Volume 10, Issue 32, Week of August 12, 2013
Saskatoonʼs REAL Community Newspaper
sky’s
The
the limit
Stefan Trischuk, 25, will be the “fresh face” on a television show featuring aerobatic flying (Photos by Joelle Tomlinson)
Saskatoon pilot to star in reality show
T
Joelle Tomlinson for the Saskatoon Express
wo thousand feet in the air, diving through the clouds, 25-year-old Stefan Trischuk is at home. He maneuvers his aerobatic plane (a matte black Ultimate biplane) with ease, rolling, turning and flipping upside down in sequence. For Trischuk, doing rolls and hammerheads and loops in an aerobatic airplane is just freedom, where you “truly experience all three dimensions of flight.” And next March Trischuk will be doing those rolls, loops and hammerheads on television. That’s when an exciting new reality show takes to the air. “About eight months or so ago, I got a phone call from an ex-Snowbird team
leader and CF-18 demonstration pilot. He was telling me about this new reality TV show that was happening. He explained how he got my contact information and asked if I would be willing to be a cast member.” The Vancouver-based film production crew visited Trischuk in Saskatoon and flew him to Vancouver to prepare for the show. It will feature three main characters: an experienced aerobatic pilot, a risk-taker and a fresh face in the industry. Trischuk will be the fresh face. To get a sense of the show, think of the Canadian reality TV series Highway Thru Hell, then replace the trucks with airplanes and the tarmac with sky. It’s a dream come true for Trischuk, who has always been fascinated with flight. It started with a school report when
he was six years old. Next he constructed a homemade hang glider — his mom helped sew the tarp material for the 22-foot wingspan. The hang glider made it about a foot off the ground. “That was a good thing,” Trischuk said with a laugh. “In hindsight, the glider didn’t have a whole bunch of the safety regulations, so I’m lucky I didn’t get (farther) off the ground.” With homemade hang gliders in Trischuk’s past, he moved on to the real deal. He has around 100 hang glider flights under his belt, including winch towing in Saskatchewan and mountain gliding in other regions. “A lot of people say when you go skydiving it’s the closest thing you can get to being a bird. Well I don’t agree with that. I think hang gliding is the closest you can
get to being a bird because you are flying,” said Trischuk. “It’s foot launched; it’s foot landed. You yourself are flying, versus when you are in an airplane and the machine is flying. You are the heaviest part of that (hang glider). It’s an amazing experience when you’re at the top of a mountain and just start running for the edge. You feel the air inflating underneath the wings, so you know it’s going to fly when you get to the end. When you do get to the end, the ground drops away from you and you just fly.” Onward and upward. It only seemed natural the next step for Trischuk was aerobatic flying. Trischuk obtained his private pilot’s licence and prioritized learning the art. (Continued on page 6)