At 6am each day, 20-year-old Kevin LaRosa Jr. flies over snarled freeways of Los Angeles reporting the gridlock for Traffic.com.
But what really rocks the manager of Jet Copters Co. is flying the World War II vintage North American P-51D warbird, valued at US$1.2 million, parked in his company hangar at Van Nuys Airport.
The polished fighter, with its 1,500hp V-12 engine, can hit 724kph as it dives toward Earth.
“When the engine revs, you can’t hear yourself think,” said LaRosa, who has flown with his father since he was in diapers. “It really does feel like the top of the world. When you’re on a roll, it’s like the world is circling you.”
For Carmelina Nucci, who learned to fly from a grass strip in Canada and mowed grass in exchange for lessons, it’s a love affair with the clouds.
“My real love, my true passion, is doing aerobatics over Santa Paula with cool music piped into my headset,” said Nucci, a neonatal and intensive care nurse in La Crescenta.
“That’s pretty close to flirting with the sky.”
Len Moore first took off from a cornfield as a 16-year-old kid in Iowa. Now 72, he’s almost got his pilot certification.
He said flying his restored 1946 Ercoupe in US Army Air Corps trim is “indescribable.” Now he hops to airports up and down the coast for “US$100 hamburgers.”
“I [had] trepidations about the whole thing at first,” said Moore.
“It’s a feeling of, ‘I can do this.’ All you can hear is your heart pounding.”
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