Pilot from Wichita ‘just got bored of flying straight and level’
Scott Francis is coming home.
And McConnell Air Force Base’s Frontiers in Flight open house and air show will be his homecoming.
Francis, 51, is one of nine aerobatic performers at the show Saturday and Sunday.
He’ll perform in his first hometown air show since he became an aerobatic pilot 12 years ago. It will be the first time he’s been back to Wichita in about 15 years.
“It’s been an embarrassingly long time, I admit,” Francis said, adding that after he left Wichita to attend the University of Kansas, the rest of his family eventually moved away, too.
But it was in Wichita where Francis’ path to aerobatics started.
“I remember my dad coming home from work smelling like airplanes,” he said. “Anything having to do with airplanes or aviation I thought was pure magic.
“There’s a certain intrigue to operating an airplane, so learning to fly them, it was an adventure to me.”
Francis’ dad, Bud Francis, was a test pilot at Beech, flying airplanes such as the Beech King Air 200, Starship and Beechjet when they were still experimental.
Francis’ early graduation present — he graduated from Wichita Southeast High School in 1985 — was flying lessons. His dad also was a certified flight instructor, and Francis had his private pilot’s license before he left for KU to pursue a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering.
When Francis started at KU, he attended on a full scholarship from the Navy’s Reserve Officer Training Corps. He hoped to become a fighter pilot. But his eyesight wouldn’t allow him to fly fighter jets in the Navy.
So Francis continued his flying education on his own dime, earning instrument, commercial, multi-engine and airline transport pilot ratings over the years, as well as a master’s degree in electrical engineering.
Francis, who lives 20 miles outside Washington, D.C., said he got interested in aerobatics in 2003.
“I just got bored of flying straight and level,” he said.
At first, Francis didn’t plan to do anything more than get five hours of aerobatic instruction “and scratch that itch.”
At the encouragement of his aerobatics instructor, Adam Cope, and with Cope’s airplane, Francis entered an aerobatics competition.
“I entered the contest at the sportsman level and actually won at that level,” he said. “I saw all this opportunity to get better in aerobatics.”
Three months later, he bought his first airplane designed and built for aerobatics, a Pitts S-1T. Four years later he traded the Pitts for a Giles G-202.
He now flies an MXS, a carbon-fiber monoplane that Francis said is one of only about a dozen in the world.
That airplane allows Francis to fly at a maximum speed of 310 mph and do loops, rolls, stalls and more sophisticated maneuvers.
“I try to hit all corners of the performance envelope,” he said.
A single performance typically lasts 12 to 15 minutes, Francis said. At times, he said, he’s pulling as many as 10 Gs — a little more than a fighter jet pilot would experience in extreme maneuvers.
Francis estimates he performs in 20 to 25 air shows a year. His first air show performance was in 2006.
It’s not his full-time job.
“I wish it was,” he said.
He’s an engineer for a defense firm and a test pilot.
“There’s a few” whose sole job is in aerobatics, Francis said. But “you have to have significant financial backing” to make a living from it.
If you go
What: Frontiers in Flight, McConnell Air Force Base’s open house and air show.
Cost: Free
When: 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m, Sept. 8-9
Where: Textron Aviation’s Pawnee location will serve as primary parking and entrance to the show. Entrances to the Pawnee parking will be available along Pawnee as well as at two spots on the west side of Rock Road just south of the Pawnee intersection. A secondary parking site, including handicapped parking, will be along the east side of South Oliver between 31st Street South and MacArthur. That parking site will offer shuttle service to the show’s entrance.
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This story was originally published September 4, 2018 at 4:43 PM.