Stunt pilot Jeff Boerboon barreled across the

skies over Bethpage, New York, this past weekend inside the Jack Link's Beef Jerky Screamin' Sasquatch, a 1929 biplane outfitted with a Lear Jet engine. But before he did, I joined him in the cockpit of an Extra 300L for a warm-up flight, which absolutely scared the hell out of me.

Meet the Screamin' Sasquatch

I took off from Farmingdale, New York, a short hop on the Long Island Railroad from our Manhattan office. A few days before any big New York air show, Farmingdale's Republic Airport is a birdwatcher's dream—as I duck into a hangar to meet Boerboon, a Blue Angels F/A-18 fighter jet roars overhead.

Even on a tarmac crowded with aerobatic aircraft, Boerboon and his team stand out. Their bright red planes are emblazoned with the team motto Feed Your Wild Side. Boerboon tosses me a package of jerky from his sponsor while his crew chief, Dell Coller, walks me through the engineering marvel that is the Screamin' Sasquatch.

In another life, the Sasquatch was a 1929 Waco biplane, built to fly straight and level at about 100 miles per hour. But where a 90-hp Curtiss engine once fired beneath its airframe, a jet engine now rumbles. With this powerplant lifted from a Lear jet, the Sasquatch can accelerate straight up and perform aerobatic feats that old barnstormers never dreamed of.

Coller spent four months in the desert with a team of engineers,testing the Sasquatch and making small modifications to the jet-powered biplane. John Klatt Airshows unveiled the Screamin' Sasquatch in early 2014, at the International Council of Airshows in Las Vegas.

"Why do it? Why not!" Coller says. "It makes for a wild air show." Boerboon and Coller are both members of John Klatt Airshows, composed of whooping pilots and engineers who have already thrilled spectators at airshows across America.

Up in the Air With a Stunt Pilot

Enough on-the-ground introduction: We're here to fly. A few years ago I actually took flying lessons and even managed to fly solo in a Cessna 172. However, my 100 hours of straight and level flight could not have prepared me for one moment in the Extra 300L.

Boerboon's Extra is a brilliant-red two-seater stunt plane with an airframe built to take a beating. I knew that I was in trouble when one of the John Klatt team members strapped me into a parachute and made me promise to pull the D-ring only if I really, really needed to. I signed a liability release that would have made our lawyers tremble and jumped into the front seat of a tiny airplane that was arguably designed to make me nauseated.

Our test run-up went smoothly, and we taxied onto the runway. Boerboon shouted something into my headset about feeding my wild side and gunned the engine. We took off at an attitude that might have stalled out my old Cessna and immediately banked into a sharp left turn that definitely would have made my flight instructor take over the controls.

Boerboon is a chatterbox when he's in the air, and as a journalist I would have loved to have taken notes. But I had to leave my notebook (and my pen, wallet, and cellphone) on the ground. I soon found out why.

Boerboon's laugh cracked over the radio as he flipped the airplane upside down. The cord from my headset floated lazily upward, but before I could enjoy the inverted view, we were spiraling into a series of breakneck maneuvers that I still cannot name.

The world spun around our tiny Extra. I clenched my jaw and tried not to black out; Boerboon later told me that we were pulling about 5 g's. Somehow I remained conscious, shouting through the adrenaline.

Then Boerboon let go of the controls entirely and let me fly a bit by myself. The Extra handles a lot like an oversensitive Cessna—tapping the stick lightly put us on our sides, and a flick of the wrist translated into a full roll. I attempted (and failed) a hammerhead turn, but performed a decent barrel roll, screaming like a kid on a rollercoaster all the while.

Once Boerboon became confident in my skills as a fledgling stunt pilot, he decided to walk me through a more complex maneuver. Boerboon told me to point the Extra's nose straight down and barrel toward the surface. We were getting dangerously close to the ground when I felt Boerboon take over the controls, yanking us out of harm's way. Later, while listening to the cockpit recording, I discovered that my radio had cut out and that I had missed Boerboon's increasingly desperate pleas to "Pull! Pull!"

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After about 30 minutes, Boerboon turned us back toward Republic Airport and eased us onto the runway. Both my parachute and barf bag remained blessedly unused. I'd love to conclude by saying something at once cathartic and cautionary—"It was a fun ride, but I'm glad to be back on solid ground." But the truth is, from the moment I landed all I could think about was getting up there again.

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