In addition to all of the airshow information you’re looking for, we’ve also got two special interviews in this edition, as I got the chance to sit down and talk with P-47D Hun Hunter XVI pilot Neal Melton and National Museum of World War II Aviation President and CEO Bill Klaers.

First things first; AIRSHOW TICKETS. Where can you get them?

The easiest, fastest and cheapest way (and recommended to skip long lines at the gate) is to pre-purchase online at www.pprairshow.org. Prices this year are:

Next up, DIRECTIONS AND PARKING.

Now on to the AIRSHOW SCHEDULE for Saturday and Sunday! 

Things will be going non-stop all-day Saturday and Sunday from opening of the gates at 8:00 AM to closure at 4 PM. One important thing to remember is that the Hot Ramp, for aircraft that will be flying, closes to foot traffic from 10:15 AM to 3:15 PM. So, if you want to get up close to the F-35s, F-18s, P-38, P-51, P-47’s, B-25, PBY, etc., plan to do that either early in the morning or late in the afternoon. The static display aircraft will be accessible all day long.

Opening ceremonies will kick off the show at 11:50 with the United States Air Force Academy Wings of Blue Parachute Team jumping from the Commemorative Air Force’s Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress Texas Raiders and a USAF UV-18B Twin Otter from the USAFA 98^th Flying Training Squadron. This will happen both days, Saturday and Sunday! Built in July of 1945 and remaining in service until the Korean War, Texas Raiders will be later available in the static display area if you’d like to get a close-up look at this gorgeous veteran.

Following the Opening Ceremonies at 12:00 PM will be the Bomber Parade!

Point those cameras to the sky as Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress Texas Raiders, North American B-25J Mitchell In the Mood, two General Motors TBM Avengers, a Douglas SBD Dauntless, Consolidated PBY Catalina, and a Douglas AD-5/ A1-E Skyraider take to the air! If you’ve never seen a presentation like this before, it is truly a treat to hear those big birds make passes low and slow for the crowd!

After the Bomber Parade, at 12:45 PM, will be the first of two warbird AEROBATICS DEMOSTRATIONS, featuring pilot Steve Hinton at the stick of the National Museum of World War II’s one-of-a-kind Brewster F3A-1 Corsair. If you’ve always wanted to see World War II aircraft doing loops and rolls, these demonstrations are for you!

The Brewster Corsair that Steve will be piloting is the only survivor of its type in the world. It crashed into a swamp in 1944 and was then recovered and brought back to airworthy condition to fly again in 2018. If you've never seen the Corsair in-person, take the time to walk around and see the details of those folding bent-wings and huge propeller. If you were a fan of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" back in the mid-1970's, this should bring back some memories!

At 1:00 PM, pilot Tom Spratt will put on a show in his kit-built Vans RV-8. Tom leads the Rocky Mountain Renegades Aerobatics Team and has been flying since he was 15 years old!

The answer is that it’s a Modular Airborne Firefighting System (MAFFS) C-130 of the United States Air Force Reserves 302^nd Airlift Wing, and it is a key element in the fight against Colorado wildfires. And you’re in luck because they’ll be putting on a water drop demonstration from 1:10 to 1:25 PM!

What would you do if you saw someone not fit to fly a plane suddenly jump in and take off, displaying all of the piloting finesse you might expect from Homer Simpson? Welcome to Franklin’s Flying Circus and the Ben Whabnoski Comedy Act at 1:25 PM! Don’t worry folks, he really does know what he’s doing …. we think.

With the airshow being held under (we hope!) sunny Colorado skies, don’t forget to put on sunscreen, bring a hat, wear comfortable shoes (you’ll be doing a lot of walking on the tarmac), and around 1:40 PM you may want to have some hearing protection handy because the show is going to get LOUD as we welcome for the first time the United States Navy’s EA-18G Growler Demonstration Team!

