As it would happen, that's where I found myself last August, two days before the final FINAL Navy Airshow at Miramar. How I came to be sitting in Rocky Hill's gorgeous modified Extra ... well ... that's the point isn't it. Time to tell a story.

Now, readers of these pages may be aware that I have a moth/flame relationship with aerobatics. (See Sky Sailing , Seat of the Pants, The Hammerhead Blues.) I love it - it does not necessarily love me ... or my body, which, while never failing me to the point of embarrassment, has caused me many hours of pain. Something about inverted flight, or multiple G's, brings out the worst in me. Why do I keep doing it? If I knew that, perhaps it would explain a lot more of my life than I'd care to understand.

Nevertheless, there I was standing in the performers' hangar at Miramar, staring speechless at a gorgeous purple aerobatics airplane, when a man walked over. He had a linebacker's build and amazingly clear eyes, and the meatiest hand I'd ever shaken, next to Wayne Handley's.

"Hi, I'm Rocky Hill," he said. Slow on the uptake as usual, it took me a while to realize that the name painted on the side of the gorgeous airplane was his. When it dawned on me, I said, (cleverly enough), "Is this yours?" He smiled and seemed pleased at the prospect of an interview. Later, better, he offered to take me for a ride. What follows is the blurred recounting of what happened.

I'm already familiar with the parachute thing; the "Headset, harness, heave-ho" routine. What I wasn't familiar with was the incredible power, and responsiveness, of an airplane built solely for its aerobatics ability. Even with my borrowed David Clarks, I could hear, and feel, the rumbling 380 horses just forward of my toesies. After some chatter with Miramar Tower, we taxied, in formation, with Wayne Handley in the Raven. Wayne's guest was Susan Taylor, news anchor at one of the local TV stations. Why is Wayne Handley, the King of Agrobatics, pals with Rocky Hill?

Later. We're going flying now.

The takeoff roll, if you can call it that, was short, the climb-out to Black Mountain, uneventful. Once clear of Miramar, we performed a couple of formation barrel rolls, followed by a couple of leap frogging barrel rolls, first Rocky and I over Susan and Wayne, then the reverse. Then we split up, Wayne taking Susan to a more northerly practice area.

Rocky said, "What do you want to do?"

I hate moments of truth. You want to be cool, you just don't want to puke. (In case you don't know, Rocky does those gyroscopic, tumbling maneuvers that neither Wilbur, nor Orville, ever imagined in their wildest, wettest dreams. So, I'm sitting there trying to be tough without wetting myself.)

"Uhhhh ... ," I said, "I don't really want to do any of that tumbling stuff, okay?"

Rocky, good guy that he is (and probably contemplating the prospects of my bagel breakfast spattered on the inside of his tinted canopy), said, "Sure ... so what do you want to do?"

"Uhhh ... ."

"How about a roll."

"Uhhhh ... okay." And, before I could reach for the angled, chest high aluminum tubing that I planned on using as a crutch ... FFOOOM, we were through a roll.

"WOW," I said. No dangling from the straps, no nose down stuff to build a little more airspeed. FFOOOM. Incredible.

"Did you like that?" said Rocky, no doubt jazzed at my eloquence.

"Wow," I said.

"How 'bout a couple more?" FFOOOM, FFOOOM. Two successive rolls left me giggling, school-girl-like.

"I've made some modifications to it," said Rocky, speaking of the gorgeous purple Extra. "I changed the wing on it, put full span ailerons on it - I wanted a faster roll rate. Well I got my roll rate up ... WAY up - five hundred degrees a second. It is BLINDINGLY fast. I actually had to turn it down, though, back to about 420. It was SO fast ... ."

Astoundingly fast. Before you can think roll, you're through it. FFOOOOM. In my three previous aerobatics experiences, strap hanging in rolls had been my least favorite moments. Now? "Can we do it again?" I said to Mr. Hill.

"Sure." FFOOOM. FFOOOM. FFOOOM. FFOOOM. A four-banger. My head rolled through a couple more, but still ... whoooh-ee, I like this stuff. "You wanna try it?" said Rocky.

"Uhhhh ... sure, what do I do?"

"Just yank it, my friend," he said, "Going left is easier than going right."

Yank it left I did. FFOOOM, it went - and rolling it out dead-on straight and level, I did, as well. "WOW."

"What else?" he said.

"Uhhhh ... ."

"How 'bout a loop?"

"Uhhhh ... okay." I was liking this Rocky Hill guy, a lot.

