Yak 52s Have Been Replaced With Extra Aerobatic Airplanes For 2019

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.

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