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JOINT SERVICE OPEN HOUSE
Andrews' Annual 3-Day Air Extravaganza
Friday, May 15, 2009
Andrews Air Force Base is hosting the annual Joint Service Open House Air Show this weekend. Today's show is open only to Department of Defense workers and their families or to sponsored school groups. The public is invited to attend tomorrow and Sunday. Admission is free.
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Greg Poe flies his ethanol-fueled Fagen MX-2 high-performance plane. He will be one of the attractions at the Joint Service Open House this weekend. |
Because of security concerns and limited parking, guests cannot park at Andrews. Shuttle buses will run from FedEx Field parking lots and the Branch Avenue Metro station. Check 301-981-4600 for delays or cancellations due to weather or other circumstances.
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Aerobatic Experts take to the skies
Civilian performers put twists, turns into flying at Cecil Field AirShow
By TIMOTHY J. GIBBONS
The Times-Union
The gauge measuring the pressure of gravity edged past 5 G's as Greg Poe pulled his ethnaol-fueld plane out of a dive, looping upside down hundreds of feet above the ocean.
Purpose-built for aerobatics, the MX-2 can flip and whirl at blinding speeds - rolling through a complete turn in about three-quarters of a second, for example.
Poe was showing off stuff from his tamer side this week, though, rather than things like the 10-G tumble he might perform this weekend. |
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"I do very aggressive flying," Poe siad. "That's how you make it best for the audience." Poe, who has been doing aerobatics for years after falling in love with flying as a teenager, is one of several dozen performers scheduled for this weekend's Cecil Field AirShow. The show will be at the Westside airfield from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
The event builds upon the Air Fest the Jacksonville Aviation Authority has held for the past two years in conjunction with Fly, Drive, Ride for MS, a nonprofit that raises money for multiple sclerosis research.
Fly, Drive, Ride also is involved this year, holding an automobile show and motorcycle poker run. The Jacksonville chapter of the Antique Automobile Club of America will have its show at Cecil on Saturday, with admission included in the AirShow entrance price.
The riding portion of the weekend - a $15 poker run organized by the Silverbacks Riding Club - will be Sunday beginning at the Red Zone Grill on Beach Boulevard and finishing at the AirShow.
The big draw, though, will be the aviators zooming by overhead. Unlike the other big Jacksonville-area air shows, most of the performers will be civilians, donating their services to help raise money for the Alan Henley Trust Fund, benefiting an aviator who was paralyzed last year.
Henley, the lead pilot for the AeroShell Aerobatic Team, was injured while playing with his kids. After he fell from a chinup bar that gave way, Henley received severe neck injuries that left him paralyzed from the chest down.
"It's a very unique business to be in," said Poe, comparing the crew to a family. "We didn't have any problems getting performers."
Most of those performing knew Henley personally, be it from hanging out at shows or taking lessons from him.
"Everyone here Alan touched in one way or another," said Greg Gibson, a pilot who works with Poe and Henley. Gibson had taken lessons with the injured man.
"It's all about family," he said. "That's why there'll be more people here than any other single air show."
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Flight set course for aerobatics
Skills on display at N'awlins Air Show
By PAUL PURPURA
West Bank bureau
It was the 1960's and the nation's space program was getting off the ground when Greg Poe first felt the draw to aviation. He wanted to become a pilot.
He worked part-time jobs to save enough money to pay for flight school and get a pilot's license, he said. But it was one fligt that pointed him in the direction that would eventually lead him to become a professional air show performer: His flight instructor showed him aerobatics.
"That was all it took, just one ride, and I was completely hooked," Poe said. "From there on out, that's where all my spare change went, flying aerobatic airplanes."
Flying about 35 years and now backed by a sponsor, Fagen, Inc., Poe, 55, will be among the civilian and military acts this weekend at the N'Awlins Air Show at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in Belle Chasse.
Headlined by the Navy's Blue Angels flight demonstration team, the show also features performaces by an Air Force F-22 Raptor and the Army's Golden Knights free-fall parachute team. Admission is free. Gates open at 7 a.m.
It is Poe's fourth performance at the N'Awlins Air Show, one of about 23 hair-raising shows he does every year in North America, dazzling crowds with loops, rolls, and "gyroscopic maneuvers" that give the appearance his airplace is out of control.
"That's the crowd-pleaser," Poe siad.
The performances, he said, are "an expression of one's personality,"
"That's a pretty awesome thing, especially at my age, to go out and express yourself before millions of people each year. Pretty rewarding."
While his instructor left him with a lasting impression, Poe hasn't been a stunt pilot from the beginning. He managed a telecommunications company in Idaho for about a decade, reporting to on office everyday in a suit and tie, he said. He had an array of pilot's jobs, too, from towing gliders and advertising banners to flying charters to Idaho's back country. He's been a flight instructor, and he was a test pilot about a year.
"I tried just about everything I could to keep me flying," Poe said. He's been performing in air shows about 17 years now, traveling the North American air show circuit that his ear will keep him away from his Boise, Idaho, home for six months.
And at each stop, Poe tries to meet with elementary students as part of his "Elevate Your Life" program, sharing a message with youth about drug abuse. He lost a son to drug use, he said, but his discussion primarily are motivational.
"The message is really, follow your dreams," Poe said, adding that he tells the youths to find their passions and interests "that they can't get their mind off of."
"That's what I encourage them to pursue," he said.
This is Poe's third air show season in which he has partnered with Fagen, Inc., a Granite Falls, Minn., company that designs and builds facilities to produce "green" alternative fuels, whether ethanol or wind power.
As such, he said, his MX-2 airplane, called the Fagen Edge, was modified by Fagen to use ethanol. It is the only airplane on the air show circuit that uses ethanol, he said.
"We get more horsepower, our engine runs cooler," Poe said. "You go through all the technical part of the advantages, but what's really nice is we're on the leading edge of promoting an alternative fuel."
The promotional aspect aside, Poe said the sponsorship enables him to pursue his love of aerobatic flight. Before partnering with Fagen, Poe was sponsored by a computer memory chip manufacturer about five years.
Many civilian performers fly on a part-time basis, working other jobs because they "cannot make money to pay the bills," Poe said. Others attempt to fly full-time without sponsorship, but "they just scrape by a living," he said. Few performers have sponsors. In his case, Poe travels with two airplanes and a crew of four.
"We're very fortunate," he said. "I cannot imaging being without a sponsorship."
He said he knows, because he performed about 10 years without one.
"That's not something I care to go back to," he said with a laugh.
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High-Flying Preview
Greg Poe will pilot his ethanol-powered MX-2 aircraft on soaring, tumbling aerobatic maneuvers at the Wings Over Wine County Air Show on Saturday and Sunday at Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma Count Airport.
Poe's passenger on a test run Thursday was Kipp Brewer, 15, who was selected for the ride by the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Santa Rosa. A 20-year air show circuit veteran, Poe takes teenagers on the rides of their lives to promote his Elevate Your Life program encouraging middle school-age children to acheive their dreams.
This year's show features military jet demonstrations, precision aerobatic flying, a wing walker and more than a dozen vintage warbirds taking flight, as well as aircraft displays and aviation memorabilia. Gates open both days at 9 a.m. with the main events taking off at 11 a.m.
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