News

My Life So Far: �Please don�t call what I do stunts�

Thursday, December 7, 2006

As told to Vivek Kemp

Bo Kagan spends most weekends 3,000 feet in the air, upside down, pushing about 10 Gs.

Kagan, a 59-year-old orthopedic surgeon with a practice in Fort Myers, learned to fly planes early in life at Page Field Airport in Fort Myers. By the time he graduated high school, Kagan had already earned his pilot�s license.

He�s flown passengers around Florida as a commercial pilot. He�s a trained glider pilot who has soared along air currents without the assistance of an engine. But mostly he�s an aerobatic pilot who prefers rolling his plane wing-over-wing to soothing, peaceful flights.

On the ground his two seat, red-and-white propeller plane looks out of place. Stagnate. The ailerons resting flat. The gray control stick simply a metal rod poking from the floor.

At 200 mph, high in the air, Kagan�s plane becomes a surgical instrument. The control stick, held tightly in the surgeon�s muscular fingers, becomes a scalpel handle; the ailerons flexing up and down, turn the wings into the blade.

A Half Cuban Eight, a Hammer Head, a Split S. The wings cutting crisply. His hands steady and sure.

The plane seems to be on the edge of control. But, as Kagan says, there�s a stark difference between looking out of control and actually being out of control.

Last Saturday, Kagan met up with two friends, Joe Haycraft and Roy Myers, at the Immokalee Regional Airport to illustrate the difference.

Between flights Kagan talked about this adrenaline-fueled sport, his aerobatics instructor who was killed performing a maneuver, and the about his personality and the type of personality it takes to be a successful pilot.

Flying aerobatics is a sensual experience. The smell of the gas. The growl of the engine. The G forces, tugging and pushing on your body.

Bo Kagan of Naples takes his two-seater Sukhoi 29, a Soviet-made aerobatic plane, into a loop several thousand feet above Immokalee during a practice run Saturday afternoon. Kagan, who learned to fly as teenager at Page Field airport in Fort Myers, gets together regularly with his flying buddies, Roy Myers and Joe Haycraft � both former Air Force pilots � to practice maneuvers.

I fly a Sukhoi 29. These airplanes were made by the Soviet government in the mid-�80s with a single purpose. And that purpose was to win world aerobatics championships.

Beautiful is not the adjective to describe this plane. It�s loud and dirty. This thing drips nearly a quart of oil every few days. I have to clamp plastic buckets on the exhaust pipes to collect the stuff.

I go through about 12 gallons of gas in 20 minutes.

There are windows on the floor so I can see the ground when I�m flying. Those are about the only things I wipe clean on this plane.

Sukhoi are not FAA-regulated. Some of the instruments still have the original Russian. In the front you can see there�s a word written on the ledge: experimental.

The Sukhoi planes are arguably the best aerobatic planes in the world. There are probably less than 30 Sukhoi 29s in the United States. People don�t really let go of these planes once they have one, but I�d guess you could buy one for around $240,000.

Once the Soviet government fell, they stopped making the Sukhoi.

In an average maneuver you�ll experience anywhere from 6 to 10 Gs, both positive and negative. The plane can handle around plus-12/minus-10G loads. Positive Gs force you into your seat and make you feel like you�ve instantly gained 40 or 100 pounds. A negative G means you�re being ripped out of the plane with as much force.

You build a tolerance to G forces. I recently took a couple weeks off flying. I had to take it a little easy.

I could take a first-timer up there and make them pass out pretty easily. With positive G-force your blood drains from your brain and into your extremities; if you don�t have tolerance you�ll pass out easily.

I really got interested in doing this when I was reading Flying magazine one day. It was a silly story about a wonderful aerobatic pilot, Patty Wagstaff, comparing aerobatic flying with a Mazda convertible. It just sounded like so much fun that I decided that�s what I�m gonna� do. That was back in 1999.

In 2003, I went to the world aerobatic championships in Lakeland, Fla., as spectator. I was just overwhelmed by the way those guys could fly. Oh, it was just fantastic � you know, the loops and rolls, and the precision and the complexity of the maneuvers was just really cool.

