Up, up and away.

That's how Steve Kapur spends many summer weekends -- soaring high above in a vintage World War II-era SNJ-2 airplane as part of the five-plane GEICO Skytypers team.

He'll be flying a little closer to home on Saturday and Sunday during the eighth annual Wings Over Pittsburgh Air Show at the 911th Airlift Wing Air Force Reserve Base in Moon.

"Flying is something I always wanted to do," says the Collier Township resident. "As a kid, I built models and read books, but I never acted on it."

Then, 20 years ago, he received an offer he couldn't refuse.

"I had the opportunity to go flying with a business acquaintance in Chicago and had a wonderful time. I decided I was going to do this."

Over the years, he learned different aerial skills, but he never was instructed on formation flying until his Moon Township employer, GlaxoSmithKline, took on a new marketing account.

"We sponsored these guys about eight or 10 years ago. I was working with the program, and they saw I was a pilot myself, so they took me onto the team."

He and another teammate are the only pilots with no professional or military experience on the unique squad.

Others on the eight-member team fly for American Airlines, have spent 33 years as a search and rescue helicopter pilot for the Long Island Police Department or earned their wings as U.S. Naval Academy grads.

"For a civilian pilot to have this opportunity, it is as good as it gets. Most civilian pilots don't get to learn these types of skills. Formation flying is a military skill," says Kapur, 52.

And though the patriotic planes will perform a low-level flying demonstration both days, showing off tight formation displays and tactical maneuvers, they're most reknowned for their skytyping.

Different from skywriting, where one plane lets out a stream of smoke and forms words from it, skytyping utilizes five or six planes in row to create messages visible for up to 15 miles in any direction.

"We fly in a wide line abreast formation, and it's like a printing head on a dot matrix printer. As we fly overhead, a computer tells each plane's exhaust systems when to put out a puff of smoke."

The result is questions like "Will you Marry me?," GEICO advertisements or an annual "Remember Love" above New York City, paid for by Yoko Ono in John Lennon's memory.

During Sunday's show, the Skytypers plan to create a white, dotted message for all the moms in the crowd in honor of Mother's Day.

Each letter can stack as tall as the Eiffel Tower, and whole messages can stretch across the sky from Sewickley to the Pittsburgh International Airport.

Controlled by a sophisticated computer in Plane 1, skytyping has evolved since it started more than three decades ago.

"Originally, it was a big paper tape reader. The guy in the front cockpit had it between his legs and he had to feed tape through the machine.

"Today it's all digital and it's terrific. It's a lot more contemporary with this technology."

Advances haven't made flying any less difficult or fun for the pilots, says Kapur. Most likely, it has probably made them a hotter commodity.

After this weekend, the Skytypers have six shows in eight weeks including Washington, D.C.'s Andrews Air Force Base Air Show -- the nation's largest, and smaller places like The New York Air Show at Jones Beach near New York City.

"It's a very unusual thing. Everywhere we go we get a lot of people asking how we do that. For me, it's very exciting to be here.

"We have a great group of guys and we have a lot of fun. We love to see the people who enjoy what we do."

When Kapur and his fellow Skytypers spend time signing autographs at the GEICO tent as they will on Saturday and Sunday, some their favorite visitors are World War II pilots, who learned to fly fighter planes on the SNJ-2's preserved by the team.

"It's a fun thing for us, too. We get to talk to veterans, who actually trained on these airplanes. It's cool to speak with these aviators. They are just excited to see them still being flown."