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Episode #2010
Jamail Larkins
Brown: Natalie Bullock Brown
Larkins: Jamail Larkins
Voiceover: He's America's youngest air show performer and CEO of his own aviation and advertising company. Find out how this young African American is inspiring young people everywhere and what keeps him flying high next on Black Issues Forum.
Brown: Good evening, everyone and welcome to Black Issues Forum. I'm Natalie Bullock Brown. Tonight a special guest who in 20 years has accomplished more in the air than most people his age on the ground. He's the youngest aerobatics air show performer in the world and the president and CEO of his own aviation sales and advertisement company, Larkins Enterprises, and spokesman for the EAA Vision of Eagles Program. He was recently featured on the David Letterman show during which he performed and explained several aerobatic feats but we've got him tonight. I'd like to welcome to the program, Jamail Larkins. Good to have you here, Jamail.
Larkins: I'm glad to be here.
Brown: Well, let's just jump right into this and fly right into it. First explain, what is aerobatic flying?
Larkins: Aerobatic flying, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, is anything that's more than 90 degrees of bank or 70 degrees of pitch.
Brown: Let's get a little more into laypeople's terms.
Larkins: Basically, any maneuver that's not necessary for normal flight, so whenever you do loops, hammerheads, rolls, spins, tumbles, any of those different maneuvers are considered aerobatics.
Brown: Okay, how did you get exposed to aerobatics and what made you decide, I want to do that?
Larkins: I had the chance to go flying. Actually, I had two main experiences that caused me to become involved in that. One chance was in my hometown of Augusta, Georgia. I had a chance to go flying with a friend of mine in his Pitts S2B. Basic aerobatic flights, it made me a little more interested in it but when I was 16 I had the chance to take my first aerobatic lesson. That's what got me hooked flying aerobatics. When you roll the airplane inverted and you're hanging from the straps for the very first time and you're looking up at the ground, that's enough to cause you to want to go out there and figure out how to do that more often.
[LAUGHTER]
Brown: Some people might say that's enough to make me throw up but you just seem to have this affinity for the air and for doing these twists and turns that most people don't even want to do on the balance beam let alone in the air so what do you think it is about Jamail that really makes you want to do this?
Larkins: I like the challenge but more importantly it's a lot of fun. I like to describe it as the ultimate roller coaster. Being able to go up there and do everything from positive 7 Gs to negative 5 Gs. Doing loops, rolls, hammerheads, spins, any aerobatic maneuver that you desire, you have the opportunity to do this. There's no other way that I've been able to find so far in my life where you can have as much freedom-in the air or on the ground. That's one of the things that intrigues me the most about flying aerobatics.
Brown: It's the freedom.?
Larkins: It's the freedom; it's the challenge, and the experience that you have every single time you step inside the cockpit.
Brown: You said that you were exposed to aerobatics by flying with a friend when you were younger. This was in Augusta. Where do young people, teenagers or younger, have the opportunity to learn how to do this?
Larkin's: Anyone can go out to their local airport. The way that I recommend it when I talk across the country is to go out there and find programs like the Young Eagles Program. That's how I first started flying. It's a worldwide program designed to get young people involved in aviation, completely free, gives them the opportunity to experience the thrill of flight. If it's something they're interested in, they can go out to a local airport, start taking flying lessons, ultimately get their pilot's license and go on from there.
Brown: How prohibitive is this cost wise? It sounds like it would be expensive.
Larkins: It's very expensive, to be honest. It costs on average between $75 dollars an hour up to $100 dollars an hour for an hour of flight training. On average it will cost between $4-5,000 dollars to get your private pilot's license inside the United States.
Brown: How were you able to persuade your mom and dad to pay that money to get you out there in the plane?
Larkins: To be honest, I wasn't. I tried. What happened is, I asked them if they would pay for my flight training and they gave me a budget of $150 dollars a month because I had some other activities I was involved in at the time. But that wasn't enough for me. So after going through a couple different ways from volunteering at the local airport, meeting pilots, getting a chance to fly with them to trying to figure out ways of lowering the cost of flying for myself by petitioning the Federal Aviation Administration to fly solo before my 16th birthday. I ultimately ended starting up my own company at the age of 15, Larkins Enterprises, Incorporated. And the primary reason for that was for me to achieve my goal of learning how to fly at a young age.
