Flying formation with a helicopter while you’re in a jet is by and in itself exciting enough. When you get cleared to fly into Sydney Harbor to get shots of you flying a hot new jet over the world famous opera house the excitement builds quickly. When the helicopter you’re following suddenly banks away and scoots out of the harbor without telling you why the excitement turns to confusion. And when the helicopter is also the one talking to Sydney approach and getting permission to fly into the busy harbor but doesn’t tell you what’s going on leaving you holding the bag the confusion turns to fear. That’s what happened last fall when we were shooting air to air footage in the Phenom. The plan was for the helicopter to hover in the middle of the harbor and I would fly the Phenom in circles around the edge and pass right in front of the opera house three or four times. As we were entering the harbor approach told the helicopter pilot that there was traffic inside and we had to clear the area imminently. Unfortunately the helicopter pilot neglected to pass that message along to me as I roared into the harbor at one hundred twenty knots. It didn’t take me long to figure out something was amiss though and I put the jet into a steep bank and got the hell out of there. We spent the next ten minutes circling outside the mouth of the harbor at five hundred feet waiting for permission to re-enter. Five hundred feet in a jet is LOW and just a little scary, but a fun kind of scary.