31/08/2012
Be sure to listen for a few great tales of adventure at the airshow, then go meet Hugh Oldham, a classic nerd with a diverse resume: a retired electrical engineer, Viet Nam combat veteran, skydiver, test pilot and successful businessman; he dabbles in politics, even teaches high school & college classes on an irregular basis. He traces his lifelong interest and love of aviation to seeing a huge C-124 Air Force Transport plane rumble overhead while a still youngster in Greenville SC.
Hugh participated in his first airshow in 1968, the self-retrieving wind dummy for the US Army Fort Jackson Parachute Team, and continues today as a nationally known airshow announcer, sound system contractor, aviation magazine columnist, aerial event producer/director and general industry gadfly.
Hugh plays well with our narrator, Matt Jolly, and will be brining his enthusiasm, vast collection of personal experience, obscure knowledge and slightly skewed personality as he joins Matt in weaving a narrative of the action in the skies over the New River Valley.
Oldham has a long association with NRV Airport, he said, “The 50th Anniversary tag line jumped out at me; I had to pull my old log books: on April 3rd, 1969 I landed at NRV flying a Cessna 170.”
This was while he was a student at USC in Columbia SC, flying two geology students to Narrows VA. on a cave exploration field trip where he “stayed underground three days.”
Oldham still remembers this great adventure to the NRV; “in my mind’s eye I can still see the Celanese plant as we turned final to that field.” His plane was so heavy from the rocks collected from the cave, his 170 was struggling for altitude to cross the mountains. Without navigation, they became lost and had to land to consult a phone book at a pay phone booth to find out where they were!
All this was great training for a pilot who would fly the unfriendly skies of Vietnam a year later.