Brown: So you started your company so that you would be able to learn how to fly.
Larkins: Exactly.
Brown: It seems that you have to have more than just the desire to do this sort of flying because you sound like you're very ambitious, also very focused and determined. Would you say that someone who is interested in aerobatics flying, you've got to have a little more gumption than just a "Well, I think I want to do this."
Larkins: I think that once you have that desire or passion to do it, everything else will fall into place. And that's kind of been that it's been my entire life. You develop the passion and the desire to accomplish something and then the impossible becomes a reality. That's the way I like to look at it.
Brown: I know you've been going around talking to high school students as you go across the country. You're in the Triangle talking to a couple of high schools here. Do you say similar things to the students? What do you tell them?
Larkins: The ultimate goal of the Dream Launch Program which is what it is, is to go there and let them know about all of the opportunities that exist, number one. To show them that they have the opportunity to become an airline pilot, an aeronautical engineer involved in some aspect of the aviation or aerospace industry. But there's another aspect of it. The aspect that's a little bit more personal for me and that personal aspect is that no matter what your goal is, no matter what your dream is, you can actually go out there and accomplish it. No matter how many people tell you that it's impossible for you to do it; there's too many hurdles or obstacles you're going to have to overcome, set your mind on it, figure out what your own personal flight plan for life is in that particular instance to accomplish that goal. Go after it. Stay focused, be determined, and it will happen.
Brown: Let's go backwards just a little bit. You grew up in Augusta, Georgia. You're 20 years old so your history doesn't go back that far but living in the South you probably ran up against some obstacles because of your race. Tell me what sort of things came up because you were a young black man in the South trying to do something that is not usually heard of, in the black community at least, that you had to overcome.
Larkins: To start off with as far as how many African Americans or minorities are involved in aviation period, there are only 2% of all the registered pilots inside the United States of minority status. So there's not a lot of young people, or African Americans, or minorities for that matter involved in aviation. But the good thing about aviation and even down in the South is, I was fortunate that I had a lot of people that were there to support me and help me accomplish my goals but, yes, of course, you run into a few of those obstacles. But the biggest thing that I can say, the biggest equalizer there is inside of the aviation industry is that no matter if you're male or female, what color you are, where you're from, an airplane does not know. An airplane doesn't care. It comes down to the skill level that you have and the knowledge that you can use and apply correctly inside of the cockpit. That's the biggest thing I've learned from aviation. I think that's been something that's also helped me to go out there and accomplish other things, outside of the cockpit, as well. That one aspect has allowed me to realize, not everyone's going to necessarily going to be there to support you but if you go out there and work for it yourself, you can still accomplish it.
Brown: So that's why you focus so much on just trying to attain your goal-whatever it is-when you talk to high school students. Tell me more about the skills that you need to fly a plane and what kind of physical endurance do you need?
Larkins: There's a couple of different things. Just to go out there and get your private pilot's license and fly for fun or as a hobby, there's not much. You have to be able to pass a third class medical which is a little bit more than getting your driver's license, a little bit more difficult than that. But going out there and to fly air shows or fly for the military, that's a little bit of a different story. One, I try to fly between three to four times a month to keep up my G tolerance or my capability to withstand the G forces that I experience inside of my airplane during air show season.
Brown: Explain what the G force is.
Larkins: Right now we're both experiencing one G or gravity's normal pull on our body. During certain times in my aerobatic routine, I can experience up to 7 Gs and that's 7 times what I would normally weigh. I weigh about 145 lbs. At 7 Gs, if I was to step on a scale, I would literally weigh over a thousand pounds.
Brown: What does that mean in terms of the impact on your body, your..
