Warbird Radio

WARBIRD RADIO - What happens when the largest pilot advocacy organization in the world finds itself at a moment of transition, while general aviation continues to face real and ongoing challenges?
That question frames Season 17, Episode 4 of Warbird Radio, which features a full-length conversation with Darren Pleasance, the former President of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.
In a candid discussion, Pleasance speaks plainly about his belief in AOPA and its vital mission. Whatever leadership changes may come and go, he emphasizes that the organization’s core work remains essential: advocacy in Washington, safety education, member services and outreach that supports pilots across the country.
The pressures facing general aviation are not abstract. Regulatory complexity, economic realities and the day-to-day demands of aircraft ownership require sustained attention. Pleasance underscores that AOPA plays a central role in that ecosystem — and that its effectiveness depends on engaged members.
The message of the episode is direct. Do not cancel your membership. Stay involved. Organizations of this scale and importance are healthiest when their members participate — by paying attention, asking thoughtful questions and contributing where they can.
The conversation also highlights one of AOPA’s most compelling programs for young people. In a time when aviation’s future depends on developing the next generation, programs like these matter.
The episode then turns from policy to marketplace, with a detailed look at the current warbird market from Darcy Stults and Mark Clark of Courtesy Aircraft.
Stults, recently named to the 2025 Class of 20 Under 40, brings both enthusiasm and discipline to her analysis of the market. She discusses which aircraft are moving, which are holding and how buyers and sellers are navigating today’s environment.
Clark’s story spans decades. FAA-authorized to fly virtually any high-performance ex-military surplus aircraft, he earned his pilot’s license in high school and sold his first warbird at 18. His introduction to the P-51 Mustang came much earlier.
“When I was about 12 someone was giving rides in a Mustang for a dollar a minute, and I managed to buy about 35 minutes worth,” he recalls. “I have proudly sold that same Mustang twice since then.”
The health of advocacy organizations and the vitality of the warbird marketplace are closely connected. One safeguards access and representation. The other sustains the aircraft and the community that keep history flying.
This is an important episode.
Listeners are encouraged to hear the full conversation, remain engaged and subscribe to the WarbirdRadio.com email list to stay informed. Participation — whether through advocacy, mentorship or stewardship — remains central to aviation’s continued strength.

#warbirdradio #nwoc #warbirds #aopa #courtesyaircraft

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WARBIRD RADIO - Historic airplanes have a way of commanding attention in the air. On the ground, their survival depends on something quieter: organization.
On Episode 3 of Season 17 of WarbirdRadio.com, Kristin Schaick, executive director of EAA Warbirds of America, speaks plainly about what she believes the next chapter of warbird preservation requires: more hangars, more local organization and more people willing to step forward.
The Warbirds of America division operates under the umbrella of the Experimental Aircraft Association, a global organization of more than 300,000 members in over 100 countries. Its AirVenture gathering each summer may be aviation’s most visible celebration, but Schaick’s focus is on what happens the other 51 weeks of the year.
“We need more Warbirds of America Hangars,” she says during the conversation.
These hangars are local chapters — structured communities formed around historic military aircraft and the people who care for them. In Schaick’s telling, they serve as connective tissue: linking owners to maintenance expertise, pairing younger mechanics with aging masters of fabric and radial engines, and offering veterans and their families a place where the stories attached to these aircraft are understood.
The barriers to starting one, she insists, are lower than many assume. A small group of committed individuals, a defined mission and alignment with national standards are often enough to begin. What matters most is momentum.
Across the country, warbirds often sit in isolation — a T-6 tucked into the corner of a county airport, a P-51 maintained by a shrinking circle of specialists. Without deliberate organization, knowledge fades. When it disappears, it rarely returns.
Schaick, making her first appearance on Warbird Radio, traces her own path to the role. Her background reflects a blend of operational understanding and nonprofit leadership, but her emphasis is less on résumé lines than on responsibility. Preservation, she suggests, is not about reverence for the past alone. It is about creating systems that make continuity possible.
If hangars represent the local infrastructure, advocacy represents the national one.
Joining the episode is Sean Elliott, vice president of advocacy and safety for the Experimental Aircraft Association. Elliott outlines regulatory challenges that will shape general aviation in 2026 — pressures that extend well beyond the warbird community.
Certification pathways, operational rules and broader federal oversight are evolving. The effects will be felt by vintage aircraft operators, homebuilders, flight schools and private owners alike. Elliott’s message is measured but direct: engagement is not optional.
The regulatory environment does not distinguish between a polished Mustang and a modest two-seat trainer. Policy written in Washington affects both. And in an era when costs are rising and margins are tightening, clarity and representation matter.
For organizations like EAA and its Warbirds of America division, scale provides leverage. Membership numbers translate into voice. But voice requires participation.
The episode does not trade in spectacle. There are no engine failures recounted, no dramatic rescues. Instead, it examines the quieter mechanics of survival — the administrative frameworks and legal advocacy that allow the spectacle to exist at all.
Warbirds, for all their thunder, depend on ordinary acts: meeting minutes, safety briefings, insurance renewals and mentorship sessions that stretch long past sunset.
Schaick’s call for more hangars is, in effect, a call for more stewards. Elliott’s warning about regulatory headwinds is a reminder that history does not protect itself.
The airplanes may draw the crowds. But it is organization, discipline and local leadership that will determine whether they continue to fly.
For those interested in establishing a Warbirds of America Hangar in their own community, additional information is available through EAA Warbirds of America.
Episode 3 of Season 17 is available now at WarbirdRadio.com.

