moves." The guys in the McKinney tower are fantastic, they make you feel wanted, every time I come back they always say "Fury 217LP, welcome home, when can I get a ride."

Till our next adventure,
"Corkey"

J.W."Corkey" Fornof