Larkins: One, it has a huge impact on your blood, primarily because your heart's not used to pumping blood that weighs seven times what it normally weighs all the way up to your head. So aerobatic pilots, military pilots, air show pilots, we do what we call a hook. We tighten up our stomach and leg muscles and try to force our blood to stay in our upper extremities. That way we can get enough oxygen to our brain. If you don't, then you black out and that could be a dangerous situation if you're in the cockpit by yourself.
Brown: Sure, and you're doing a hammerhead. I can't imagine. That has to be a little scary. Now the hook is an exercise that you do on your own away from the plane?
Larkins: Actually, the hook is pretty much what you do inside the airplane but to be able to make the hook work, you have to make sure that you have strong ab muscles, strong leg muscles. I try to work out at least three to four times a week.
Brown: What kind of work out do you do?
Larkins: Lift weights, a little bit of running, a little bit of exercising, swimming, whatever I can do to increase my heartbeat a little bit. Primarily lifting weights and the other aspect of that is to make sure that you go out there and experience the G forces as routinely as you possibly can. Your body starts to adapt to that and starts to develop the G tolerance to be able to handle it a little bit better.
Brown: And there are no side effects or danger to your body adjusting to excessive G force?
Larkins: Not that I've been able to find out so far but you take the necessary precautions and you can make it safe and that goes with anything in life.
Brown: Are you telling me you've never gotten sick when you've been up in the air?
Larkins: Thankfully, not yet.
Brown: Not even in beginning?
Larkins: Not even in the beginning but that was primarily because I had pilots that went out there that allowed me to learn and have a good time and not necessarily try to go out there and show me the skills that they had. That's one of the things that I have learned from them that when you take people up for their first aerobatic ride, you don't necessarily want to go up there and show them what you can necessarily do. Go up there and allow them to have a fantastic experience and realize that this is something that they want to become involved in.
Brown: Tell me what kind of education you need. I know you're in college now, you're a Junior at Embry Riddle University.
Larkins: Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Brown: When you started becoming serious about aerobatics in high school were you taking specific classes or did you have an affinity for math and science? Do you think that you need that sort of interest in order to be an aerobatics flyer?
Larkins: You don't have to necessarily have a profound interest in learning more about math, science or technology. But all of those things definitely help especially in the aerobatic arena primarily because when you're doing aerobatics the temperature, the humidity, the density, altitude, all of those things affect the radius of a turn I may be doing. The performance of the aircraft, the performance of the engine, how much lift the wings can create at a certain amount of airspeed, all of those things are factors that you have to evaluate every single time that you go up flying. And sometimes when you're flying air shows when you're low, close to the ground, a couple hundred feet off the ground, as a matter of fact, then it can become a little bit dangerous if you don't make the right calculations.
Brown: So you're actually making calculations in the air.
Larkins: All the time.
Brown: Wow. That's deep. Well, I understand that you have participated in a couple of air shows in North Carolina. One in Winston-Salem and one in Lumberton.
Larkins: Just finished one about a month and a half ago in Winston-Salem.
Brown: What was the air show about?
Larkins: The air show's primarily a family oriented event where families from the local area come out to the airport, get the chance to see aerobatic pilots from across the country, go up there and perform an aerobatic routine. Basically a dance inside the sky and show people what airplanes can do in an interesting format and it's typically a fun day, go out there. Most of the time the average spectator spends between three to five hours at the air show. They get the chance to watch some of the air shows as well as see some of the other things that are involved inside the air show. Seeing some of the exhibits that are there, getting involved in some of the other activities that are there for the kids and everyone else.
Brown: I want to segue into your company because when we were talking before the show began, you were saying that air shows draw some of the largest crowds or spectator crowds.
Larkins: They draw some of the largest spectator crowds inside of the nation. It's one of the largest spectator sports in the nation. On average between 18 to 25 million people each year attend an air show.
Brown: That blows my mind because you would never think that aerobatic shows or air shows would draw so many people.
Larkins: But they do. On average each show that I've performed in has between 50 to 75,000 people in the audience each day.
Brown: And getting back to the safety issue that you were talking about because some of the maneuvers that you do are so close to the ground, have you ever been in a situation where it got kind of tricky and you were concerned about how close you were getting?
