Angel pilot all calm at Cherry Point

When a Blue Angel jet roars across the sky, people shudder and quickly cover their ears.

As the F/A-18 Hornets twist and turn just feet apart, the crowd stands in awe.

But inside the cockpit, everything is calm.

"A lot of people ask ‘Is it loud?'" The answer is ‘No,'" said Lt. Cmdr. Craig Olson, pilot of the No. 5 Blue Angel jet scheduled to perform in this weekend's Cherry Point Air Show.

"We're in the cockpit. We have a helmet on. The engines are behind us. The sound's all behind us. So, unless we're tucked in formation right behind another airplane, it's really pretty quite."

The air show began with the Night Show Friday and continues today and Sunday, with the gates opening to the public at 8 a.m. and the flying starting at 10 a.m. both days. The Blue Angels, the Navy's jet demonstration team, is scheduled to perform at 3 p.m. both days. Admission and parking are free.

Olson is in his fifth season with the Blue Angels, which includes stints as a pilot and the show's narrator.

"I think for myself and the rest of us, it's a lifelong dream," he said of being a Blue Angel. "It certainly takes a lot of effort to get there, both in terms of experience and just in terms of desire and motivation to try to apply for the team.

"I certainly consider myself lucky. Obviously, some apply and don't get picked, and I have no idea why they picked me."

But, he's glad they did. After all, where else can you feel seven times the force of gravity?

"Imagine if you weighed 100 pounds. Now you weigh 1,500 pounds, so that's what it feels like," Olson said. "It feels like a heck of a lot of weight, strain against your body, both in terms of just trying to keep your head up, keep your vision, keep the blood up there so you can think properly and communicate and listen and be cognoscente of everything that's going on around you. I guess I would just describe it as very physically demanding."

This all comes with the jets just feet apart.

"It depends on the conditions on how close we fly, but there are times when you feel you're pretty darn close," he said.

Olson flies the roll of solo pilot in the demonstration and said he and his fellow pilots have trained so much that the difficult moves become less dangerous.

"Any maneuver, had it not been rehearsed and well-trained for, could be dangerous, but that's of course why we practice so much and train the way we do," he said.

Olson the maneuver that is his most dangerous occurs right on takeoff. The dirty roll is a slow takeoff with a complete roll while the wheels of the plane are down.

"It's done low to the ground at fairly slow speed, and if I initiate it too low, or it there's something wrong with the airplane - there's just not a lot of margin for error," he said.

He said his favorite move is the sneak pass, when he flies at 700 mph and appears in front of the crowd out of nowhere, buzzing the crowd with a large roar from his two jet engines.