View From Above : A Glimpse at What the Air Show’s Pilots Will See This Weekend

Flying at 3,000 feet before my morning coffee is not my idea of a good time. Especially when I’m upside-down.

But there I was, strapped into a circa 1940s biplane headed toward Santiago Peak, when the guy at the controls, John Bowman, said, “You wouldn’t mind a little maneuver, would you?”

You gotta love the Chuck Yeager in every pilot’s demeanor.

We had just taken off from El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, the site of this weekend’s air show that begins tonight with a twilight show at 6:30 p.m. and continues through the weekend.

Bowman, who was “Red Baron One” on this short media hop with the acrobatic team known as the Red Barons, pushed the joystick back. Up we flew into a barrel roll.

At first, I saw Saddleback ridge in front of us, then blue sky, as Bowman goosed the throttle. Up, up, up we went like that weird ride at Knott’s Berry Farm. A few seconds later, we saw land again but this time, it was an upside-down Lake Forest subdivision.

After the roll, the four biplanes settled into a nice bank, keeping in tight formation as they swooped over swimming pools, Portola Parkway, and the foothills of the Cleveland National Forest.

I asked Bowman about our altitude and speed. He told me we were at 3,000 feet and flying at 160 mph. On the intercom, I asked if we were low enough to stop at a minimarket so we could both grab a coffee.

“Yeah,” Bowman said, “maybe we can grab a latte there, eh?”

We flew on.

Bowman lives in Colorado, but the Red Baron pilots come from all across the country and travel from city to city, reminiscent of aviation’s old barnstorming days. Red Baron Frozen Pizza owns and operates the squadron as a kind of flying promotional tool.

Bowman flies because he likes it.

The real Red Baron, the flamboyant Baron Manfred von Richthofen, was the famous World War I flying ace who downed 80 French and English aircraft. He was dubbed the Red Baron because of the bright red plane he flew as a challenge to opposing airmen.

The contemporary Barons fly a Stearman model A-75 built in the late 1930s and 1940s to help train those in the U.S. Navy and Army to fly more advanced World War II fighter planes.

On Thursday, the only thing that Bowman wanted to strafe was a Diedrich’s coffee shop to score a bull’s eye on a cafe latte and perhaps a blueberry muffin. He was a pilot with a good sense of humor, something you need when you entrust your life to a stranger.

I recalled that on the preflight checkup, Bowman helped strap me in. He explained that the cumbersome harness he first hooked me into wasn’t attached to the airplane. It was a parachute.

“If we have to,” Bowman explained, “you need to remember that you must unbutton your chin strap first, then this black hook here and that frees you from the plane. Don’t pull the rip cord. You do that after you leave the plane.”

After we returned to the airstrip, it was time for a glider ride in a sailplane piloted by Bret Willat, owner of Sky Sailing in Warner Springs.

After the barrel roll, I thought a glider ride would be just the smooth ticket I needed to help me relax.

Wrong. Willat, 44, was one of those glider guys who enjoys putting visitors into tight maneuvers, turning them green and then declaring, “Isn’t flying wonderful?”

After landing safely, I hooked up with Times photographer Mark Boster. Boster had reluctantly decided to fly in a chase plane tailing Sean Tucker, the daredevil pilot flying another aircraft.

Tucker, from Salinas, flies this bullet-shaped plane that is half engine. He flies sideways, upside down and sometimes lets the plane fall backward.

Boster said that after taking off in a modified chase plane without doors, they lost sight of Tucker.

“We were saying, ‘Where did he go? Where did he go?’ ”

Just then, Tucker flew right by them, upside down, smiling all the time.

* ON THE APPROACH

Where to go, how to get there and, most important, what you can expect to see at the air show. B3