Debrief /

Who:Spencer Suderman, airshow performer
Hours: “I have just over 2,000 hours; it is hard to build time when most flights in a Pitts are less than 45 minutes.”
Aircraft: “My favorite airplane is the one I have been flying since 2003, the Meteor Pitts S-2B. It’s bright red, has old-school hot rod flames, and helped me get a world record. Yes, I’m in love!”
Extra: Suderman's record flight took him from 23,000 feet to less than 2,000 feet in a little more than three minutes.

To overcome airsickness, Suderman took spin training with CP Aviation’s Rich Stowell.

Airshow performer Spencer Suderman recently set the world record for inverted spins—81 turns in three minutes. Based at California’s Camarillo Airport, Suderman’s airshow performance features the inverted spin with his signature corkscrew smoke trail. “As long as I have that smoke, I can wow them,” he says with a smile. “That’s why I’m an airshow performer—no one is crazier than me.”

Started in aviation…I started flying while in college in the late 1980s. Like most college students I was of the starving variety and couldn’t really afford to take the lessons in a meaningful time-frame so I only got about one hour of flying in per month. It wasn’t until a decade later that I was employed in the tech industry and was able to finish up and get my private pilot certificate. 

Early challenges… Getting enough flight time to make progress. Best practices dictate that you should fly two to three times per week when pursuing the private pilot certificate and I wasn’t able to fly that often, which meant that every lesson was first a prolonged review of previous work before new learning could take place.

Hardest lessons to learn... Learning to be smooth on the flight controls and not jerk the airplane around. This is especially important on landing and I had terrible fear of ground rush—not that there is much of that in a Cessna 152.

Aviation related activity…It wasn’t good enough for me to just fly in aerobatic contests; I had to pursue airshows because performing acro for yourself is fun but demonstrating it to others is awesome!

Advice for students… I tell all people who want to be pilots to learn how to spin and roll an airplane. You can’t truly become a safe pilot if you aren’t comfortable handling the airplane in all situations, conditions, and attitudes of flight.

Whoops… I was pink-slipped during the oral portion of my private pilot checkride for giving the wrong order of application of the flight controls to recover from a spin. How ironic is that since I just broke the world record for most inverted flat spins? Never give up, because success only comes to those who are willing to put in the effort.