A vintage air tour outfit helps one pilot return to the skies in aerial combat.

By Ralph Wetterhahn

One of my wife’s favorite quips is, “You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever.” I’m sure that thought crossed her mind when I announced I had agreed to once again take to the skies in aerial combat.

Barnstorming Adventures is the oldest and largest vintage air tour outfit in the country and operates out of McClellan-Palomar Airport near Carlsbad, Calif. Owned by two aviation nuts, Kate Lister and Tom Harnish, its ad reads, “Real dogfights in real aircraft. You do much of the flying. No pilot’s license required. Make an Ace of yourself.” Naturally, I was hooked.

Saturday dawned bright and cloud-free, so off I roared down the freeway, sporting a flight suit that hadn’t been upside down in 23 years. With quirky humor, Barnstorming Adventures’ Web site warns clients:

In over thirteen years in business and after flying more than 80,000 passengers, we’ve never scratched a soul. But in the same period, we’ve had forty-two people not show up for their flights due to car accidents.

Whoa, better slow down!

At the airport an hour later, I checked in at the pilot shop. The attendant thrust a two-page waiver at me. Customers must initial enough caveats to permit unrestricted assaults on the body.

Put something in your stomach before you fly. Try bananas if you think you’ll get queasy (they look and taste the same coming up as they do going down). And by all means, don’t go out on a bender the night before your flight. It’s the surest way we know to guarantee you’ll blow chunks (that’s an aviation technical term).

With my rights duly signed away, it was still early, so I wandered around the aircraft: two 1920s-era Travel Air 4000 biplanes, a 1941 Navy SNJ-4 (better known as an AT-6 Texan),
a 1942 twin-engine C-45 Expediter, and three 1978 Varga VG-21s. The latter are the two-seater planes we’d be using. Made by Varga Aircraft Corp. and powered by a single 150 HP Avco Lycoming engine, their top speed is 174 mph. The g-limit is 6.0 positive and 3.0 negative — more than enough to compress these old bones!

After a few minutes, my pilot arrived and introduced himself as Mo. Then my dogfight opponent appeared, looking very Italian and with two days’ stubble gracing his dark chin. “I’m Carmine,” he allowed (not his real name). Carmine, it turns out, is from New York. When I mentioned I was writing a feature on the flight, he declined to give his last name, said he didn’t want his photo used either. Yikes!

Lt. Brandon “Jed” Tucker would be Carmine’s pilot and safety observer. Jed is an experienced F/A-18 fighter pilot on active duty with the Navy. It turns out Mo is Maj. J. Cody Allee (pronounced like Muhammad Ali, hence the nickname), also on active duty, but with the Marine Corps. He, too, is an F/A-18 pilot. They both currently have desk jobs, so Uncle Sam gave them permission to keep up their flying skills by doing part-time work with Barnstorming. But as the briefing proceeded, it became clear that both Carmine and I would be doing the high-performance stuff. Mo used model aircraft to demonstrate the twists and turns we’d be making to get at each other’s six o’clock. High-speed and low-speed “yo-yo” maneuvers were the main ingredients.

Barnstorming Adventures’ mission is to avoid having a real mission statement, or, God forbid, wear pantyhose. In the end, our mission is just like everyone else’s — Get Cookie. Eat Cookie. Get More Cookies.

Fifteen minutes later, I was strapping into the rear cockpit of our Varga when Jed stopped by and thumbed toward my competitor in the other plane, “Go easy on him.” Was that a request or a threat? “No problem,” I blurted. Indeed, Carmine was going to be a clear winner in this dust up. Soon we were taxiing onto the runway for a formation takeoff. Suddenly, I was back two decades as we zoomed into the air with Jed tucked tight on our wing, climbing into a sunlit sky, out above a low coastal fog, and into the offshore training area. Glorious!

After a few minutes of hands-on flying to get the feel of the machine, Mo directed me south while our opponents headed north. Then we did 180-degree turns and came full-power toward each other with enough lateral spacing to keep from smacking head-on.

As our wingtips passed, Jed transmitted, “Fight’s on!” I banked, but kept the plane level to see how Carmine handled the “yo-yo.” The Varga is a dream to fly and turns so tight you feel like you’re doing it inside your garage. Carmine did just fine and after about two full circles was inside gun range behind us. “Rat-a-tat-tat,” Jed radioed.

We split up again, and now my ego took hold. As we reversed, then passed wings, I rolled high into a notch-cutter of a turn and within 30 seconds was camped behind Carmine. One quick adjustment to set the nose for a gun shot, and Mo made the “rat-a-tat-tat” call.

On our third go at it, I decided to let Carmine reclaim his chops. Soon, he was working his way behind our wing line. Mo called over the intercom, “Stretch this one out a little.” With that, I pulled the nose up and tightened the turn. Carmine crossed behind our tail. “Let’s see how he handles a reversal,” I said to Mo, then rolled the other way. I guess that tumbled Carmine’s internal gyro, because the resulting scissor-like maneuver spit him out front, and Jed cried “Knock it off.” Bananas, anyone?

On our way home, Mo let me fly formation on Jed’s wing. The old sensations came rushing back as I used delicate stick and throttle movement to maintain position. After holding for a few minutes, we were cleared to land. Mo then made a greaser of a touchdown, and the adventure ended.

Afterwards, Kate wanted to know how I felt about the whole thing.

If we did something that made you mad please call Phil at 1-760-438-7680. There’s no one here by that name, but that way we’ll know why you’re calling.

Complain? Hey, I got home in one piece!