Flipping Out

It’s 6:30 AM. Scrambled eggs glisten at the hotel’s breakfast buffet, bacon proffers its succulent aroma, and French toast plumply awash in powdered sugar makes you want to grab it and reach for the syrup. Instead, you munch a dry blueberry muffin. In an hour or so you will be in the heavens with the Aeroshell Aerobatic Team, and you don’t want to have to jettison anything.
     At the Sun ‘n Fun airbase in Lakeland, FL, nerves crowd out hunger when you climb into a rear cockpit not much wider than you are in a little plane with only one engine. A little sign riveted to the metal in front of you says, "Sit Down, Shut Up, Hang On." Checking that your empty Aeroshell giveaway bag is carefully stowed for quick emergency retrieval, you snap the shoulder and lap belts of the T-6 and snug them up. Tighter. You notice that there is nothing to hang on to.
     In a little while, it doesn’t matter. You’re part of the plane. Maybe you are the plane. Sky and earth wheel beneath, smoke-oil trails scribble signature loops into the morning sun, and you soar into another realm, an altered state of consciousness. You shove the plastic canopy forward and out of the way, bite the wind. Gravity is a toy, and you are playing with it. You really are in heaven.
     Back on the ground – (was it always this flat?) – you know why those Aeroshell Aerobatic guys walk around grinning. Now there’s time to talk with them.

The Guys

This 2001 Sun ‘n Fun Fly-In is the official introduction of the new Aeroshell Aerobatic Team (formerly the North American Aerobatic Team), the premier precision flying team in the skies today. Both team members and Shell are delighted by the enhanced sponsorship, and the planes, which sport a very spiffy new Aeroshell paint job, seem to positively glow.
     The leader of the Aeroshell Aerobatic Team leader is Alan Henley. "My family has always had a bunch of planes," he says. "I got interested in aviation as a kid. Then I got tired of flying straight and level and started playing."
     Alan first soloed in air shows at the age of 16, then teamed up with Steve Gustafson five years later. In his career (so far), he’s flown more than 90 different airplanes ranging from the Piper Cub to the P-51 Mustang.
     Like Alan, Steve had flying in his blood – the T-6 he flies was bought by his dad when Steve was only a baby, for the bargain price of $1500, hardly enough for tires today. By the age of 20, Steve had accumulated more than 7,000 flying hours, developing a real love for the powerful T-6. "The kind of maneuvers we do are graceful maneuvers," he explains, "not flipping and flopping. These are heavy airplanes. They are made quality well, and they’re still just as sound today as they day they were built. When you get in a T-6, you have an instant love for it."
     The third team member is Gene McNeely. "I started crop dusting in the 60s," he says. "Then I started air-showing, and I’ve done a lot of most everything in flying." In addition to performing in air shows, Gene races his T-6 at the Reno Air Races and has been finishing in the top five since 1986. "I’m proof that an old full-figured guy can still fly," he says with a grin.
     Alan’s twin brother Mark rounds out the team. Since Alan had snatched up the family’s T-6, Mark bought a Stearman, a biplane military trainer from WW II. "It was a basket case when we bought it," he says, "but when we finally started flying it, it was a hoot." Once he flew a T-6, though, nothing else would do. He finally found one to buy and a few years later found himself on the team.
     One thing all team members share, beside their love for the T-6, is their appreciation for Aeroshell lubricants, which the team has used for all 16 years of its existence.
     "I feel really special about Aeroshell," says Alan. "We believe in what we’re promoting. We don’t have a single product that we use or endorse that we don’t believe in 100%. Steve and I have been flying airshows together for over 20 years, and we’ve been using Aeroshell all along. And we’ve never had any oil-related problems – why change? You don’t fix what’s not broken. I use Aeroshell in everything. Outboard motors, motorcycles, everything except my car. I use Rotella® in it."
     Steve Gustafson chimes in. "I’m an ag pilot by trade," he says. "I’ve run Aeroshell in some extreme conditions, I mean, high, high, high temperatures and never had any problem. It amazes me. Nobody can talk me out of using Aeroshell oil. I’m just a Shell man."
     As an example, Steve brings up a crop-dusting plane he bought recently from a friend who had run it with Aeroshell. "The recommended TBO [time before overhaul] for that engine was 1400 hours," Steve says, "and we ran it to 2000 hours. When we sent the engine back to Telodyne Continental, we put a note with the hours in there. They took it apart, and all the parts were fine and good. It was just amazing."
    "It’s great that Aeroshell is sponsoring us now," Steve concludes. "We’re getting a lot of attention and they’re getting a lot of exposure. It’s working great for both of us. Shell has a great product, and we’re proud to be a part of it."

The Oil

The Equilon folks are just as excited about the Aerobatic Team sponsorship as the Team itself is. "They did a night show last night, and we had no idea how well it would stand out," says Ben Visser, Aeroshell’s Guru Supreme. "People are coming by the booth to say it was the best airshow they’ve ever seen. The Aeroshell logo shows up much better on the planes than we anticipated, and the graphics are better. Everything has surpassed our expectations by a great deal."
     While the Aerobatic Team is busy taking off for Shell, so is new Aeroshell Oil W 100 Plus.
     "The sales have just gone straight up," says Ben. Sales grew more than 90% last year, and after only two years this new product already has about 12% of the Oil W 100 market. Ben explains why this qualifies as unqualified success: "If you look at a 1949 airplane and a 2001 airplane, they’re very similar," he explains. "As a result, aviation people are not much into new technology and they tend to stick to what they’ve always used. A lot of them prefer a single-grade oil. So we gave them the additive package from our premium multi-grade product in a single-grade form. It has done phenomenally well. The feedback from the field is very, very positive. The only complaint we’re received is that now they want it in a W 80 form!"