Wed, Sep 13, 2023
The Phillips 66 Aerostars have been performing together, side by side at around 250 mph, for more than a decade, and the story of how the team came to be is like so many other such stories ... it happened almost by accident.
Team member Paul "Rocket" Hornick told that story to Aero-News at AirVenture 2019. Essentially, Harvey "Boss" Meek was looking to buy an aerobatic airplane, and answered an ad for a Pitts for sale. But through a sequence of events that you'll have to watch the video to learn, he wound up forming the Aerostars with Dave "Cupid" Monroe flying Yak-52s.
The team flew as a three-ship operation until last year, when Gerry "Fossil" Molidor joined the team in the slot position.
Phillips recently decided that they wanted to appeal more to the GA market than the warbird enthusiasts, so now the team flies three Extra 300Ls, with Fossil flying slot in an Extra 330LX.
The four-ship team has two more shows this summer, the Central Iowa Airshow in August and the Owensboro Air Show in September.
Aero-TV is a production of the Internationally syndicated Aero-News Network. Seen worldwide by hundreds of thousands of aviators and aviation adherents, ANN's Aero-TV has produced over 5000 aviation and feature programs, including well over 1700 episodes of our daily aviation news program, AIRBORNE UNLIMITED, currently hosted by Sophie Hurlock. Now in its third decade of operation, parent company Aero-News Network, has the most aggressive and intensive editorial profile of any aviation news organization and has published over 450,000 news and feature stories since its inception -- having pioneered the online 24/7 aviation new-media model that so many have emulated.
©2019 Aero-News Network, Inc., ALL Rights Reserved
More News
Have A Story That NEEDS To Be Featured On Aero-News? Here’s How To Submit A Story To Our Team Some of the greatest new stories ANN has ever covered have been submitted by our>[...]
“The legislation now includes a task force with industry representation ensuring that we have a seat at the table and our voice will be heard as conversations about the futur>[...]
Aero Linx: Waco Museum The WACO Historical Society, in addition to preserving aviation's past, is also dedicated and actively works to nurture aviation's future through its Learnin>[...]
Adcock Range National low-frequency radio navigation system (c.1930-c.1950) replaced by an omnirange (VOR) system. It consisted of four segmented quadrants broadcasting Morse Code >[...]
Also: uAvionix AV-Link, Does Simming Make Better Pilots?, World Games, AMA National Fun Fly Czech sportplane manufacturer Direct Fly has finished delivering its 200th ALTO NG, the >[...]
ANN FAQ: Submit a News Story!
See All