Air Hannah

AIR HANNAH

HURRICANE UPDATE FROM IDAHO

APPARENTLY, THERE'S MORE TO A BLUE ANGELS flight than motion sickness. Just ask motocross great Bob Hannah: "You wake up not quite sure where you are. Once you begin regaining your senses, you notice that your arms and legs are flailing around and you can't make them stop-you’re having a seizure.”

Hannah is very animated in his description of catching a little shut-eye in the back seat of an F/A-18 Hornet, flapping his arms and bobbing his head as he reenacts the experience of blacking out under the high g loads dealt out by a fighter jet performing heavy maneuvers.

Hannah was no stranger to flying when he bagged his ride with the Blue Angels in 1988. At the time, he had been a licensed pilot for nearly a decade, was still riding supercross and in top physical condition, and had been briefed prior to strapping into the Hornet’s cockpit on how to grunt through a high-g pull. All this made little difference: Hannah went out for the count as the pilot demonstrated the turning capability of a modem fighter.

“They asked me how often I run, and when I told them 5 miles a day they said that’s too much, that it thins the blood and makes you more susceptible to blacking out,” says Hannah, before going on to explain that a short, fat, cholesterol-clogged 50-year-old would be far better suited to withstand high g’s than a tall, thin runner. “That’s why I eat these, now,” he jokes, picking a deep-fried finger steak off of his plate, “it builds up my tolerance.”

Clothed in his olive-drab flight suit, Bob Hannah could easily pass for a fighter jock. He has that unmistakable air of selfconfidence. A patch on the left breast reads “Hurricane Hannah,” a call sign carried over from his racing days when he stormed onto the national motocross scene in 1976 and promptly blew the competition into the cheap seats.

By the end of his racing career, Hannah’s victory tally read like Baron Von Richthofen’s kill sheet, including six national championships and a Trans-USA crown. Although he recently

signed on as a consultant to Yamaha's supercross team and still enjoys riding sportbikes in the Idaho mountains with

his 78-year-old father, the Hurricane’s course has turned.

To say that Hannah’s life revolves around flying is an understatement. The art decorating his home and office reveals the man’s love for aviation in general and his taste in aircraft in particular-classic warbirds and jets of the Korea and Vietnam eras. A quick browse through a stack of the 30-odd magazines piled atop a coffee table in Hannah’s office turned up only three publications that were not related to aviation, and by his own admission, he spends more time with the stick and rudder than behind the wheel. “I don’t drive much anymore, I don’t like driving,” he says. His preferred mode of transportation these days is a Piper Super Cub, which he keeps along with a Pitts S-1T aerobatic bi-plane in a 3600-square-foot hanger a stone’s throw from his back porch. ‘T can preflight my Cub and be off the ground in the time it takes me to reach the front gate in the Suburban,” says Hannah. Three years ago Hannah moved from the mountains down into the flat farmland outside of Caldwell, Idaho. Flying his Super Cub, he scouted for a piece of land to build on. “The farmer that I bought this place from was on his tractor. I buzzed him, flying a low pass off to his side, then came back the next day in the Suburban,” says Hannah with a smile. “He agreed to sell the place to me.” Nestled in a comer of Hannah’s 200-acre spread is a pilot’s dream: a home

airstrip. The first thing he did was grade a 2200-foot mnway; next came the live-in hanger; and, finally, a house.

So how was it that aviation should steal the heart of perhaps the greatest motocross racer of all time? The answer can be traced to childhood. Hannah grew up in Lancaster, California, a region rich in aviation history neighboring Edwards Air Force Base and several aerospace facilities. “My old man worked for Lockheed and where I lived, the Blackbird and F-104s flew over my house daily,” recalls Hannah. Fate stepped in years later when a water-skiing accident sidelined Hannah throughout the 1980 season, giving him time to take flying lessons. “Busting my leg in ‘79, really, that was the luckiest thing that ever happened in the long run,” he says.

When Hannah’s not bush-flying in the mountains or traveling cross-country in the Cub, you’re likely to find him performing aerobatics in the Pitts Special or dogfighting with his flying buddy Joe Cenarrusa. “The Super Cub is a trail bike with saddlebags,” says Hannah. “The Pitts is a 500 roadracer.”

Hannah has flown in three aerobatic competitions thus far, a class winner the first time out. But more recently, he had a tryout in a P-51D pylon racer. Hannah lost the ride to an active F/A-18 pilot, narrowly missing out on getting to fly the modified warbird in the Reno Air Races. But you can bet your deep-fried finger steaks that Hurricane Hannah, the pilot and consummate competitor, didn’t catch a wink of g-induced shut-eye this time around.

Don Canet