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WARBIRD RADIO - The second episode of WarbirdRadio.com’s 17th season turns its attention to a subject that has always lived at the heart of the program: not simply the machines, but the people who assume responsibility for them.
Jerod Flohr, a 2025 inductee into the aviation community’s “20 Under 40,” joins the program with news that is likely to ripple through the airshow world in 2026 — including the anticipated return of the F-4 Phantom to the circuit.
For many Americans, the Phantom was more than an aircraft. It was a symbol of Cold War resolve and Vietnam-era airpower, its twin afterburners announcing its presence long before it appeared overhead. Its reemergence in front of airshow crowds is not merely a matter of spectacle. It is an act of interpretation — a way of placing history in motion rather than behind glass.
Mr. Flohr flies with the Vietnam War Flight Museum, an organization committed to preserving and presenting the aircraft — and the stories — of the Vietnam generation. In conversation, he is measured and pragmatic. Vintage jets, he notes, demand more than enthusiasm. They require discipline, institutional memory and, above all, succession.
The greatest threat to historic aircraft is not always mechanical. It is generational.
To keep aircraft of such complexity airborne into the next decade will require a deliberate effort to train young pilots and maintainers who understand that stewardship is a long-term obligation. In this respect, the return of the Phantom represents not only a logistical achievement, but a signal of continuity.
The episode then shifts from jets to a family whose name will be familiar to long-time listeners.
In a rare joint appearance, John and Matthew Hyle join the program together. Both are early in their careers as aerospace engineers, often working opposite shifts that leave little time for collaboration in the hangar. The pace of professional life has slowed their side-by-side work, at least temporarily.
Yet listeners will recognize the standards they carry. Their father, Skipper Hyle — a fighter pilot, United States Air Force veteran and frequent guest on this program — has long been known for his exacting approach to warbird maintenance and operation. Their mother, Dr. Susan Northrup, the Federal Air Surgeon and also a familiar voice to the audience, has likewise spoken often of discipline, preparation and respect for the craft.
Those principles are visible in the brothers’ work.
The family Harvard, a North American trainer that once prepared Allied pilots for combat, remains a touchstone. More recently, the brothers completed a Stearman restoration, returning another aircraft to flight status. Both are Eagle Scouts. Both are engineers in modern aerospace. And both still devote their off-hours to preserving aircraft whose stories predate their own.
Taken together, the conversations form a single theme.
Historic aircraft endure only when the transfer of responsibility is intentional. Airshows may feature afterburners and radial engines, but behind each display lies a chain of instruction, mentorship and trust.
The Phantom’s return in 2026 will be dramatic.
The quieter story — and perhaps the more consequential one — is who will be there to maintain it in 2036.