Hailing from Broomfield, Colorado, lead pilot LT Ryan “BITS” Paulson will lead his ship and his wingman’s as they take this F/A-18F Super Hornet derivative through its paces, pulling maneuvers loud and fast. Maverick has nothing on these guys!

Following the EA-18G flight demo will be the first of two legacy flights on the afternoon, as we watch vintage World War II aircraft fly side-by-side with their successors.

Designed and built at the end of World War II, the Grumman F7F-3N Tigercat sports two Pratt & Whitney R2800-34 Double Wasp engines capable of 2100 horsepower each, giving the Tigercat a top speed of 460 miles per hour, a service ceiling of 40,400 feet, and a combat range of over 700 miles.

Compare it as it flies next to the Boeing EA-18G Growler which has a top speed of Mach 1.8, a range of 1,275 miles, and a ceiling of 50,000 feet; which one will be your favorite?

After the EA-18G peels off and lands, keep your eyes up as Steve Hinton takes the Tigercat through its paces at 2:00 PM in an aerobatics demonstration. She is a big bird with a very unique sound, and it is really impressive to see what Steve can make her do!

Are you tired yet? Maybe it’s time for a bite to eat and something to drink? The concession stands are located in the Static Display area, directly in front of a row of beautiful aircraft that includes an L-5B Sentinel, AT-6 Texan, Fairchild PT-19, T-28 Trojan, L-19 Bird Dog, and a Diamond DA-20 Katana. 

While you're in the concession area, be sure to visit the museum's merchandise tent, where we'll have a massive inventory of artwork, memorabilia, t-shirts, hats, artifacts, you name it. Museum members, remember to show your active membership card to get 10% off your purchase; now would be a great time to get some of that early holiday shopping out of the way!

The NASA B-377SG Super Guppy was scheduled to be the centerpiece of the Static Display area, but unfortunately with the launch delays of the Artemis 1 mission, NASA informed us that the Guppy has mission requirements elsewhere and had to cancel. We hope to get it here for a future show, because it is a simply awesome aircraft with a tremendous history!

At 2:15 PM it’ll be time to head back for front-row seats to the Fighter Parade!

This year we have not one but TWO Republic P-47D-40 Thunderbolts taking to the air … keep your eyes peeled for Neal Melton’s Hun Hunter XVI and the museum’s checkerboard P-47D.

Mark Bingham returns in his North American P-51D Mustang ‘Stang Evil; Mark visited the museum earlier this year for a special historical presentation after which he put the P-51D through its paces for visitors.

The Fighter Parade will continue with the Brewster F3A-1 Corsair, J.P. Thibodeau in his North American NA-50 Replica, the Commemorative Air Force’s General Motors FM-2 Wildcat piloted by Mike Polley, the Grumman F3F-2 Flying Barrel, and both of the museum’s Grumman F7F-3N Tigercats.

It’s getting to be late afternoon now; are the children getting a little bored, tired and restless? This might be a good time to give them a break and head on over to the KidZone! It will be located on the south side of the ramp, behind the helicopters,

Kids love helicopters, it’s a rule … and you absolutely can’t go wrong when the Kiddie Train takes them for a ride around them. Look for the Boeing AH-64 Apache, Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk, and Boeing CH-47 Chinook to guide your way.

Inside KidZone, it offers up a Play Zone and Color Zone to help burn off some energy. It also features kid-friendly exhibits like the Space Foundation Discovery Center, Tuskegee Airmen, Pikes Peak RC Club, Fishing Has No Boundaries, United States Air Force Academy Glider Display (where they can sit in a glider cockpit!), Wings Over the Rockies, Pikes Peak Children’s Museum, Rocky Mountain Vibes, Children’s Hospital of Colorado, National Museum of WWII Aviation, Air Force Academy Sabre Team, Girl Scouts of America, Special Olympics, and more!

As a reminder, parents and caregivers must accompany their children at all times in the KidZone; it's a break area for them, not for you!

At 2:40 PM put those earplugs back in, because it’s time for the last two demonstrations of the day and they are going to knock your socks off.