Now, other than the inverted part at the top, you know - where the earth and sky trade places and you fear you'll never again sort them out - I like loops. There's no dangling from the straps like there is in a roll - well, other airplanes' rolls - and, other than the mild couple of G discomfort as you pull out near the bottom, they're fun.

In Rocky's beautiful modified Extra, they're a little different. For one ... you don't dive to build up airspeed - the airspeed builder is cranking 380hp on a very light airframe. The bummer, for my aging, non-aerobatics carcass, is that the speed and the tightness of the loop the airplane's capable of tends to add a few G's. Oooff. Still though, it was fun - and at the bottom Rocky said, "You try it."

"Uhhh .. what do I do this time?"

"Just yank it, man,"

Yank it, man, I did - up, up, up and over, looking right/left to keep the wings level at the top, and I was thinking, 'Hey, maybe I can do this aerobatics stuff,' ... when ... 'ooooffff,' the G's began pulling my chins into my bellies at the bottom of the loop. 'Ooooooffff.'

"What else?" said Rocky, chuckling at my 5.5 G groan.

"Well ... I really like hammerheads," I saids, when the blood returned to my brain.

Yank, straight up at the top of the sky, three rolls on the upline as he called it, slowing, hanging, kicking the rudder, then banging over the top, and SHHOOOOM, straight back down at the growing green speck that was becoming Black Mountain. That moment of weightlessness at the very top is perhaps my favorite moment in time. Or ... one of them, anyway.

Three rolls on the downline, a major groan at the bottom ... then, surprise ... straight back up to do it all over again - me giggling again, at the top, grunting and groaning at the bottom.

"What else?"

I'm not sure, really, what else we did. Rocky says we did something called an Avalanche, a loop with three rolls at the top, but it may have been one of the modified hammerheads, for all that I can remember. We did some inverted flight - he loves inverted flight. In fact, he loves it so much that after our aerobatics, we formed back up with Wayne, only instead of flying slot, we flew top - inverted fifty feet above Wayne and a screaming Susan. (At least that's what Wayne told me later. Every time they did anything, she shrieked like a banshee then laughed and laughed and laughed.)

(Rocky, by the way, was nearly as demonstrative about inverted flight. "Isn't this amazing. Upside down, the airplane flies just the same as it does right side up," he said, laughing. I think. The tape wasn't recording upside down, nor, for that matter, were my ears.)

Landing at Miramar, Wayne asked tower for a break over the numbers - fortunately, I knew what a break was, so I didn't scream, groan or launch lunch when Rocky snapped a 60 degree left 360 and formed up on Wayne as we landed.

Exhilarated, I prattled and ranted endlessly at Rocky and anyone else within shouting distance. I even got Wayne on tape when he came by. "Well, he just really wrung you out," he said. "I wouldn't do that to Susan. When you were doin' the fast, full roll rate, three times around and all that ... " Wayne paused, laughing, and shook his head. "It's so different," I hear myself saying to Wayne. "It's so much more responsive."

Later, or earlier ... who can remember after 5.5 G's, Rocky and I spoke about his life and his flying.

"I'm from a small town called Saratoga," he says, "Right near San Jose. My dad flew and I've been flying since I was in high school. I flew for about five years, got bored with it ... and then discovered aerobatics about ten years later and just fell in love with it."

He's even got a San Diego connection. "I went to San Diego State for three years ... ," he pauses, chuckling, then says, "... and realized I probably wasn't going to graduate - there 's too many other interests in San Diego. So I had to leave if I ever wanted to get out of school. I had a very good time, though. Lived in Mission Beach and then La Jolla, and La Mesa for a little bit, but definitely had a good time."

So, he got back into flying via ultralights, then bought his first aerobatic airplane in 1989. He competed in the Sportsman category for a while, then bought a Pitts and moved up to Advanced Aerobatics. It was then he decided it was time to get a coach. Who'd he call? Wayne Handley.

As Rocky tells it, Wayne, "... lives only about 50/60 air miles from me, so I called him up and said, 'Hey, can I come down and get some instruction?' He said, 'Sure, come on down.' And that's how it started." It says something about Rocky Hill that he'd make the call. It says more about Wayne Handley that he'd offer to help.

With Wayne's training, Rocky flew unlimiteds for a year, then he and Wayne worked out a dual airshow routine and for the last four years they've performed together. Rocky also has a solo show he performs, doing maybe 10 or 11 airshows per year, mostly on the west coast. His full-time businesses are the manufacture and leasing of secure storage containers and job site recycling and considers his air show his 'loss leader', if you will.

