TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — Never heard of the Patriots Jet Team? You will hear them soon.

The high-performance civilian jet team will introduce itself to the South Sound as the show-stopping final act at the Joint Base Lewis-McChord Air Expo on Saturday and Sunday.

With an expected weekend turnout of at least 300,000, the expo is the biggest public event on the base all year, and one of the bigger events in the region — more heavily attended than the busiest weekend of last year’s Puyallup Fair.

The Patriots might not have the familiarity of the Thunderbirds, the elite Air Force flying team and air show mainstays. They might not have the cachet of the Navy’s Blue Angels. But they will thrill and dazzle just the same.

“Our entertainment value is pretty high,” lead pilot Dean “Wilbur” Wright said Thursday after the Patriots took a few media representatives and VIPs for the ride of their lives.

The Patriots debuted in 2003 with two high-performance L-39 aircraft. Since then they’ve expanded to four-jet performances with two other jets in waiting. The group’s signature move is called the “tail slide,” a kind of vertical moonwalk that no other jet teams perform.

“We pick the airplane up on its tail and run it out of air speed until it hits zero and then it actually starts falling tail-first through its smoke and exhaust,” Wright said.

What does the pilot go through during the maneuver?

“It feels like the elevator hit the top and you lost all your power and you’re going down,” said Wright, a former Air Force pilot who also flew with the Thunderbirds.

At 560 mph, the Aero Vodochody L-39 can’t match the speed of the Blue Angels or Thunderbirds, but that’s not a bad thing when it comes to awing an audience.

“The nature of the L-39 is it’s a much slower airplane than the F-16 or the F-18 that the Blue Angels fly,” Wright explained. “But that speed difference works in our favor.

“If you go to a Thunderbirds show or a Blue Angels show, you’ll notice after every pass they disappear for about a minute or a minute and a half. We don’t do that. Because of our speed we can keep the entire show in front of our crowd for the entire time.”

And sometimes, the Patriots themselves will seem to be within arm’s reach. At times during the show, Wright said, the jets will be only 10 or 15 feet above the ground

It’s no surprise, then, that the Patriots are the finale at the expo, the first public air show at Lewis-McChord since 2008.

“This is something awesome and we won’t do it for at least the next two years,” said Maj. Ben Jonsson, director of the event.