Headlining will be the USAF F-35 Lightning II Demonstration Team out of the 388th Fighter Wing, Hill Air Force Base, Utah. The team's mission is to showcase the unique capabilities of the F-35A, and to highlight the history of the Air Force's service through heritage formation flights.

Leading the team will be pilot and team commander Major Kristin "Beo" Wolfe. Major Wolfe entered the Air Force in 2011 after receiving her commission from the U.S. Air Force Reserve Officer Training Program at the University of Alabama. She is an experienced fighter pilot with more than 800 flying hours in the F-22A Raptor and F-35A Lightning II. Her flying assignments include Undergraduate Pilot Training at Laughlin AFB, Texas, fighter training in the F-22A at Langley AFB, Virginia, and operational assignments at Langley and Hill AFB, Utah. As unit commander, she also provides operational oversight and direction for the 13-personnel team, to include maintenance, aircrew flight equipment, and public affairs Airmen.

  

Moms, dads, if you’re looking for an example for your kids of what they can grow up and accomplish, point them towards Major Wolfe!

Ending out the day will be the National Museum of World War II’s pride, our World War II combat veteran USAAF Lockheed P-38F Lightning White 33, piloted by Charles Hainline as he takes her to the air for a Legacy Flight with her successor, the Lockheed F-35A Lightning II.

As the afternoon winds down the hot ramp will open back up from 3:15 PM to 4:00 PM, at which time the airshow will end for the day. If you spent your entire afternoon with your face towards the sun, this would be a good time to check out the static display area, or maybe walk out to the performer section to get a close-up of any aircraft that you might have missed earlier in the day. If you run out of time and its only Saturday? Come on back tomorrow, because the entire schedule will be repeated on Sunday!

If you get a chance and see them wandering the area, maybe take the chance to speak with P-47D pilot Neal Melton, P-38 pilot Charles Hainline, F-35A pilot Major Kristin Wolfe, or museum President and CEO (and F7F-3N Tigercat and B-25J Mitchell pilot) Bill Klaers; they’d love to hear what you thought of the show they put on for you!

G: How does the cockpit feel?

Then you’re just traveling cross country! If the weather is really nice, you just sit there and hope you’re bored. You can't let go of the stick though; you can trim it out really nicely, but you always have to keep it level. If you let go of the stick you can’t ever get it to where the ailerons are setting perfect, it'll just start tipping off to the left or the right. It’s not hard to hold, you can hold it with two fingers. But if you let go it'll start banking off one way or the other, and if you aren’t paying attention, you’d be in a dive in four or five minutes probably.

I sat with Bill Klaers and talked the airshow, museum, his flying history (if you read nothing else below, read about his life-changing experience at Reno in 1993), and the plans to keep building the Colorado Springs community through museum educational programs!

George: Bill, what is your earliest memory of flying?

Bill: That was way back. I don't remember what year, but I remember my brother owned a T-6 (Texan), and he asked me If I wanted to go to an air show up in Columbia, California. I had never been to an airshow, I didn't know what it was like, I had never flown or had any interest in it.

So, we got into his airplane and flew up to Columbia and it was a small air show; I think the T-6 was the biggest warbird there, which shows you how small it really was! The community was just so nice, they took us in, put us up in different places, we had a ball. That was that first thing that got me.

The next weekend, he says, “Hey, I'm gonna go over to Chino next weekend, do you want to go?” And I said, well, what's over there? And he said, “Well, a lot of warbirds”. So we got into his old beat-up Chevy pickup truck and drove down to Chino.

Jimmy Maloney was there in the Corsair, and he was just starting to crank it, you know, poot, shoot, fire, and smoke belching, and then all of a sudden the wings are coming down, and the hair just stood up on the back of my head. And that was it. I said, you know what? I want to do that. And that's what we did.

G: How old were you?

B: In my 30’s, I'm guessing it was. My wife Debi says 32. That was a late start in it.

