My good friend, and a friend to many others on this board, Bud Granley was presented with the "Art Scholl Showmanship Award" at the ICAS Convention earlier this month. For those that don't know, this award is basically an Oscar for an airshow performer.
Bud is well known for his Harvard, Fouga and Yak airshow routines. He does a dual Yak-55, Yak-18 show with his son, Ross, that must be seen to be believed. He is also well known for being the primary race pilot for the T-6 "Lickity Split", former back up pilot for the Seafury "Furias" and a former race pilot of the P-51 "Miss America". Some of you might have seen him fly the Spitfire in formation with the Snowbirds at the Abbotsford airshow a few years back. In addition to all this, he is one of the main pilots for the Olympic Flight Museum, flying all of the fighters and the C-123 when we still had it.
A short list of stuff I've seen in his logbook is: A1-E, AD-4N, HU-16, AN-2, TBM, AT-11, A-26, B-17, B-25, Brousard, BT-15, C-45, C-123, CasaJet, CF-100, Chipmunk, UC-78, Corsair, CJ-6, DC-3, DC-6, DC-7, F-86, Fleet, Fouga, L-39, L-29, ME-108, Mig-15UT, Mig-21, N3N, Navion, NA-50, P-40, P-51, PT-22, Seafury, Storch, Soko-522, SokoJet, Stearman, Spitfire, Tiger Moth, Tracker, Tutor, TA-4Shawk. T-28, T-33, T-34, T-6, FM-2, Yale, Yak-9UM, Yak-11, Yak-18T, Yak-50, Yak-52, Yak-55. There is a lot more, but I just can't think of them right now. He's also done all the chase flights for the ME-262s.
Anybody who has ever seen Bud fly, flown formation with him or been lucky enough to ride with him will tell you that he is one of the best airshow pilots around. Anybody that has been lucky enough to hang out, party and spend time with him knows how much fun he can be and will tell you he is definately one of a kind.
I'm proud he has been recognized by the airshow community and I'm even prouder to call him my friend.
http://www.airshows.org/
www.airshowpilot.com