Keith Leedom, Pilot from Van Nuys Airport and the Movie One-Six Right
I read the threads about Keith Leedom and his airplanes. I met Keith in 1999 at Van Nuys Airport when he was training with the world champion (from Kazakhstan-not Russia) Sergei Boriak. I had seen Keith around the airport and knew he had an Pitts at the time. Later he bought a Sukhoi 31 and then a Sukhoi 29 from the Russians. I saw him train very hard over the years. He used to fly 3 times a day, 3-4 days a week and yes, he did break a lot of blood vessels in his eyes and around his eye sockets from all of the negative g loads. He used to have red spots on the whites of his eyes!
The plane's g-meters pegged at +10/-10 and on several occasions we looked in the cockpit after his flights and he had pegged it both directions. Undoubtedly, he flew harder than any fighter pilot in the services. And, yes, he did it in shorts and t-shirts...no g-suits. He is in excellent physical shape if you look at him. Edan Shalev (Israeli pilot, veteran air show pilot and competition pilot at VNY) said that Keith put him through, undoubtedly, the most violent maneuver he has ever experienced in an airplane. Keith tumbled the Sukhoi on a 45 degree upline at 320 kilometers (200 mph) when most do it at 100 mph. Edan said he though his head was going to come off.
I rode with Keith one time. He gave me -4g's at my request and I had a headache for hours and slept for 4 hours that afternoon. To give you an idea of what -10 g's is like, Keith would have to fly the plane straight down toward earth at about 190 kts (217 mph) and push the plan to level so that the plane was inverted and level. He did this at about 1,500 feet off the ground (about 4 seconds from impact). All the blood rushes to the head and the transition from straight down to inverted level took about 3 seconds. Do the math on that and no human could take that without great conditioning to the g loads.
When I fist saw him fly, i thought I'd hear about him dying. He was amazing to watch and some things he does in those planes are amazing. His takeoffs and landings were also spectacular as he constantly made high-speed short approaches about 50 feet over the hangars and frequently made nearly vertical takeoffs with all of that power.
Over the years, i saw him train very hard. I learned he was a competition skydiver, race car driver, jiu-jitsu fighter and a self-made business owner. I came to know him after stopping in his hangar a few times to talk. He always had a fridge full of beer for his friends even though he didn't drink it. Go figure!
I changed my opinion of him from that of being dangerous to that of being a perfectionist and true professional who worked VERY HARD at being a great pilot. I know he won almost every contest he entered and has since flown in foreign countries in the Russian planes.
The skydiving stories are something else, too. I know he jumped out of a Boeing 727 at over 200kts and literally decelerated to terminal velocity. Keith said it felt like he was hit in the back with a baseball bat when he hit the air at 230 mph.
So, the stories you read (and there are more) are all true. More importantly, he is smart about what he does and is not a danger to himself as some would like you to believe. He just has a higher thresshold for risk and danger than about 99.9% of us mortals do. If you ever run into him, talk to him about it. He is very personable and easy to talk to.
-Thomas