BC Veterans Pilot Group helping Damboree take off

By Jinae West

Thursday, July 2, 2009 | 1:02 a.m.

Before retired Air Force pilot Mike Smith took off, he smiled into his headset and said, jokingly, “You know, I haven’t had much experience doing this.”

The engine of his RV-7/7A airplane roared.

“Just 45 years,” he said.

Smith, 68, is a member of the Boulder City Veterans Pilot Group, an informal club of retired military service members who perform flyovers at community events. In the past, the group has appeared at inaugural Little League baseball games and memorial services, he said.

This year, the group, which has about half a dozen members, will open the 61st Annual Damboree Festival at 9:05 a.m. on July 4.

Group member Mark DuLaney, 57, a retired Air Force pilot who currently flies for Southwest Airlines, said he has about 10 planes, including Warbird, T-6 Texan and Stearman aircraft, and will fly at the Damboree.

A few pilots from North Las Vegas will join in on the flyover. This will be the first time the group has performed for the festival.

Smith, who flew in South Korea supporting CIA operations, said his love for flying started as a boy, with his first airplane ride at 14.

“I was a paperboy and my route went right by this little grass strip by the airport,” Smith said. “I happened to see a fellow stopped at the end of the runway...I walked up to the fence and asked him, ‘How about a ride?’ And he said, ‘Sure.’ So, I threw my paper bag down and climbed over the barbed wire fence.”

DuLaney, who started flying when he was 16, said, “Most of us do this because it’s a passion. It’s what we love to do.”

Smith said DuLaney taught flying tactics to pilots at Nellis Air Force Base, where he simulated enemy combat.

“Mark doesn’t like to toot his own horn,” Smith said.

Although Smith is retired, he said, he flies every day.

On one recent jaunt over Boulder City and the Hoover Dam, Smith piloted the small red, white and blue plane he and his wife built.

He demonstrated how to do a slow roll, a maneuver that flips the plane upside down. He also explained the dials and odometers in the cockpit, which measure everything from speed to distance above sea level.

As he turned to head over to the dam, Smith said people’s interest in flying isn’t piqued like it was when he was younger.

“People don’t have that curiosity anymore about it,” he said. “You know, people fly in airplanes and they think that’s flying. But I call it traveling. When you can look at things on the ground and be in control and go wherever you want— that’s flying.”