Honor to be Presented at EAA AirVenture

Nathan K. Hammond has been named as the next recipient of 2023’s Bill Barber Award for Showmanship. Among the airshow industry’s most prestigious honors, the Barber Award recognizes excellence in airmanship, airshow performance, and panache. The list of the award’s winners reads like an airshow hall of fame roster.

In less than ten-years as an airshow performer, Nathan “Nate” Hammond has established himself as one of the contemporary airshow circuit’s most creative and innovative performers. In addition to superb stick-and-rudder skills, Hammond’s popular night airshow features wing mounted pyrotechnics and dazzling LED lights. What’s more, Nathan was instrumental in the development of innovative theme acts such as Adventures of Aviore, which has been featured at EAA’s AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Hammond’s path to airshow stardom started in up-state New York, where his father worked as a pilot in the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome’s airshow. Young Nathan took his first airplane ride at the tender age of two weeks—riding in his mother’s lap.

In the early 1990s, the Hammond family moved to Kentucky, where Nathan’s father took work as the crew chief and ferry pilot for Steve Oliver and Suzanne Asbury-Oliver of Pepsi SkyDancer and Pepsi SkyWriter fame. Nathan, by extension of his father’s new station, became a twelve-year-old ramp rat, helping around the Pepsi camp in any way he could.

Nathan soloed at age sixteen and, by age eighteen, had earned his Commercial Pilot Certificate. Shortly thereafter, he took over his father’s position as Steve Oliver’s crew chief and ferry pilot for SkyDancer—a highly modified de Havilland Canada DHC-1 Chipmunk.

Aware of Nathan’s growing skill and experience, Mr. Oliver suggested the young man learn to skywrite and use the Chipmunk to work toward the attainment of his low-level aerobatic card. A savvy businessman, Oliver aspired to see the proverbial show go on—even if he were unable to fly.

Nathan’s maiden skywriting flight was over the Atlanta Motor Speedway with some one-hundred-thousand spectators and a national television audience looking on.

Upon the Olivers’ 2016 retirement from the airshow circuit, Nathan assumed control of SkyDancer, renaming the airplane GhostWriter.

In addition to flying his day and night airshow routines, Nathan has been a driving force behind the Black Flag airshow training camps—a forward-thinking initiative undertaken in 2020 for purpose of affording aerobatic pilots to preserve perishable flying skills. Black Flag has since become an annual event, helping experienced aerobatic pilots stay sharp and providing up-and-comers an avenue to coaching, mentoring, improved proficiency, and networking opportunities by which to advance their burgeoning airshow careers.

First presented in 1986 and named for aerobatic legend, Bill Barber—a man alternately dubbed by aviation writers "Aerobatic Flying's Renaissance Man" and "The One-Man Air Show"— the Bill Barber Award for Showmanship is presented annually to airshow performers or teams deemed to have demonstrated great skill and showmanship.

2023’s Bill Barber Award is to be presented during EAA’s AirVenture Oshkosh.

FMI: www.airventure.org