Hawk One is the last airworthy Sabre fighter jet in Canada, a remnant of an era when the Sabre was Canada's ticket to the space age, when farm boys learned that if you were good enough, the Sabre could take you to 50,000 feet, seemingly to the edge of space, where the horizon gives way to an indigo heaven and the earth is more distant than the stars.
Is a priceless artifact worth risking in airborne acrobatics?
The answers lie in the theatrical performance that is a modern-day air show: a play staged in three acts.
Act 1
Ninety-two years before this year's Abbotsford International, Canadian air shows began in earnest with a performance by returned First World War warriors led in a formation by Victoria Cross medal winner William Barker at Toronto's 1919 Canadian National Exhibition.
The attraction has spanned decades, and continues today at Abbotsford, B.C., where an average of 125,000 spectators brave traffic jams, sunburn and portable toilets.
They could just watch it on YouTube. But no one does.
An air show has high grass, blue skies, tents and crowds. It's an elemental setting that evokes circuses and other extravagant performances. There are untamed beasts (fighters), strongmen (cargo lifters) and comics (a jet-powered outhouse and a 500-km/h school bus).
Of course, there are beauties too.
Hawk One, painted in the all-gold scheme of the RCAF's Golden Hawks display team, is a svelte sophisticate, a shape that says '60s space age cool.
A high-performance aircraft like the Sabre makes the miraculous appear easy. It's a streamlined beauty housing the powers of a beast - a turbojet heart that channels a continuous explosion, a plume of superheated gas that propels the aircraft.
It's not just beauty that fascinates us.
Even in 1919, Canadians were hungry for the sight of aircraft, but some were also tantalized by the risk inherent in early flight.
Hawk One team leader Dan Dempsey is also author of A Tradition of Excellence, the comprehensive record of Canadian air display teams. In it, he relates a newspaper report that said Barker's team at the 1919 CNE jolted the throngs into "gasps and cries" when "they thought the airman was plunging down to destruction."
Now, the greatest risk to the crowd at a Canadian show is sunburn and a sore neck.
An air show brings easily injured human beings and high-speed jets into close contact. Private pilots like myself, toddling along at 120 m.p.h. must maintain 1,000 feet of altitude and distance from anyone within 2,000 feet. For the show, the limits are reduced, under strict conditions, to improve the spectator's view. According to Dempsey, Transport Canada has cleared high-speed performers and aerobatic teams to blaze along 1,500 feet from front the row and 250 feet off the ground.
Is the audience too close to the uncaged beast?
The key is the distance from the crowd and the direction of the aircraft. During the preshow practice, we were allowed into the pilots' safety briefing. Officials there emphasized two principal rules: A minimum distance of 1,500 feet from the front row for aerobatics; Any movement closer than 1,500 feet must be restricted to straight and level flight.
These rules are one reason there is no record of injury to a Canadian spectator.
The backstage safety briefing is really the culmination of detailed planning that began eight months earlier in Las Vegas.
Each December, at the International Council of Air Shows convention in Las Vegas, 2,000 delegates like pilots Dan Dempsey and Robert Mitchell converge in a mass casting call, and prospective performers make their pitch to organizers. With show dates in hand, Dempsey turns it over to team co-ordinators Jeff Hill and Real Turgeon.
Hill and Turgeon work the phone to clarify myriad minutiae - hangar space, pilot aerobatic credentials, the voltage of the engine start cart - it all has to be checked off.
Later, the co-ordinators liaise with Transport Canada to demonstrate that the performance is safe.
The co-ordinator also works the mike during Hawk One's routine. This is no job for a poseur pilot. Hill and Turgeon have decades of flight experience, both having served a stint as voice of the Canadian Forces Snowbirds demonstration team. Nor is it a job for the inarticulate. As Hawk One gambolled in the air at Abbotsford, Hill's effortless patter wove real-time description with historical anecdotes.
The theatre has been chosen and the announcer knows his lines.
Act 2
The spotlight's now on Hawk One's aircraft maintenance engineers, who act as the backstage stewards of Hawk One.
At Abbotsford International, the role fell to Chris Adams, a 20-year aviation industry veteran and one of the few engineers qualified to work on everything from Second World War piston-engine hotrod fighters to supersonic jets.
It's a gruelling one-man show he put on at Abbotsford, spending sometimes 12 hours each day tending the jet, putting children in the seat and polishing spectators' handprints from the Hawk's gleaming wings.
There's more to his role than keeping the jet flying. As it is for the team pilots, a significant part of his time is spent engaging the public.
Adams says, "Most people remember it flying ... you get people coming up all day saying, 'I remember seeing the Golden Hawks flying in Chatham, or I remember seeing them flying in Toronto,' and you end up spending 15 to 20 minutes with them."
With the jet fed and polished, Adams bows out. The pilots attend a final safety briefing. After that, it's a waiting time, when the pilots mingle with the crowd and then slip away.
Act 3
Show time.
Mitchell and Dempsey shared the flight duties, but it fell to Mitchell to fly the jet for the practice-day rehearsal. Being on stage is nothing for this aviation veteran, who is also a bona fide stage actor. The line between air show and stage vanishes as Mitchell retreats into a pre-show ritual.
