July 19-26, 2026 - AirVenture 2026
Airshow
A good look at the Red Bull DC-6B -- one of the Flying Bulls.
This isn't just an old airline DC-6. The airplane was specifically ordered by Marshal Josip Broz Tito, president of Yugoslavia, as a luxurious personal transport. Yugoslavia's state airline JAT operated it, but Tito and his distinguished guests were the intended passengers. This particular DC-6B was essentially a flying government VIP suite. It served Tito from 1958 until 1975.
In 1975, Tito transferred the aircraft to Kenneth Kaunda, president of Zambia. Kaunda also used it as a VIP aircraft until it was eventually left abandoned at Lusaka Airport.
A Namibian aviation businessman, Chris Schutte, discovered the abandoned DC-6B along with another one. He operated them for sightseeing and charter work around southern Africa, including flights over Victoria Falls. It remained in African service into the late 1990s.
In March 2000, Flying Bulls chief pilot Sigi Angerer saw an advertisement for the DC-6B in an airline magazine. Two days later he was in Windhoek, Namibia, looking at the airplane and negotiating its purchase. On July 7, 2000, the DC-6 left Windhoek for Salzburg.
The Flying Bulls initially thought the airplane was in reasonably good condition. It wasn't. The DC-6 was completely dismantled, essentially down to individual components. The restoration began in 2001 and took about three years, involving tens of thousands of hours of work.
The Flying Bulls describe it as the "crown jewel" of their collection and use it for air displays as well as occasional passenger flights.
Until this summer, the DC-6B had not flown over U.S. soil since the 1950s.
This is the first time I've ever seen a P-63 Kingcobra fly.
Four Northrop F-5 fighters -- your basic small, simple, inexpensive fighter -- cruise by in diamond formation. The interesting thing here is that the F5 in the number two position is is flown by billionaire entrepreneur and current NASA administrator Jared Isaacman!
Isaacman has a fascinating bio. Born in 1983, he started Shift4 Payments in 1999 when he was only 16, initially operating the business from his parents' basement. It eventually became a very large payment-processing company and made him extremely wealthy.
The Black Diamond Jet Team began in 2010 as the Heavy Metal Jet Team, founded by retired USAF Lt. Col. Jerry "Jive" Kerby and Jared Isaacman. Kerby was Isaacman's L-39 instructor. During one of their early formation flights, the two apparently decided, essentially, why don't we start an airshow team? They initially had just two Aero L-39 Albatros jets. The operation grew quickly. By the 2012 season it had become the Black Diamond Jet Team, based in Lakeland, Florida, and was flying a much larger formation.At its peak, the team was flying five L-39s plus two MiG-17s which flew as opposing/solo aircraft. One of the MiG pilots was the legendary Navy fighter pilot Dale "Snort" Snodgrass. Isaacman was not merely the guy writing the checks. He actually flew as a team member, initially as the team's "Rook" (rookie), flying right wing. He was trained by Kerby in the L-39 and subsequently became a highly accomplished formation pilot. The team only flew a few years, and was essentially finished after the 2014 airshow season. I saw them fly at AirVenture 2011.
At some point a question arose: "What else can you do with all these former military jets and pilots"? That question eventually led to Isaacson co-founding Draken International in 2011, initially using some of the same people and aircraft associated with the Black Diamond operation. Instead of having the U.S. military use extremely expensive frontline fighters to simulate enemy aircraft, private contractors would operate older tactical aircraft as red-air aggressors. Now Draken operates one of the world’s largest fleets of privately owned fighter jets. Draken now provides the military with an entire simulated enemy force: live aircraft, electronic warfare, surface threats and other systems integrated together.
Next, Isaacman and SpaceX developed the Polaris Program, a series of increasingly ambitious private missions intended to push commercial human spaceflight technology forward.
The first Polaris mission was Inspiration4. Operated by SpaceX using the Crew Dragon spacecraft, it launched on September 15, 2021, with Isaacman commanding, and orbited Earth for three days. It was the first orbital mission with no professional astronauts aboard.
The second mission was Polaris Dawn, launched in September 2024. Isaacman and his crew reached an orbit of roughly 870 miles, the highest Earth orbit achieved by humans since Apollo. They conducted extensive medical and radiation research, tested Starlink laser communications, and tested new SpaceX spacesuits. Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis performed the first commercial spacewalk.
Isaacman originally arranged for three Polaris missions, with the third intended to be the first crewed flight of SpaceX's Starship. But then he became NASA administrator. He certainly wasn't your traditional NASA insider.
Isaacman isn't simply a wealthy guy who decided to buy a ride into space. He's a serious pilot who has spent years learning to operate demanding aircraft. Isaacman has logged over 7,000 flight hours. All these accomplishments and yet the man is only 43 years old!
The F-5 itself has an interesting history. Because it was a lightweight fighter, it simply couldn't carry the fuel, weapons and electronics of the bigger aircraft, the U.S. forces didn't use it for combat. But the U.S. Navy eventually discovered that an old F-5 could be extremely valuable for something completely different: pretending to be the enemy. The Navy and Air Force would use F-5s as adversary aircraft, because the little airplane's size, speed and maneuvering characteristics could approximate Soviet MiG fighters much better than another American fighter could. The Navy still operates F-5s as adversary aircraft today. Furthermore, over 25 countries including Switzerland have used or still use F-5s for their Air Forces. Finally, Hollywood made the F-5 famous as the fictional MiG-28 in Top Gun. Those were actually F-5E Tiger IIs painted black.
And yet there's more! The F-5 wasn't just a successful fighter in its own right. Northrop's work on the F-5 family eventually led toward the YF-17 Cobra, which competed against the YF-16 in the Lightweight Fighter competition. The YF-17 lost the USAF competition to the F-16, but the Navy selected the enlarged, heavily modified design as the basis for the F/A-18 Hornet.
Northrop ultimately built more than 2,600 F-5s, with production and licensed production extending into the 1980s. JJJ
An F-22 Raptor, P-51 Mustang and F-16 Viper perform a heritage flight.
The British Red Arrows fly the BAE Systems Hawk T1 jet trainer. The Hawk is a two-seat, single-engine British jet originally designed primarily as an advanced trainer. The Red Arrows have used the Hawk T1 since 1979.
The U.S. Navy's T-45 Goshawk jet trainer used for intermediate and advanced portions of the Navy/Marine Corps Student Naval Aviator strike pilot training program is a highly modified version of the British BAE Systems Hawk.
Bailey Sutherland took this awesome shot of the Raptor.