He calls his act Tumble Time and if you've ever seen it, you know why. His individual routines include those mind-numbing gyroscopic, tumbling, torquing, rolling maneuvers, as well as most of the other kinds of aerobatics we've come to expect. His dual routine with Wayne includes formation aerobatics as well as opposing maneuvers, usually involving those gyroscopics that seem implausible, if not impossible. They perform a double ribbon cut as well. Besides being talented at what they do, Wayne and Rocky seem to genuinely like one another.

When asked specifically about those of you who might be interested in flying aerobatics, he says, "If you're gonna do it, don't go out there and try and learn it yourself, as so many people do - like I did. It doesn't work - go get instruction right off the bat. Don't think that because you saw it on TV, you can go do it. Too many guys get hurt, or get scared and quit doing it, because they didn't get instruction. You gotta do it correctly, that's the safest way. Or else ... you could get yourself hurt quickly - really quickly."

Rocky says that during the season he flies five days a week, but after a layoff he requires re-building that G-tolerance. "I carpeted my hangar," he say, because (after a hard session), "I just fall out of my airplane and lay down." I laugh. He laughs, then says, "I'm not kiddin' you, man. I flew the Salinas Air show, two weeks ago. Then I had a bunch to do at work, so I didn't get to fly until Monday of this week and, boy, I'd already started to lose my tolerance. It was gone. So, I had to hit it hard. You can either just hit it hard so you feel lousy and get it over with or ... ." He pauses, then chuckles again and continues with a memory.

"See, when I started, I always used to puke. My first aerobatics ride, ever, I got so violently sick I had to lay down for two hours. Oh, I used to get sick at the beginning all the time. I NEVER thought I was gonna get over it. I'd say, 'God, I love this, but I gotta get over it, someday.' Eventually, I did."

As for staying in shape, he says, "Just fly a lot." Asked if he follows a special fitness regimen, he says, "Oh, I work out a lot ... I mean, you can't tell ... ," he looks down at his body, "But ... I don't know if even that helps as much - it's just a matter of flying. You just gotta do it a lot so your head's in it. It's not that I feel sick to my stomach, it's the pressure in your head. It's feels like a horrible hangover ... oh, man ... but then you get over it and it doesn't bother you any more.

"If you hit it hard, you can still keep it up flying only two days a week," he says, "You won't have your proficiency, but you can keep your tolerance up."

With regards to the G forces he encounters, Rocky says, "In my airshow it's 10 positive and 4 1/2, negative. Every time I land my G meter's always at 10 and 4.5." He chuckles, again, thinking about the negative G's. "Those outside pushes, I get to where I just hate 'em."

When asked whether he preferred airshows or competition, he smiled a broad, boyish smile - ingenuous in a broad shouldered man - then laughed an almost self-conscious laugh. "Airshows," he says, "Much better."

Why?

"The people, the times, the places you get to go. I also like to share flying with people, I mean, that's my passion - and this gives me a lot better medium to share it with than in competition."

Ah, the people. It is a passion with him - letting people see how much fun it is, how exhilarating it can be. "All the time people come up to me and say, 'How do you do this? How can you fly?' Flying is so misunderstood. People think that you need to be a PhD - well, we are not the smartest folks on earth. It doesn't take a super intellect to fly airplanes.

"The whole problem with airplanes is that people don't understand them. People think of it as a rich man's sport. Flying is not THAT expensive, compared to a lot of other things. Instead of thinking it was so scary, I wish more people would go out and try it and find out just how enjoyable it is. It used to be something that people wanted to do and now it's too easy to get a video game and pretend you're flying - which isn't anything like it. As real as they would like to make those games, it just isn't.

"It just drives me nuts that people come up to me and they're awed, maybe, and say, 'God, that must be so scary.' Well, it's not. Just go try it. You'll enjoy it."

And the best part, it seems, is what draws us all. Rocky says, "Flying's a constant challenge - that's what makes it fun. And you never quit learning - NEVER quit learning. I've gotten bored with so many things, but never flying ... ." He pauses, then looks at me earnestly.

"Every flight I make there's a little something. No matter what it is. you're always learning something. It encompasses so many things - there's always a different variable, a different cloud, a different wind, different ... whatever it is that you're doing. That's what always makes it wonderful. You never quit learning and there is no master. There is nobody who's got it all figured out."