Wing Nuts, Air Heads & Plane Crazy People!

Roger on that, got my own share of Cessnas and Pipers, good airplanes with one exception, the only plane I flew that I did not really like was the C-188.

Other than that I have flown a range of crafts from C-120s to B-747s.
My 3 favorites would be the C-185, the DC-3 and the B-747-200.
Nowadays I drive a light twin for a living, the B-767, good airplane and easy work..

Oh well, since someone started this ...

Here's the one I miss the most. Sold it and shipped to the UK.

Sunset through the bird strainers.

Starduster?

Starduster Too

It was my second Duster, bought in California and flew it to East Coast.

Here's the first one:


Followed by what some might call a "hard landing" in a field and a ditch after an encounter with a fence following an engine failure over the Sierras between Sacramento and Reno:

Some might call it a Bipe w/ retracts now.

Saw the Starduster at Oshkosh a few years ago. Thought it was the best looking bipe ever built. At the time, I was actively looking to build a Glasair or a Lancair, but time isn't a luxury anymore. I would enjoy the building process and I've honed most of the skills to complete it; short of all the right tools. I helped a friend finish off a Velocity many years ago. I was also the 2nd set of hands for a friend that built an RV-6, but I'm not a riveting kind of guy. Prefer the sweet smell of epoxy.

Beautiful bipes Marmot! Sorry about the early landing.

That's about the area where my brother found his. Loomis to be exact. Found it in a barn, where it had been for some 20 or so years. Dry, and dusty, he picked it up for a song and did a full restore on it while in a hanger in Lincoln. I'll try and dig up some pictures from an old hard drive or ping him for some.

That was one of the happiest landings I ever made! I would have bounced onto the pavement if there hadn't been a barbed wire fence in the way, it absorbed just enough energy to put the plane into the side of a ditch and that is what took out the gear. It made the biggest cloud of dust I've ever been in!

The last few minutes of the descent there was a CHP helicopter on my wing, I guess they didn't have a camera otherwise it would have made a great YouTube video!


In my eyes the Starduster Too is still the best looking biplane ever made, I love the lines of the thing. I have always had a love for biplanes. My first was a Mong Sport, it was like a little pug faced dog, flew like a mad wild thing with such short coupling and was the squirreliest thing on wheels I ever drove.

Will dig through the boxes and look for some pics, it goes back a ways though. I should also have some of a Great Lakes I used to play with.

Might also find some C-45 pics. I flew the night mail in one for a couple of years out of Missoula, Montana on a MSO-HLN-BIL-MSO run carrying 3000 lbs of mail through rain and sleet and snow and hail and dark of night. Even with 12:1 blowers it was a real treat clawing out of Missoula and Helena sometimes. That was some of the most beautiful and the most horrifying flying I have ever done.

I bought it in L.A. and left the wreck in the EAA hangar in Auburn, California. Last I checked, someone had bought it and it is flying again. It wasn't all that badly damaged as shown, and if the darn fence or ditch hadn't been there I could have flown it out after fixing the engine problem.

When my insurance agent said they would total it I hopped a ride with one of the EAA guys back to Sacramento where there was another Duster I was interested in and bought that one. Last time I saw the red one was looking down from the blue one as I crossed over Auburn headed East.

My old stomping grounds.
Have flown in and out of Auburn a good number of times.

Fun story, Marmot. Thanks for sharing.

Lol! Lucky he didn't get into one of those A-10 or F-15's in the back gound... would of been interesting

I would of liked to see the pilot "cut the ribbon" though.

Far

Who was the Civil Airline Pilot that said in Interview in a obscure local US magazine ..the story did the rounds in the Military circles his facebook address was posted on line and numerous Fighter Jocks gave him Pelters

He flew F16's in the ANG ..which was never true

Yeah, that was Tim Martins, he is (was) an American Eagle co-pilot and an idiot.
He was interviewed by the ALPA magazine and spun a bunch of lies.


http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/military/49320-military-poser-alpa-magazine.html

More Than A Few Bad Habits

Boats, Cars, Planes....all the expensive toys!

Good to sea ya on the N-63 Chris. We really should cruise sometime, void of cameras and a critical eye. Nice to see there's another writer among us with his feet firmly planted in the air.

So there's FLIBS, MIBS and soon... we'll add OAV to the acronyms we attend. On that note, is anyone at YF going to Oshkosh this year?

Oshkosh?

I'm three hours away Carl. Fly in to MKE, I will pick you up, stay at my house, eat great, get fat and go to Oshkosh.

I am going to try and get back down there again this year. Haven't been there in a few years.

It was great to see a Blanik here! It brought back some great memories and sent me digging through the old pics. I got my glider rating in a Blanik.

Aero tow
Cloud base (air conditioning for glider drivers)
Hunting Waves at Pikes Peak in a 2-32 (bomber suits and O2 required)

Marmot--are the top two pix of your Blanik? If so, I must have had the Mk I version (old pilot joke: never fly the Mk I version of anything) because my instrument panel was squarish.

Started out flying on the power side in Southern California back in the '70s when you could just get in a Cessna 172 and fly around, maybe have the hundred-buck hamburger or fly out to Catalina for a buffalo burger.

Then it became all terminal control zones and talking to ATC and it sort of took the fun out of just flying around so, as a sailor, I got into soaring at Elsinore, first with the usual Schweizer 2-33s and then in 1-23s, and then a partnership deal popped up for the Blanik, which we put into the Elsinore rental fleet. Loved the Blanik. We'd take it to El Mirage dry lake in the winter for mountain flying and, when we really wanted to scare ourselves, up to Inyo Kern or Lone Pine to play in the Sierra standing wave.

That was a club a/c, I never owned a glider but bought an 8GCBC Scout for towing. I believe it was an early model from the '70s but I have never seen any other type of panel on an L-13.

The 2-32 was a rental at Black Forest in Colorado Springs. I used to fly the Scout up there from Houston and camp under the wing to get some real soaring. The guy in the front seat was an old retired fanatic who finished up his airline career flying Connies in Biafra. He lived for the wave off Pikes Peak and whenever I was there and conditions were less than great we would split the cost of a 2-seater and the tow.

It must have been spectacular around Lone Pine! I have seen some rotors in that area that make you cringe just thinking about it.

Jumping out of an airplane that's going to land anyway has never appealled to me but this looks fun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVvRWVoHDb8&feature=player_embedded