As the last eight words, “…land of the free home of the brave,” sung a capella by Jake Edvenson, Nate Everett, Emily Firstbrook and Abby Chase, drifted across the airfield, the throaty engine of the bright red 1940 Boeing Stearman could be heard revving up at the opposite end of the 6,350-foot strip of concrete, just before it raced by the crowd and leapt into the air.
Pulling back on the stick, Watsonville’s diminutive Vicky Benzing (www.vickybenzing.com), guided the old barnstorming biplane high above the tarmac trailing a long, corkscrew tail of white smoke in a series of awe-inspiring maneuvers defying gravity and g-forces most humans will never experience.
And so began two days of thrills, laughs, and downright inspirational flying that made up the annual Hollister Fathers’ Day Weekend Airshow.
Benzing has become a fixture at the Hollister airshow and she has said in the past it’s one of her favorite airports at which to perform. A world-renowned stunt pilot, she also races jets, which are sometimes maintained at the Hollister Airport. All in all, she has more than 7,000 hours of flight time. She also likes to leap out of airplanes, accumulating more than 1,200 jumps as a skydiver. She could be called a thrill seeker or even action junkie, but she is definitely the real deal when it comes to seat-of-the-pants flying.
Later in the show, Benzing performed again, this time in her modified German-built Extra 300S. This time, though, not everything went as planned and she had to cut her routine short and landed. No one in the crowd knew just how dicey her situation had just been as she pulled into the hangar at the north end of the airport.
“My magneto backed itself out of the engine during my flight and the temps started to skyrocket and oil went everywhere,” she wrote in an instant message to BenitoLink. “It was the smell of hot oil that really told me I had a problem.”
Down safe on the ground with her plane tucked away in the hangar, the show went on without further mishaps. Mike Chambless, airport manager, commented that Benzing is a great inspiration for girls of all ages, projecting the message that they can do anything.
“I saw her spend a lot of time with the youth, talking and inspiring them to dream big,” he wrote in an email, and then also commented about 80-year-old Dr. Frank Donnelly, known in the air as Dr. D, who began flying only after retiring from practicing medicine, “This is Dr. D’s last year. His abilities that he demonstrated were amazing. All the other airshow pilots each year secretly tell me that he is the one they want to watch.”
During a KSBW Action News 8 interview, Benzing said, “The best part of the whole show is interacting with the kids, telling them they can be anything they want to be when they grow up. The sky is the limit.”
What had to be the most unusual performance came from a “hillbilly” duo who go by the moniker, Alabama Boys, and are actually from Alabama. A product of Greg Koontz Airshows, the two Alabama Boys put on a demonstration of redneck kitsch and pretty impressive flying skills that bordered on suicidal to the strains of Lynard Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.”
Billing his routine as “good old-fashioned family entertainment in the best flying circus tradition,” Koontz and company played up to the audience with a drawn-out gag that involved a supposed non-pilot commandeering a plane and taking it up in a solo aerobatic routine, often flying sideways and conducting maneuvers that should have resulted in crashes, but didn’t. The act climaxed with Koontz landing the bright yellow 1946 Piper J-3 Cub on top of a pickup truck as it sped down the runway. Later, he took off from said truck, flying straight up.
“The Alabama Boys had the crowd on their feet and laughing for their whole show,” Chambless said via email. “Greg Koontz demonstrated amazing skill in making the Cub dance around the sky. His ability to land on a moving truck with a crosswind was truly a magnificent feat.”
Later in the day, Kevin Walker, of Fox 3 Warbirds, who flew F-4 Phantoms as a Marine, streaked back and forth at more than 400 miles per hour in an L-39C Albatross, a high performance jet built in Czechoslovakia, while casually talking with the announcer on the ground over the loudspeakers as they worked the crowed to become part of the act.
Between aerial acts, on the tarmac, burning tires and screaming Haley-Davidson engines engaged the crowd as Jason Pullen and his crew of stunt drivers of Jason Pullen Stunts, put the motorcycles through wheelies and even flips. The act also included 8-year-old daredevil, A.J. Heinicke, who performs many of the same stunts as the adults. He has his own company, AJ Stuntz, and has been performing with Pullen for the past couple years.
The airshow also presented inspirational flybys by various warbirds, including five gleaming World War II-era P-51D Mustangs. One of the intricate flight patterns they conducted was the missing man formation, an aerial salute often performed as part of a fly-past of aircraft at a funeral or memorial in memory of a fallen pilot.
When not watching the performers, the crowd could amble along about ogling warbirds and civilian aircraft, as well as gleaming, chromed-out classic cars, while munching on chili dogs and snow cones. At the opposite end of the field from the P-51s and a Navy Avenger torpedo bomber sat a dull grey 20th century version of a war machine, an F-18F, from Lemoore Naval Air Station flown in by naval reservist, Commander Les Phillips, attached to VFA-122 Flying Eagles.
The 18-year veteran, who has served from Pensacola, Fla. to Qatar, Iraq and Baharain, said the plane he flew in the day before was a Super Hornet.
“It’s substantially larger than the old C model that we used to fly,” Phillips said. “It has about 21,000 pounds of thrust per engine and full afterburners, so it can get up and go. It’s probably the best slow-speed fighter in the world. You just have to figure out how to get your adversary into a slow-speed fight.”
He said he had no issue landing the huge fighter at Hollister’s airport.
“It’s shorter than what we’re used to at just over 6,000 feet and it’s a skinnier runway than we’re used to, and there’s no arresting wire (referring to aircraft carrier landings) out there,” Phillips joked. “There was a little cross wind out there and I used a technique called aero-braking to slow down, but you’ve got to be careful aero-braking with a crosswind. It will blow you where you don’t want to go. I studied the runway a little bit, so it wasn’t a big deal. They have a 3,000-foot runway here too and I sure wasn’t going to try that.”
Chambless said Monday that the dollar figures have not been tallied up, so he didn’t know yet if the show was a financial success or not, but wrote in the email that the show went great and he thought everyone who attended had a good time.
“There were some extremely complicated logistics going on behind the scenes this year and my staff of volunteers pulled it off without a hitch,” he wrote. “I would like to thank the City of Hollister staff, my volunteers, Boy Scout Troops 436, 700 and 777, the police and fire explorer groups, the Hollister Vikings, and the FAA for making this happen.”
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