Say “Cheese!” As some of you know I’m starring in a new reality show on the Discovery Channel called “Dangerous Flights.” The show is about ferry pilots and follows six of us as we deliver real planes to real customers around the world. I did four trips last year with a human anchor cameraman/director along filming almost every minute, although he did manage to have the camera rolling whenever I made some boneheaded mistake. At the beginning or end of each flight we would spend a day doing air to airs with a helicopter that had a gyro stabilized camera mounted on it. I love formation flying, doing aerobatics and having my picture taken so doing all three is like a dream date for me. The first two times we did it a director in the helicopter would tell the helicopter pilot what he wanted me to do and the pilot would call me on the radio and pass that information to me. It was a time consuming and sometimes frustrating process that usually sounded like this.
Helicopter: “Scary, come left thirty and give us a hard left bank as you pass as close to the big cloud off my nose as you can.”
Me: “Roger… you mean the one with the big gap on the right side?”
Helicopter: “No, the one with the tall knob that looks like a chicken.”
Me: ………….”I don’t see a chicken…….I see one that looks like a horse.”
Helicopter: “Never mind, we passed it.”
By the third time I got to know what kind of shots the director wanted so all I had to do was play around in front of the camera and have a good time. It’s a blast, especially when I got to do it in the Phenom 100.