#warbirdradio #warbirds #vintagejets #vietnamwarflightmuseum #museumoftheforgottenwarrior

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WARBIRD RADIO - The seventeenth season of Warbird Radio opens not with spectacle, but with sobriety. Last year, during what should have been a routine flight in a P-51 Mustang, veteran airshow pilot Jim Pietz encountered one of aviation’s most unforgiving emergencies: an in-flight fire. In an aircraft designed in the crucible of World War II, where systems are mechanical and margins can be thin, smoke in the cockpit is not an abstraction. It is immediate. It is disorienting. It is measured in seconds.
What followed, as Pietz recounts in a candid conversation that anchors the 2026 premiere of Warbird Radio, was not improvisation but preparation. A former Chairman of the International Council of Air Shows, Pietz is widely regarded as a pilot’s pilot — an instructor, mentor and trusted adviser to some of the most accomplished aviators in the airshow community. His response in that moment reflected decades of disciplined training and a deep familiarity with the performance characteristics of the airplane he was flying. What might have been instantly fatal became survivable.
In the interview, Pietz resists dramatizing the event. There is no theatrical retelling, no indulgence in adrenaline. Instead, he speaks plainly about decision-making under pressure and the culture that makes such decisions possible. Warbirds, he notes, are neither forgiving nor sentimental machines. They reward precision and preparation; they expose complacency without hesitation.
The conversation does not end with the emergency itself. Later in the season, Warbird Radio will return to the incident, widening the lens beyond the cockpit to examine maintenance practices, inspection culture and the sometimes uncomfortable but necessary candor that underpins safe operations. In a sector where aircraft are both historic artifacts and active flying machines, transparency is not merely professional courtesy. It is preservation.
The episode opens, fittingly, on another front of stewardship. Josh Wells, executive director of Doc's Friends, joins the program to discuss the ongoing work of operating one of only two airworthy B-29 Superfortresses in the world, B-29 Doc. Keeping such an aircraft aloft is as much an exercise in organizational leadership as in mechanical aptitude. It requires volunteers, donors, logistical planning and an unrelenting commitment to standards that honor both history and safety.
Wells outlines the aircraft’s upcoming tour and the network of support that sustains it, underscoring a central truth of the warbird community: these airplanes do not fly by nostalgia alone. They fly because individuals accept responsibility — for systems, for teams and for the legacy embodied in aluminum and rivets.
Taken together, the two conversations establish a theme for the season ahead. Whether confronting an emergency in a high-performance fighter or preparing a 141-foot wingspan bomber for public display, the work hinges on leadership under pressure and humility in preparation. The spectacle of flight may capture the public imagination, but it is the discipline behind the scenes that determines whether these aircraft endure.
Season 17 begins there — in the seconds that matter, and in the steady work that makes those seconds survivable.

#warbirdradio #warbirds #p51mustang #b29doc #b29

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WARBIRD RADIO - The 17th season of Warbird Radio is almost ready for takeoff, but some stories can’t wait.
In this special report, Matt Jolley sits down with Darren Pleasance for a candid conversation in the wake of the recent announcement from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA). Over the past year, Pleasance has been one of the most visible leaders in general aviation, and the news of change at the organization has sparked serious discussion throughout the aviation community.
Beyond the immediate headlines, a larger question is emerging: what comes next for AOPA? If leadership believes the president should be closer to headquarters, many members are asking whether the Board of Directors should also move closer to reflecting the membership it represents. At a time when the freedoms protecting general aviation have never been more important, the need for a strong, unified voice has never been greater.
In this special report, you’ll hear a preview of Matt’s conversation with Pleasance. The complete interview will be released as part of the 2026 season of Warbird Radio, which begins February 10th, 2026.
This is a conversation about leadership, representation, and the future of general aviation—one you won’t want to miss.
#aopa #warbirdradio #generalaviation #warbirds

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