One of my teachers was Ian Groom. Pilots have a mentor/apprentice relationship. I may be a grown man but I still seek out teachers. Learning from someone you respect and admire is a thrilling experience.

The first time Ian took me out he was showing me the way to control the aircraft. No maneuvers, just simply the way you move the stick. You don�t just push it. He was showing me Dutch Rolls, where you make the plane tilt back and forth like a see-saw.

These planes are very responsive. A slight tilt of the stick will turn into a large tilt of the plane.

You have to have a steady hand in competition aerobatics. The patterns and maneuvers you fly need to be sharp; you need to be able to roll over your right wing and return to flying right side up with a level horizon.

You don�t slam the stick over. It�s gently over and rapidly back. Boom.

You can�t anticipate a maneuver. You have to wait till you�re ready and then do. Because as you anticipate you begin to move the stick a little bit and then the plane gets a little off line.

Please don�t call what I do stunts. Stunts are dependent on luck and people are out of control. What I do in a plane is very precise and deliberate.

I�ve been flying since in was in high school. I learned how to fly at Page Field in Fort Myers.

One of the first aerobatic maneuvers I learned was a roll. It is a rotation around the longitudinal axis of the aircraft. It looks fairly simple. It�s not.

In aerobatics, you�re not just doing a trick, you�re doing a trick that looks good to the people watching from the ground.

Like everything in life, looks matter. If you watch from the ground, a roll looks like the plane is on a level string and the pilot is just spinning around. In fact when you make a roll, the plane wants to point itself toward the ground, so you have to keep the nose tilted slightly up. So you�re pulling back on the stick and pushing it over at the same time. It�s a constant battle in your mind.

Aerobatics are done in a block of air, which is about a thousand meters by a thousand meters. In competition, if you go out of that box you get points deducted.

One of the most important parts of competition aerobatics is you have to know where the wind is coming from. An airplane is like a boat in the water. If left alone, an airplane will flow along the air current like it was in a stream.

The finesse of flying aerobatics is knowing where the wind is coming from and how you need to adjust your maneuver to compensate. We call it handling the wind.

Remember: We don�t have many gauges in these planes, and at 300 miles an hour when you�re turning a roll, you have a lot of information rushing into your brain. Handling the wind takes skill.

This type of flying is like great cosmetic surgery: If done right it looks completely natural and flawless. Just a simple roll. You�ll never know all the intricate elements involved.

As an orthopedic surgeon, it would be great to constantly have the feedback, observations and criticism that you get from your spotters and observers on the ground. Imagine how much better we would all be at our professions if we had consistent feedback from experts.

My teacher Ian Groom died in May 2004 when he was practicing a flat spin. I didn�t see the crash, but people who were there said Ian had to have been medically incapacitated. He was an extraordinary pilot who knew what he was doing. More than likely he was unconscious.

That hit me hard. I didn�t think I was going to do aerobatics anymore. Maybe I�d fly a plane over to see my children or friends, but nothing extravagant.

My hesitation to get back into aerobatics lasted a few months. Eventually, my wife helped me realize I would be miserable just flying from one place to another.

The first time back up in the air after Ian�s death was tough. I had to get the feel of the aircraft again and re-familiarize myself with the plane and the feeling of being in the cockpit and behind the controls.

You cannot be afraid when you�re flying. You better not be. There is a serious danger in these maneuvers. You�d better know what you are doing and have total confidence that you are going to perform perfectly.

Surgery is the same. Every surgeon will tell you that there are complications or unexpected occurrences during surgery. You have to stay calm and know that you are going to resolve the issue and successfully complete the procedure.

Aerobatic pilots are surgeons of the sky. The people that do this are perfectionists. They are somewhat introverted. They tend to be self-reliant and are highly driven. That�s exactly me.

Longtime pilots will tell you that there�s a point you get to when a maneuver becomes a religious experience � when you�ve reached the pinnacle and you reach a point of enlightenment.

That hasn�t happened to me yet. Maybe someday.