Larkins: The thing is before you ever bring an aerobatic maneuver down to the ground particularly in an air show environment, you've practiced it literally thousands of times up in the sky. And the reason for that is when I go out to perform an air show, I have a duty not only to myself but also to that crowd. The crowd's coming there to have a good time and I have to make sure they have a good time. If I have an accident, they're not going to have a good time particularly if there's some little kid that's there in the audience and sees that. So I want to make sure that each person that leaves the air show has a memorable experience from that air show event. I always make sure that before I ever bring in a new maneuver or routine into my air show sequence, that I've practiced it, I know exactly what's going to happen, and all the different combinations that could possibly happen if something goes wrong and that's my responsibility. There is a certain amount of risk involved and I'm not going to say it's just the same as sitting here talking to you. But you can minimize that risk by making certain calculations.
Brown: I'm going to get to your company but I want people to understand the relationship between what you do and maybe what some of the groups that they're familiar with do. I think at Fort Bragg there are two groups: Blue Angles and Thunderbirds. Similar to what you do?
Larkins: Yes and no. The Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds both have-I've had the opportunity to get to know and fly with their various air shows across the country. Their airplanes are all about speed and doing loops, rolls, flying in formation. My aerobatic routine is me up in the air by myself and I have to entertain those 50 to 75,000 people. I have to go up there and create a new routine that is interesting, new, dynamic, challenging, that the audiences necessarily like; so it is different but at the same time we do have some of the basic principles such as doing loops, rolls, spins and all sorts of different aerobatic maneuvers. So that aspect is the same but they're primarily about formation and I'm primarily about doing the show solo.
Brown: What are some of your favorite stunts?
Larkins: There are so many different maneuvers out there but probably my most favorite maneuver to go up there and do is the tail slide.
Brown: Okay, what's that?
Larkins: A tail slide is basically where the airplane goes vertical, pull the power back on the engine, airspeed goes down to zero, airplane basically flies backwards or falls backwards. Then it rotates down towards the ground and it's a lot of fun. The great thing about doing tail slides is that I have a little sight gauge on the left hand side of my cabin and there's a little piece of yarn attached to it and when I start flying backwards-normally the yarn's going backwards-but when I do start flying backwards, it goes forwards so that's really the only way that you can tell when you're actually coming backwards because there's no physical sensation with it so the airplane rotates down towards the ground.
Brown: It sounds like that maneuver has to give you the sensation of being in a really, really fast and very steep roller coaster. Is that correct?
Larkins: Definitely. I like to describe aerobatics as the ultimate roller coaster because on a roller coaster you might be lucky if you can experience positive 2 Gs or even when your stomach floats and you're experiencing negative Gs, you're maybe zero to negative 1 at that.
Brown: What is that? You're experiencing less gravity than normal?
Larkins: Negative G is like whenever you come over the top of the roller coaster and you're stomach starts to float up, that's a negative G experience. If you do that that's less time so when I do negative 5 Gs inside my airplane, I have 600 lbs of pressure trying to force me up and it's a lot of fun.
Brown: You keep saying that. [LAUGHTER] But it sounds scary. But the average person would be like, "I can't believe he does that," but you seem to revel in it.
Larkins: There is nothing else like flying aerobatics. It's the ultimate roller coaster, the ultimate thrill and it's the ultimate experience.
Brown: And everybody has a chance to be involved in it.
Larkins: Everybody has the chance to do it.
Brown: Let's talk about your company, Larkins Enterprises, that you say you started at 15 years of age. I remember you said that part of the reason you started it was because it would help you to be able to fly. Tell me about the two divisions you have within the company.
Larkins: Now we have sales division which is the distributor for a couple of different companies. We work with a company called Gulf Coast Avionics and a few others. We sell pilot supplies to pilots throughout the country. From GPSs, headsets, navigational equipment to flight training materials and recently I started a wholly owned subsidiary of Larkins Enterprises which is called Aviation Marketing Group. And that's basically to allow corporate America to take advantage of the advertising opportunities that air shows present.
Brown: And that gets back to the spectator numbers.
