Keith Leedom and One Six Right
I am a skydiver from the Boston area and had occasion to visit Southern Ca. I had a skydiver friend in So. Cal. who knew Keith Leedom and had told me about his skydiving stunts (skysurfing from 24,000 feet on pure oxygen, jumping out of a Boeing 727 -back door-) and I knew he was a silver medalist in the US Skydiving Championships. My friend told me he was a nice guy and arranged for me to ride in one of his Sukhois that he bought from the Russian government.
I met him at Van Nuys airport and we went over some basic emergency responses (I guess Keith had just caught on fire in another plane and landed it without bailing out and he wanted to make sure I was comfortable getting out of the plane in case we had to). I was scared and made to feel safe at the same time if that makes sense.
Let me tell you, he did amazing things in that plane. He literally tumbled the plane (tail went over the nose) and took me through +9 g's (which caused me to black out-tunnel vision- and come to). He would only give me negative 4 g's and that made me feel like my eyes were going to pop out of my head. In competition and when practicing, Keith flew +9 and -8 g's..at one time he said he broke a bunch of blood vessels in and around his eyes and backed off to -7 and -6. These are g loads that fighter pilots in g suits don't fly and Keith did it in shorts and a t-shirt.
He then spun the plane from 6,000 to 2,000 feet and I was done. This guy had balls of steel and couldn't have been nicer. That picture of him skydiving from the Pitts is in his hangar and he told me it caused a LOT of trouble for him from people who thought he was dangerous, wreckless, etc. But, you should know, the FAA was aware of Keith's jump from the Pitts and had no trouble with him doing it. It was legal and Keith said the only thing that was negative about that jump was that everyone thought he was going to die and gave him a rough time for being irresponsible when he really wasn't.
By the way, planes weren't the only thing Keith was crazy in. After our flight, he gave me a ride in his Ferrari on the Van Nuys guard ramp and he took to car from 0 to 120mph to 0 again between the hangars and the taxiway that parallels 16R. Apparently the Airport police "requested" that he not do that anymore....turns out he had given about half of the force a ride in his plane so they were pretty nice to him.
I have over 2,000 jumps and am getting my private pilot's certificate now and NOTHING has compared to the aerobatic ride with Keith. He was very generous and couldn't have been nicer to me.