G: Your brother just happened to own a T-6?

B: Yeah, he bought into a T-6 with another guy. He got his private pilot's license, then he went out and flew a bunch of different airplanes, then he got the bug for the warbirds.

G: What were your steps after that, what did you pursue? Was it your pilot’s license or was it purchasing aircraft?

B: I didn't buy in on the T-6 right away, although eventually I ended up buying it for my brother. I just got involved and started saying, hey, we need to find something for a project, because we didn't have a lot of money back then to go out and buy a licensed and flying airplane.

I started my private pilot's license, and then bought a Stearman project; I didn’t have a lot of knowledge in airplanes and restoration, but that's kind of where I started. In the interim I had a construction company, and my partner and I decided, hey, you know what? We made some money one year and we started looking around and decided to buy a Beech 18. Neither one of us could fly, so my brother Larry would fly it for us. Me and my two brothers restored it and got it flying; my brothers still own it today. I left it with him when I went to Colorado.

Then I pursued trying to get a private pilot's license. I never could get it completed for a long time because of work; I think I was the longest student pilot in the world! I flew the student pilot’s license for four years or five years or something before getting it done.

G:  Let's see. In the fighters I have the Mustang, the Thunderbolt, the Tigercat, the Corsair, the Skyraider, and the Wildcat. The B-17, B-24, the Bushmaster, Martin 202, Martin 404, G-111 Albatross, B-25, TBM and the Dauntless… there's a bunch. After a while I think the FAA got tired of giving me ratings, so they gave me what they call an Unlimited Letter of Authorization to fly all makes and models of single and multi-engine, piston engine, propeller driven aircraft. Which is something they don't give away anymore. That's probably the biggest thing, so I'm commercial rated single-engine land, multi-engine land, multi-engine sea.

G: What is your single favorite flight memory?

B: Oh, without a doubt the first time I flew off of the aircraft carrier …… wait, Debi is waving her hands ... so I’m supposed to say my first date with Debi.

G: Ah, there you go …. “However, comma”.

B: We were down at Rialto Airport in California, and I decided I was going to build a hangar and got a lease, and that's how I met Debi. When I went to get my permit, she was working at the building department. We started talking and I told her I was at the airport building a hangar, which she kind of knew because she was doing the permit. Our first date was I went over and opened up the hangar door and showed her this big yellow biplane, military painted, and I told her I built it myself.

And she was terrified. (he smiles)

So that's kind of one of the more memorable ones, but I think really the first carrier takeoff in 1992, when we did the 50th anniversary of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo; we flew two B-25's off of the USS Ranger out of Naval Air Station North Island, San Diego. That was probably, of all the memories, the coolest.

G: That does sound pretty awesome. The flip side to that same question; what is your worst flight memory, or worst flight experience?

B: I kind of look at it this way; any landing that you make is a good landing. I haven't had any accidents or incidents as of yet.

But I guess Reno (Air Races) in 1993. We were racing; we owned a Mustang, “Damn Yankee”. From the early 80s all the way through the 90s I was crew chief and crewing on different airplanes, Sea Furies and different airplanes, and finally we got a Mustang. Then you go to Reno and you know you're going to be the ****-hot pilot. You get in the airplane and you qualify, and you're doing different things, and the next thing you know you’ve got a problem on your engine and you have a Mayday.

It's amazing. People say, when you get into a situation like that, how slow time goes. That's the truth. It absolutely slowed down, but you know what you're supposed to do. You know you've gone through the training. You have a problem; you look at the gauges, you pull up. First, you get your altitude. Then you decide what runway you're going to pick, and you stick with it; that's what you do because if you start changing stuff in the middle of a Mayday, that's when people get hurt or killed.

I'm coming down on the runway that Steve Hinton went off the backside of, that goes into the gulch at Reno; the gauges are good, everything is good, but if I put the throttle in it, it was just shaking and vibrating like the props were going to pull off or something.

