Super Petrel XP Water Flying Magazine Photo Shoot

December 9th, 2025, was an interesting day at Super Petrel USA in Ormond Beach, FL. Water Flying magazine, the official publication of the Seaplane Pilots Association, was on hand to fly, review and photograph the latest version of the Super Petrel XP aircraft.

Editor Mark Twombly arrived from Sanford FL with Dan “Danno” Pederson in Dan’s personal Super Petrel XP. An ex-Navy F-18 carrier pilot, Dan is the Chief Pilot for Super Petrel USA and wears N522TP like a glove. Bradford Fuller, Creative Director and photo pilot for the Blue Island Digital team, brought the Piper Lance PA32R photo plane down from its last gig in South Carolina, while photographer/videographer George Burkitt drove in from home base in Orlando.

The fun began just before sunrise, shooting for about an hour on the coast, flying the beaches of Volusia County, before heading West to the beautiful fly-in community of Eagles Nest Aerodrome, F44, for photos on the manicured grass strip and adjacent Lake Estella.

Blue Island Digital is a sister company to Florida Film & Tape, and Brad heads up the creativity for both companies. Combined, the two companies have a significant client base in the aviation industry, and Brad’s well-worn commercial pilot’s license has served both well. FF&T also shoots much of the photography for Water Flying, either from the Piper Lance or a PA-18 Super Cub on amphibian floats.

Brother/partner Mike Fuller is the third member of that pilot/photographer team. Together Mike & Brad have well over 20,000 hours of flight time logged, a fair chunk of that either flying the photo ship or shooting the camera. It’s fair to say that avgas is in their blood!

Blue Island Digital took on the digital marketing for Super Petrel USA in July of 2020. Scoda Aeronautica, the Brazil based manufacturer, at the time was selling about four aircraft a year. Today that number is now dozens a year. This is a self-imposed maximum output as it’s always, Quality over Quantity. To be clear, it’s one damn fine aircraft, and getting better with every innovation they engineer in.

But a good part of that success was effectively getting the word out, letting the market know the Super Petrel is here and here to stay. The newest version is the Super Petrel XP PLUS. If you want to know more about the aircraft, and see more of the photography and video, see https://superpetrelusa.com or https://seaplanes.org. And more about the folks who took the pictures, see https://ffandt.com.

Blue Island Digital has put together, with a combination of Digital Marketing, video production and photography, a team with an unparalleled level of experience and expertise in the aviation industry. A team you can count on.