Larkins: Yes, goes back to spectator numbers of 50 to 75,000 people spending three to five hours at an air show every single day in a family oriented event, it's great opportunity for companies to promote their products and services, as well as work with air show performers or air show events as far as branding opportunities as well as sponsorship opportunities. That's what it's all about.
Brown: When did that part of your company begin?
Larkins: That part was actually incorporated earlier in the summer, June of 2004, but before that it acted as an advertising division of Larkins Enterprises but because it kind of needed more attention I decided to put it in a wholly owned subsidiary for other reasons as well.
Brown: When you say wholly owned subsidiary, what exactly does that mean?
Larkins: Basically means that it's its own corporation that Larkins Enterprises owns.
Brown: How involved are you in every aspect of your company?
Larkins: I'm pretty involved in the majority of the aspects. It's a small company but we do work with some significantly talented people. We work with a PR agency based in New Jersey, Rosica Strategic Public Relations. They handle all the media coordination for promoting both sides of the company as well as the Dream Launch Tour in the air show program. I have a couple people in Augusta Georgia that help with accounting, financing, bookkeeping and then we also have some advisors that I work with that are a basically consultants that help steer us in the right directions to make sure that we provide the most bang for the buck for all the different clients, Aviation Marketing Group.
Brown: Now with all of the media appearances that you do, the traveling you do for the appearances you make in air shows, the fact that you're in college and then the fact that you go around talking to high school students; how do you have the time to do all that plus oversee this company?
Larkins: I get that question a lot. Primarily when I'm in schools and the main thing goes back that if you're in high school or you're an athlete or involved in any student activity or club, it's an extracurricular activity, basically. Although my extracurricular may take a little more time and cause me to travel across the country every couple of days but it's a lot of fun and definitely has its pros, has a few cons but I definitely think the pros outweigh the cons.
Brown: That's great. Finally, I think I'm going to ask you about your mommy because you're 20 years old, you're still young and you're doing this incredibly adventurous and exciting sport, but it's dangerous, at least potentially. How does she feel about that?
Larkins: She's a mother, I guess is the best way to describe it in the sense that she's a little bit nervous every single time I go up there to perform but at the same time she's there to support me; her and my father and my sister. They've been there every step of the way and if it wasn't for them I definitely wouldn't be headed down the track that I hopefully plan on going down to accomplish my ultimate dreams.
Brown: Well, that's going to be my last question for you: what are your aspirations for the future?
Larkins: I have a couple of different things I want to do. One, I definitely want to have a positive impact on the aviation industry in some capacity. To help make that happen. I'm glad to say that this week we just signed an agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration for me to become their ambassador for aviation and space education. I'm going to be expanding my current duties that I currently have been doing as the spokesman for careers in aviation in the Young Eagles Program and going out there and promoting the aviation industry and aerospace industry as a way for young people to achieve their dreams. That's one aspect that I want to do and then the other aspect is definitely get more involved in the business side of the aviation industry.
Brown: How? Just elaborate on that.
Larkins: Either currently growing my current company that I have, going to work at an already existing aircraft company or getting involved in an aviation association. I want to have some way that I can become more involved in some aspect inside of the business industry. Exactly what that means, I'm not 100% sure just yet. Part of the reason why I say that is one of the things that aviation has taught me is, always have a flight plan for yourself. Figure out what you want to do and how you want to accomplish it but you have to be flexible. Inside of the cockpit we may have a thunderstorm that develops that's going to cause us to deviate. Sometimes you have other obstacles or other opportunities that pop up and when those opportunities pop up you definitely have to take advantage of them and seize them.
Brown: Well, Jamail, it has been wonderful talking to you. You were great on the Dave Letterman show. I'd like to thank Jamail Larkins for coming out and sharing his soaring success story with us. If you'd like more information about Jamail or a transcript of tonight's program, visit us online at www.unctv.org/bif or call us with your comments at 919-549-7167. Be sure to join us each and every Friday night at 9:30 pm for more on the people and issues that matter. For Black Issues Forum, I'm Natalie Bullock Brown reminding you to be encouraged no matter what. Good night.
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