HIGHT TO FLY WITH BLUE ANGELS
Thu, 2007-03-01 15:18
POWERade points leader Robert Hight, who’s been figuratively flying this season
at the wheel of the Automobile Club of Southern California Ford Mustang, gets to
go literal Friday when he climbs in the cockpit of a F/A-18 Hornet, one of the
aircraft used by the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels precision flying team.
Hight will fly out of the Naval Air Facility at El Centro, Calif., the
team’s pre-season training facility.
Among the maneuvers for which the elite team is best known are the
four-plane Diamond Formation, enhanced by the individual maneuvers of two solo
pilots, and the six-plane Delta Formation.
Although the Blue Angels are stationed at Forrest Sherman Field NAS in
Pensacola, Fla., the squadron trains from January through March in El
Centro.
The Blue Angels are scheduled to fly 66 air shows at 34 air show sites
during the 2006 season as goodwill ambassadors for the U.S. Navy and U.S.
Marines. The team this year is celebrating its 20th season flying the F/A-18
Hornet. Last season, more than 15 million spectators watched the Blue Angels
perform.
Hight originally was to have flown with the team last season, but
scheduling conflicts forced a postponment. The 37-year-old native Californian
was the winner of the Auto Club’s 2005 Road to the Future Award as the NHRA
Rookie-of-the-Year. After finishing second in points last season, he leads the
standings this year after consecutive runner-up finishes at Pomona, Calif., and
Phoenix, Ariz.
Hight’s Ford Mustang is the quickest full-bodied race car in the world,
having accelerated from zero-to-330 miles per hour in 4.636 seconds.
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