FPP219 - From Wimbledon to Mach 1.58: Louis Skupien’s Wild Ride into Telling Aviation’s Story

2026-07-20

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He was a national champion tennis player headed for Wimbledon, then COVID and injury ended that dream overnight. Two years later, Louis Skupien was strapped into a jet suit. Four years after that, he was breaking the sound barrier twice in an F-16D over Edwards Air Force Base, filming a documentary on the 412th Test Wing and the story behind Auto-GCAS — the system that’s saved 13 pilots’ lives. Louis, host of the Talk4 podcast and creator of the Full Throttle documentary series, joins me to talk ...

He was a national champion tennis player headed for Wimbledon, then COVID and injury ended that dream overnight. Two years later, Louis Skupien was strapped into a jet suit.

Four years after that, he was breaking the sound barrier twice in an F-16D over Edwards Air Force Base, filming a documentary on the 412th Test Wing and the story behind Auto-GCAS — the system that’s saved 13 pilots’ lives.

Louis, host of the Talk4 podcast and creator of the Full Throttle documentary series, joins me to talk tennis-to-aviation reinvention, flying with jet-suit inventor Richard Browning, low-level runs down Sidewinder, pulling 9Gs, and what it took to get a foreign national civilian into the backseat of an Edwards test jet.

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