So okay, well, let's land the airplane. Then you realize you're high and you're fast and you're going along and you're thinking, “The hell, you know what? I gotta get this thing slowed down.”

Well, you don't have to worry about pulling the throttle off because it’s already dead, so you start looking at the airspeed and it's too fast for the gear to come down. Then you're looking at the end of the runway coming and you're saying, well, what if the gear gets blown off, or the gear door? Well, that doesn't really matter right now, so let's get the gear down. You come in and you're hauling.

You're trying to float the airplane like you normally would, and then you remember your trainer saying, “get it on the ground”, because once you touch the wheels down it slows because you're not flying through the air, so you stab it on.

The tail goes down and I hear the tower clear Rick Brickert, who was taking the Pond Racer onto the runway in the opposite direction. When I heard ATC clear him on, I called Rick from the ground, and said Rick, I can't stop and I can't see you because the tails coming down.

So he pulled right onto the west runway, and then they cleared him to take off. He turned and went downwind and, about the time I stopped and started to get out of the airplane, I could see the smoke. He just caught fire and Mayday’d, and that was it.

That's when he crashed and died in the Pond Racer.

When you're up there in the air, and when I say time goes so slow, you're thinking of all these different things. And here I was thinking, “I've worked my whole life to get a fighter, and now I've got a fighter, and I'm up here at Reno, and I'm trying to break the airplane and kill myself.”

What's wrong with this picture?

It was a minor thing that caused it, a spark plug broke and it turned into a glow plug and it was just detonating the engine. Fortunately, I pulled power back and it didn't hurt the engine. Put some new spark plugs in it, went out and race ‘till Sunday, and flew the plane back home.

So, it was a little stark reality. “You know what? I don't think I need to be going to Reno anymore.” Gosh.

G: Let's talk about the Pikes Peak Regional Airshow a little bit!

B: When we got to Colorado Springs, it was, “let's put on an airshow” and it was small, on the west side; we thought we would test the waters and see what it was like.

We found that, for performers you didn't have a lot of people around here, but there was a lot of smaller static displays. So we did that first one; I can't tell you how many people we had, but it was a success even though I don't think we made a profit.

In 2017 we moved down to the A/DACG (Arrival/Departure Airfield Control Group) for the first time. We had the Thunderbirds, we had a great show scheduled, we had a lot of people buying tickets … and we had two days of rain. Half the show was rained out on Saturday and then in the morning on Sunday; finally in the afternoon we had it where we actually got the Thunderbirds to fly, at the very end.

In 2019 we had great weather; we had a great show. Every year it's progressed to where we’re able to draw more people, get more acts; to get a Raptor, an F-35, the Growlers; our reputation has grown tremendously, gotten bigger and better. The different performers that you bring out are the ones that go back and help to do the advertising.

I think that the rapport we’ve built, everything that we've done, doing it properly, has helped. In 2019 we were able to make some cash donations into the three museums (Peterson Space Force Base Air & Space Museum, Fort Carson 4th Infantry Division Museum, and National Museum of WWII Aviation), to give back to the community, and that’s what this is all about. You're trying to promote the airport, you're trying to promote aviation, you're trying to promote the museums; that's what the goal is. Make a good community event and make it grow and grow and grow.

If we pull off a major act, that could turn into forty or fifty thousand people on a weekend to come see a show, which is a lot, and that brings a lot to the community when it comes. Selling hotel rooms and rental cars, two days of meals and stuff like that within the community. That's what you're trying to promote.

A godsend, I have to say, is that the Sports Corp has been monumental in helping to promote this airshow to the next level. Because of their association and the people within the Community, their relationships with other companies; they do this type of thing all year long. They've got discounts that are really helping the show go along; they have other sponsors that are different from ours, so that's really helped a lot. It's made it to where the strain is off us. It's going to be a great long-term relationship, which will help the airshow grow. I'm pretty sure that we've got a really, really good shot for a major act in 2024, and that'll push this thing over the top.

