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Brush With Death
He found out in 1979, while practicing for an attempt at a record-breaking 30 inverted flat spins. With the plane upside down and gyrating, he tried to shift its center of gravity by leaning out of the open cockpit. Unfortunately, he couldn't reach the pedals to stop the maneuver. He bailed out at 300 feet, just before the craft -- still spinning -- slammed into the ground.Chastened, Tucker concentrated on building his own helicopter crop-dusting business. But he never lost his passion for extreme flying, and in 1984, he bought another stunt plane. When its fuselage cracked during a roll, he had to hit the silk again.
Tucker purchased a replacement and set about learning the finer points of aerobatics. He soon surpassed his mentors. After winning his first national championship in 1988, he went back on the road, performing signature maneuvers like the double hammerhead and the Son of Edwin, which involves a vertical climb followed by a wild tumble known as a lomcevak (Czech for "headache").
Today the software company Oracle sponsors Tucker to the tune of $2.1 million a year. He employs five mechanics and rehearses his moves three times a day. Yet disaster is never more than a glitch away -- which is how he found himself about to leap from a plane again that morning in Louisiana.
Tucker was directed to a cotton field where he could ditch the plane without endangering others. But that didn't eliminate the danger to himself. Climbing out of the cockpit, he tripped over a shoulder harness and was pinned against the tail-brace wires. He hung there for a few minutes, stunned and disoriented, listening to the cables scream. Then he jumped. "See you later, girl," he murmured, looking away as he floated down. He heard the crash, but he couldn't bear to watch.
Tucker flew at an air show in Florida two days later, but for months he was racked by doubts. "It took me a long time to figure out whether I was still supposed to walk this path," he says.
The following October, though, during a show in San Diego, he had what he considered to be the first perfect flight of his career -- a run so graceful that the plane seemed to pilot itself.
He decided soon afterward that retirement was not an option. "I'm still learning," Tucker says. "And I'm still getting better."
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