If you live in Salem and heard planes buzzing around all weekend, they were part of the annual aerobatics competition held at Salem’s Leckrone Field.
The pilots flew in from around the country, including Robert Bond of Knoxville, Tennessee who has flown his plane to Salem since 2021 to participate.
“Competition aerobatics is really kind of addicting, because the goal is perfection,” Bond said. “It’s pretty easy to teach somebody to fly a loop, but it’s hard to teach somebody to fly a round loop, and the judges are all looking for perfectly circular loops.”
Bond described how pilots learn to perform the patterns.
“The ideal situation is to get somebody who’s a good judge to be on the ground and coach you on the radio and tell you, that loop wasn’t round, that line was off, or you’re messing up the roll somehow. Now we’ve got some technology. A lot of us have little boxes that we can put in the airplane, and it’s a data acquisition system that lets us replay the flight at home. I don’t have a coach, so that works pretty well for me.
Many of the two dozen participants travel to various competitions around the country to earn points to qualify for the nationals competition. Salem has hosted the competition for over 50 years.
