L ike many thousands of people, I’ve admired the legend that is Bob Hoover since I was a small child. His aerobatic routine in the Shrike Commander with one engine feathered, the famous video of him pouring a coffee while rolling, all the time holding positive G, plus his famous line “Gentlemen, we have a race” as the Reno chase plane and safety pilot. All things that make him inspirational to flyers everywhere. So it’s great to see that his life is to be narrated in a documentary film called ‘Flying The feathered Edge.” Directed by Kim Furst, who edited the superb One Six Right, the film will be a biography of Hoover’s life. Furst comments:
“Sometime last January, my dear friend and aerobatic legend Sean D. Tucker invited me to a legendary “Bob Hoover Dinner” near Bob’s home, in Palos Verdes, California.
That evening, our party of ten, consisting of Bob, Sean, fellow test pilots and air show pilots, Bob’s wife Colleen, Bob’s last air show sponsor Randy Fry, myself, and my friend Jessica Ambats (editor of Plane and Pilot magazine) sat listening to Bob’s stories spanning a truly remarkable career. I was enthralled. And somewhere along the line, as the laughter and the true friendship between Sean and Bob set the stage for some of the best flying stories anyone has ever heard (and between glasses of wine for all of us I might add, Sean’s friends at Silver Oak came through once again with a rare Magnum that was about the size of Bob’s wife Colleen, and she’s a normal size woman) I decided that Bob’s story – deeply moving and uniquely American with themes of integrity, skill, competency and heroism – deserved to be a big, glossy, elegant, dynamic feature length documentary.
Flying The feathered Edge - The Legend of Bob Hoover
No release date is given for the film, but for sure, it’s one I’ll be queueing to see at the first opportunity. Here’s the trailer, including that coffee pouring barrel roll….