G: Last question! Talk a little bit about the museum and the way forward, what you see being able to do over the next couple of years. Talk about the educational aspect of it and giving back to the community.

B: I tell people all the time, we're still the best kept secret in Colorado because we don't advertise so much! Our push has been on the social media side of things, but when we got this “Top 1% in the world” (from TripAdvisor) and #17 in the country, that was a huge push for us. Our associations within this community are growing at a very rapid rate, somewhat because of we've become, mostly because of what we've done.

10 years ago, coming up on the 27th of October, we wrote a Vision Plan, which every museum is supposed to do, and we gave our 10-year projections; we achieved every goal on that projection! Which is highly incredible, because sometimes you reach for the sky, but you get what you get. The community now is starting to see that this museum built itself with very little community funding, just a fraction of what we have for assets right now. And now they're realizing what the museum brings to the community, such as an airshow like this every year!

When we first started the museum, we built three hangars. After that, the WestPac Restorations hangar came in. The next phase was going to be the Aviation Hall, but now that project has been relegated to the final phase. Why? Because Jim Slattery and his family came in. Jim liked what he saw in the museum, and he put up a fair amount of money. Then, after he saw that we were progressing, as we are still, he donated a huge collection of aircraft to the museum.

That kind of put us over the top, but it forced the need to stop on the Aviation Hall project and then turn around and focus on hangars, because obviously we needed space for all the aircraft. We completed the first phase of the Kaija Raven Shook Pavilion, and we were going to go right into the second phase, which was supposed to start in June of 2020 … but of course Covid hit and stopped everything.

Now we talk about the education component coming in when we build the next phase; our big push on the education side is to get the Airframe and Powerplant school in!

The whole idea of the museum is to get kids inspired into aviation. Once you get them inspired, what do you do next? Often, they go back to the classroom, and in a relatively short period of time they forget what they've learned, and they lose their excitement.

So we created a volunteer program! The kids who really want to do something, they come out, they do the education program, they volunteer, and then it expands into other things that they can do in an aviation-related setting.

Where WestPac came in was to create apprenticeships and have the volunteers come over there and start working. We’ve got an 11-year-old working with us there right now, and he’s hooking up tow bars and moving airplanes! But that's what you're trying to do, to inspire the next generation.

When the next phase gets opened up, and that building space opens, then hopefully we'll have a fully accredited Airframe and Powerplant school. That’s also big for the community, because you have Fort Carson and Peterson and people that are coming out of the military, and if they were mechanics they’d have to drive through Denver every day for the nearest A & P school. So, for this community it’s a huge step.

But the whole program is not wrapped around just that hangar, it's two projects; the Kaija Raven Shook Aeronautical Pavilion Phase Two and the Aviation Hall. Those are both, combined, at about a $48 million dollar project. We have to get the community behind that for fund-raising, because we're going to a national level on the Aviation Hall project! It's a big deal to get the community involved; success there will then springboard us, within the next seven or eight years, to have the Aviation Hall project completed. That’s our expectations, but it could be sooner!

G: It’s a living museum, always growing, always warm and friendly.

B: People say the biggest draw is the airplanes, but I say no, the biggest draw is the people!

It's the people that are there every day that are walking people around, or they see a visitor looking at something with a question mark on their face, and they walk over and talk to them. They're excited to be there, our docents and our hosts, and people really respond to that! We couldn’t do it without our volunteers.

We're extremely lucky because we have a lot more talent that's coming up. I just can't shout it out enough to the people that stay into this museum, and back it, and are proud of it.

We get compliments all the time, and when you're getting nice words from people and good results, well that’s really great to hear! It's a team effort, it's just fun to be around, and it's fun to work with people. My hat’s off to everybody that really makes this museum so …

Debi: “Everyone makes it a reality.”

B: There you go.

Gene Pfeffer

Historian & Curator

Rich Tuttle

Docent, Newsletter Writer, Social Media Writer, Photographer

George White

Newsletter Editor, Social Media Writer, Photographer