About this episode

Louis Skupien shares his journey from being a national champion tennis player to breaking the sound barrier in an F-16D and creating aviation documentaries.

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. Support this podcast at: https://www.patreon.com/cw/ftrpltpdcst Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People in this episode

Host: E. Vincent "Jell-O" Aiello

Guest: Louis Skupien

Topics covered

• aviation
• reinvention
• test flying
• jet suits
• documentary filmmaking

Keywords

• aviation
• F-16D
• jet suit
• documentary
• Auto-GCAS
• tennis
• COVID
• reinvention
• test pilot

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Talk4, 412th Test Wing, Auto-GCAS

More episodes of Fighter Pilot Podcast

• FPP218 - The Humans Behind Autonomous Air Combat · July 13, 2026 · 53 min
• FPP217 - Shot Down, Not Out: Col. Richard "Dog" Brenneman on Service and Survival · June 29, 2026 · 1h 35m
• FPP216 - 300 Vietnam Missions in the F-4: Combat and the Making of a Leader · June 15, 2026 · 1h 5m

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