Gray Skies Don’t Deter Air Buffs About A Thousand Visitors Viewed Stunt Pilots, Wing Walkers, Wwii Planes And Model Planes
Penny Simonson waited patiently beneath drizzle and forbidding clouds Sunday while her husband videotaped World War II bombers and hightech jets spouting billowy streaks of smoke.
All she really cared about were the Daring Damsels - flighty gals who graced an air show at Felts Field standing on the wings of 100-mph biplanes.
“Wing walkers! I mean, how often to you get to see something like that in Spokane? It’s great entertainment,” said Simonson, a Spokane resident.
About 1,000 attendants gawked and applauded as the famed Damsels streaked across gray skies.
Other airplane aficionados - ranging from 6-year-old wannabe pilots to retired aviators in full military garb - toured rescue planes on display near the runway.
Because of the gray day, turnout at Magic of Flight ‘95 was about half of what it was for last year’s air show, organizers and attendants said. Men in flip-flops and kids in shorts huddled beneath wings of display planes and gulped cups of coffee and hot chocolate to insulate against blustery winds.
After watching stunt runs by the Gee Bee R-2, the state Department of Natural Resources Water Bomber and the P-51 Mustang, ubiquitous father-son pairs made their way to the model airplane tent.
The display featured mini-airplanes such as Doug Hunt’s 2-foot-long, radiocontrolled F14 Tomcat, valued at $3,500.
Hunt, a Spokane resident who doesn’t have his pilot’s license, flies replica jets at Deer Park Airport.
The minis are so close to the real thing that they quench his would-be pilot tendencies, he said.
“This plane can do everything that Maverick and Goose’s jet did. That’s how advanced it is,” Hunt said, referring to characters in the movie, “Top Gun.”
Model airplanes even mimic the gutwrenching stress pilots feel when a plane begins spinning out of control, he said. Hunt has crashed about a dozen planes in his 14 years of flying, and said “a deep, sinking feeling in the stomach” accompanies every crash.
“The guy who taught me to fly had some good advice: If you’re afraid to crash it, don’t build it. All planes will crash sooner or later,” he said.
Hunt wasn’t the only person to wax philosophic about winged machines.
Glen Balison of Sandpoint learned to fly in the ‘80s and was at Felts Field to indoctrinate his 5-month-old daughter, Jessica, to the mystical world of aviation.
He assumes that his daughter will have her private pilot’s license by the time she’s 17, and looks forward to taking her up with him within the next six months.
What’s the fascination?
“I don’t know if that’s something I can explain,” Balison answered slowly.
“You have to be a pilot to understand the sensation. It’s close to euphoria when you’re in the air.”
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