John Morrissey will get an interesting view of the Lawrence Municipal Airport today.

It’ll be 30 feet off the ground, upside down at 250 feet per second.

Aerobatic pilot John Morrissey flies his plane upside down during a practice run at the Lawrence Municipal Airport.

Must be a rush, right?

“Oh, I don’t know,” the 65-year-old said during practice Friday. “I guess I get a kick out of it. I wouldn’t get up every morning and wait in line to do it.”

That’s the reaction you might expect from a veteran stuntman, a retired Air Force fighter pilot who toured the country for years with aerobatic teams.

Today, Morrissey will show off his skills by using his aircraft to cut a ribbon stretched across the airport’s main runway as part of the celebration of the airport’s 75th birthday and recently completed runway renovations.

The pilot will invert his Pitts 52A biplane and rip through the ribbon, outstretched on bamboo poles, with the plane’s tail.

“I think it’s a very, very cool and intricate maneuver,” said Rick Bryant, chairman of the city’s aviation advisory board. “He makes it look pretty simple and tame, but he’s done it hundreds of times before all around the country.”

Bryant, who was among a handful of people gathered Friday to watch Morrissey practice, will be among those holding the ribbon-supporting poles today for the 1 p.m. ceremony.

“I have trouble with straight and level flight,” Bryant said. “He’s a retired Air Force colonel, and to him it’s like golf. He gets a rhythm and routine.”

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Morrissey, who lives in Lee’s Summit, Mo., started flying while attending business school at Kansas University in 1957. He earned his flight-training certificate and taught flying to help pay his way through school. He then entered a 24-year military career.

Morrissey was a team leader with the traveling Black Hawk and Holiday Inn aerobatic team, and was coach of the U.S. world competition team from 1991 to 1996. He since has given up competition and teaches fledgling pilots from his base at the East Kansas City Airport in Lee’s Summit.

Morrissey said the traveling life and monotony made the aerobatic-team life difficult.

“From break release to touchdown, it’s tremendous,” he said. “The rest of the time it’s like being in a carnival.”

Although he doesn’t get the same rush as he did when he started flying, Morrissey said he’s happy to be helping rededicate part of an airport he’s been flying to for 47 years.

“It never gets routine,” he said. “But after awhile, you get more confident. My son Matt (who also is an aerobatic pilot) says, ‘When do you ever get comfortable?’ And I say, ‘Do you mean comfortable — or confident?'”