Blue Angels Foundation president Scott “Intake” Kartvedt is in town for the Blue Angels airshow and was my guest on “Real News with Rick Outzen” this morning. He is an instructor and evaluator for United Airlines. Scott was also a stunt pilot in TOPGUN Maverick and the aviation safety supervisor in Mission Impossible 8.
In 1999, Scott was selected as a member of the Navy’s Flight Demonstration Squadron, the Blue Angels, stationed in Pensacola, FL, where he flew air shows for three seasons before returning to the fleet.
While leading the 250 Sailors of VFA-83, the unit was awarded the 2009 Commander Naval Air Forces Aviation Battle Efficiency Award, the CAPT Michael J. Estocin Award as the Navy’s Strike Fighter Squadron of the Year, and the 2010 CNO Safety Award. He went on to serve during five combat deployments and flew 91 combat missions in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (3 tours) and ENDURING FREEDOM in Afghanistan (2 tours), as well as the 1996 TAIWANESE CONTINGENCY OPERATIONS. He has accumulated over 6,300 flight hours and 658 carrier arrested landings on 11 aircraft carriers.
I asked what was the most challenging place the Blue Angels performed during his tenure.
“Traverse City, Michigan was always difficult because it is in a little bit of a bay. It’s over the water, but there’s cliffs on either side. And so, you’d have to come up over the cliffs and then drop down into the bay and then climb back up over the cliffs, and that was kind of fascinating,” he said.
He added, “The marine layer at Marine Corps station Miramar in the afternoon would make the visibility really tough. I was one of the opposing solo pilots and we were coming at each other at 800 miles of closure. And so it’s one mile every eight seconds is the rate at which we’re closed on each other, but the visibility was only about a mile horizontally, so you’d really have to be on your line because I wouldn’t pick up either ‘Judge’ or ‘Dino’ depending on who I was flying with that year it was until right before the hit. So that was always fascinating, too.”