He finds a quiet spot on a taxiway, and walks through the show, flying one hand through the routine, eyes closed, visualizing the jet in the air.
Like the best performers, and I've seen a number - downhill ski racers, Olympic champions - when the curtain goes up, the game is on.
Dempsey and Mitchell do not disappoint. Theirs is a demanding triple test: Fly hard, fly safe and make it look easy.
Although the focus is on the 12 minutes of Hawk One's performance, their flight to centre stage began decades ago. The ascent is arduous and only a handful can gain the experience to reach the summit.
Only ex-military pilots like Dempsey and Mitchell have the jet aerobatic experience. It's a matter of cost. The Sabre can burn up to 2,800 litres of jet fuel an hour. Dempsey says, "We're up to $5,500 per hour to operate the jet." After initial training, even experienced jet aerobatic pilots require "four to five trips ... to get an individual comfortable doing low-level aerobatics."
The journey doesn't end with in-house training. Both Dempsey and Mitchell must be qualified by the International Air Show Council and demonstrate to Transport Canada that they're safe. An experienced pilot requires an average of six hours of training to meet the required standards, mounting to a total cost of $30,000 for that time in the air.
"The important thing in all of this," says Dempsey, "is flight safety."
Can safety throttle the thrill? Humans are a fickle audience. We want a safe show, but one that entrances us with a display showcasing the outer limits of human ability.
Consider the physics.
Diving down the backside of a loop, Hawk One travels at 500 feet per second. Pulling out at 250 feet pleases the crowd, but leaves only a half second before contact with Mother Earth.
Self-preservation requires a Plan B. The singer has Auto-Tune, the trapeze artist a safety net. Even the lion tamer has a gun.
For the Hawk One pilots, experience and skill are the Plan B. Adding up shows and practices, Dempsey and Mitchell both have more than 1,400 performances to their credit. This vast experience allows them to thrill the crowd and survive.
As the Hawk soars above Abbotsford International, the crowd is enthralled by the jet's gyrations in its carefully choreographed routine. Hawk One's flight is an illusion - that a human can make graceful art of the caged explosion that is the jet fighter.
Still, the greatest illusion lies beyond the visual beauty: During Hawk One's performance, time doesn't wind to a stop. It flies backward.
You crane your neck and daydream - this is what the Sabre sounded like when it ruled the skies of Europe. And so on with the other performers - so that's the growl the Spitfire made over Dover's white cliffs. That's what a Cormorant rescue helicopter looks like when it saves someone from a floundering vessel.
Dempsey says, "People can close their eyes and visualize the Golden Hawks when they see our Sabre fly ... people get way more out of seeing an airplane fly than just (seeing it) sitting in a museum. Getting a chance to actually sit in such an iconic aircraft after the show just enhances the experience."
It's not just the ability to evoke history that makes the venture worthwhile.
Dempsey says, "Sure there's an element of risk in everything we do in flight," but he points out that, "there are a lot of young people out there who are motivated by Hawk One and who are too young to know anything about the Sabre ... and the history and heritage of our veterans."
When they see the jet fly, "it spurs them to ask questions, and that's a really important part of what we do."
So in the end analysis, is it worth risking the Hawk?
The jet has played many roles, all of them tinged with risk. Yet, this turn on the stage, before thousands of spectators, is the performance of its lifetime. In one 12-minute flight, Hawk One revives an entire history of challenge, personal transformation and national achievement.
The risk is negligible; the payoff is priceless.
HAWK ONE: PART 3
Doomsday defender, space age artist, career inspiration. Hawk One, a 1954 Canadair Sabre fighter jet, has been all these things, but for three days in August in Abbotsford, B.C, this swept-wing jet was a performer, one of the stars on Canada's biggest open air stage: the 2011 Abbotsford International Air Show.
Canada's largest aerial display is the subject of this third instalment in the Postmedia series on the Discovery Air Hawk One 2011 tour.
For this four-part project, writer Karl Wilberg teamed with filmmaker brother Chris Wilberg, who is shooting a companion documentary for North Vancouver's Barney and Oscar Films.
The first two stories detailed the earlier personae of Canada's Sabres and its pilots. In its initial guise, the Sabre was a formidable Cold Warrior and as the mount of the RCAF Golden Hawks - the premier Canadian display team of the '50s and '60s - a vehicle for modern art and the inspiration for a generation of aviators.
In the hands of its current owner, aviation preservation group Vintage Wings of Canada, the Sabre is still used as a catalyst to inspire young Canadians.
At every stop, pilots Dan Dempsey, Robert Mitchell and astronaut Chris Hadfield seat kids in the cockpit and encourage them to pursue their dreams.
After pre-season events in Gatineau, Que., and on Canada Day in Edmonton, the Wilbergs followed the Hawk to Abbotsford to explore the enduring attraction of the air show, investigate the paradoxical blend of safety and performance, and ponder the magic of a live act.
http://www.edmontonjournal.com
