Vicky Benzing Aerosports

Vicky Benzing Aerosports is the air show business of Vicky Benzing, a California pilot, skydiver, aerobatic performer and air racer who flies aerial displays in a vintage 1940 Boeing Stearman and a 1944 P-51D Mustang named Plum Crazy. She says she loves sharing her passion for flying with others, and her act is booked at military and civilian air shows across the western United States and at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh.

Aircraft

• The Stearman was built in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1940 by the Boeing Aircraft Company as a military trainer and served during the Second World War at air bases in Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama. Sold by the War Assets Administration in 1946 for 770 dollars, it was fitted with a 450 hp Pratt and Whitney R-985 engine and used as a crop duster in California's Sacramento Valley until 1973, then restored by Stadel Aircraft of Yuba City in 1990 and returned to standard aerobatic category. Vicky bought it in 1998 and bases it at Pine Mountain Lake Airport near Yosemite; apart from the engine and a smoke system it remains as built, with two ailerons rather than four and no inverted fuel system, so she keeps positive g at all times in the spirit of early barnstorming
• Plum Crazy, a P-51 Mustang built in 1944, served with the Royal Canadian Air Force from 1950 to 1958 before Gulfstream founder Al Paulson bought it in 1964 for Clay Lacy to race at the first Reno Air Races, painting it purple after a mistaken delivery of 1,500 gallons of custom purple paint. Lacy bought the aircraft in 1967 and raced and displayed it for 55 years before selling it to Vicky in 2019; after four years of restoration under Steve Hinton Jr and the team at Fighter Rebuilders it returned to the air in 2023 in its purple racing scheme

Schedule and media

The 2026 schedule published on the site includes Wings Over Solano at Travis Air Force Base, Gunfighter Skies at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Fairchild Skyfest in Spokane, the Moses Lake Airshow, EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, Rumble Over the Redwoods at Humboldt County Airport and Wings Over Camarillo. The website offers a press kit, images, videos and sponsor information, and news items include features in EAA's Sport Aviation and Aeroplane magazines, podcasts on EAA's Green Dot and Warbird Radio, an honour at the Palm Springs Air Museum gala and flying the Stearman in the film Mercury 13.

Shows

Vicky Benzing Aerosports appears in the sponsor lists of the ICAS Convention 2026, where it is listed as a silver sponsor.

Contact

Based at Pine Mountain Lake Airport, California, United States
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