tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27765883127974898362024-03-18T20:03:14.879-07:00Anchor Watch Press chronicles of adventure by air and seaanchor watch presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02166601802029669961noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776588312797489836.post-40558960270513613992013-12-03T07:00:00.000-08:002013-12-03T16:22:26.384-08:00High Jinks, Low Hops<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><u>High Jinks, Low Hops</u></span></b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><u>A Memoir of Postwar Flying</u></span></b><br />
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">by Robert J Hing</span></b><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: large;"><em>"Highly recommended" Prop-Swing, Spring 2013</em></span></strong></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Now available at these sellers: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/High-Jinks-Low-Hops-Postwar/dp/1475295294/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349975665&sr=8-1&keywords=High+Jinks+Low+Hops">amazon.com</a> </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> <a href="https://www.createspace.com/3865339">createspace</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/high-jinks-low-hops-robert-j-hing/1112999905">barnes and noble</a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><i>(To read the complete entry please click on the title of this post.)</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Gas was cheap, enthusiasm was sky-high in the postwar boom, 1946-1975 and beyond, almost into the new century. There were 300,000 private airplanes, more or less, and 20,000 airfields. Author Robert Hing's exuberant memoir of this time tells of his own tiny piece of the action, skylarking in homebuilt airplanes, warbirds, gliders, classic airplanes and floatplanes.</span></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Coming this fall: <u> Searching for the Epic of Flight, 107 Books Briefly Noted</u></span></b><br />
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<em>photo: Cliff Hilditch</em></div>
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<i>White Waltham, 1952</i>. </div>
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<i>My first solo aircraft.</i></div>
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<i>"The fact is, I was wary of the Tiger Moth. In my view, flying it solo was rather like riding a jittery horse which might unseat me at any moment."</i></div>
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anchor watch presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02166601802029669961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776588312797489836.post-38221237832204697402013-10-14T09:30:00.000-07:002013-10-14T06:47:48.777-07:00New Release: Searching for the Epic of Flight<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>cover art copyright of Canadian War Museum</i></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><em>" A Nice Little Book" Flying magazine, August 2013</em></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><i>(To read the complete entry please click on the title of this post.)</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Here are reviews of 107 exciting, surprising, and informative books on flight. Arranged around twenty three themes, they range from high flight (Flying the Hump); through "fear of falling" (The High and the Mighty); long distance flying (The US Navy's transatlantic flight of 1919); war flying (Gods of Tin); to plain old high spirits (By the Seat of My Pants). This book is an intelligent attempt to sort out which are the "epics of flight".</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Now available at these sellers</span>: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue;"> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Searching-Epic-Flight-Books-Briefly/dp/1479194441/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359052113&sr=8-1&keywords=Searching+for+the+epic+of+flight">amazon.com</a></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: large;"> <a href="https://www.createspace.com/3974940">createspace</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: blue; font-size: large;"> <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/searching-for-the-epic-of-flight-robert-j-hing/1114134967?ean=9781479194445">barnes and noble</a></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">bookstore discount through Ingram, Baker & Taylor</span><br />
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</span>anchor watch presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02166601802029669961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776588312797489836.post-72184580413711970842013-08-09T12:32:00.001-07:002013-08-15T08:16:33.475-07:00Flying in the 1960s <div align="left">
(<em>to read the complete entry please click on the title of this post</em>)</div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Flying in the 60s<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">From:</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> Brian Johnson <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">To:</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> Bob Hing <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Subject:</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> Flying in the 60s<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Date:</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> Aug 8, 2013 2:58 PM<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Bob: Here is a write-up. Please modify and shorten as required.<br /><br />My flight training started at the Flying Club in Fort William (now Thunder Bay) on October 23, 1961 in an Aeronca Champ. I continued on through the Winter on mainly a Piper Colt but also on the Aeronca Champ on skis. I remember it being cold pre-flighting and starting the engine. We used a surplus WW2 gasoline crank heater to pre-heat the engine. There wasn't much cabin heat but with the adrenalin flowing I didn't notice. I received my "Single Engine Land" License on March 14, 1962. The rental cost in those days I believe was around $15 hour wet solo and about $25 with the instructor. Total cost was somewhat under $1000. <br /><br />In 1967, I moved to Powell River, British Columbia. My close friend and colleague had a Globe Swift and my Landlord and neighbor had a twin Apache. The Flying club was very active and my wife and I joined it and this became the focal point of our social life. The cost of the Club's Cessna 150 was, I believe, $17 wet.<br />In early 1968, I got interested in buying an airplane and started looking around. I put a deposit, sight unseen, on a Globe Swift for sale in B.C. for around $7500. On the pre-inspection there was a mechanical problem and my deposit was returned. I was always grateful that it didn't go through as the Swift was beyond my level of experience and still is!<br /><br />In Spring 1968, my wife and I drove down to Washington State stopping at a number of airports looking for small planes for sale. In Arlington, Washinton near Seattle, I found a 1954 Tri-Pace with a 0290-D2 motor, 125 hp. I liked the plane as it was very similar to fly as the Colt. I bought the plane for $4500 and on May 6, 1968 I flew it back to Powell River. It had under 1000 hours on the engine. In July, my friend and I flew to Calgary and back, stopping at Revelstoke and Grand Forks, putting 21 hours in my log book. Then in August my wife and I flew the plane from Powell River B.C. to Fort William Ontario in 2 days stopping at Lethbridge Alberta for fuel and Saskatoon for the night. The next day we stopped in Brandon Manitoba for fuel and lunch and then on to Thunder bay. We later returned to Powell River with a total trip flying time of 35 hours. <br /><br />My brother lived near Portland Oregon so we flew down there a few times. It took about 2 hours of flying time versus about 12 hours overall driving with the ferries to take.<br /><br />I don't remember the fuel costs at the time but I do recall that it was very inexpensive, no greater than taking the car and cruising with the plane at 120 mph instead of say 50 mph average in the car. I sold the plane in 1970 for about what I paid for it.<br /> There were no landing fees at that time at even the large airports like Vancouver, Portland and SeaTac.<br /><br />Brian<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Comments by blog author</span></i></b><span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">:<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>I got my PPL on a Champ in 1960 at Lombard, IL.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1962 I joined a flying club, also in Lombard (Mitchell Field).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hourly cost (club rate) flying a 65 hp Champ was $5.00/hour wet (I don’t remember what the club dues were).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Aeronca 7 DC (85 hp) Champ N82769</div>
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Pilot: Helen Collins, York Township Airport, Lombard, Illinois, 1968</div>
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(Airport was closed that year.)</div>
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The Champ was in production 1945-1951 and reintroduced in 2007.</div>
anchor watch presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02166601802029669961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776588312797489836.post-29210988287178098222013-05-14T14:35:00.003-07:002013-05-14T14:39:20.343-07:00A Hop Over the Sierras<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In the postwar years, every Tom, Dick and Harry was flying his own airplane in pursuit of life, liberty, and freedom from gravity. A hop over the Sierras in our Cessna One Eighty. We were at 14,500 feet en route to Death Valley Airport (211 feet below sea level), Sept. 5, 1967.</div>
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<b>High Jinks, Low Hops </b>available at <a href="http://www.amazon.com/High-Jinks-Low-Hops-Postwar/dp/1475295294/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348430161&sr=8-1&keywords=High+Jinks+Low+Hops">amazon.com</a></div>
anchor watch presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02166601802029669961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776588312797489836.post-52569972528799936802013-04-02T11:41:00.000-07:002013-04-09T08:02:54.401-07:00Where the Sopwiths Are<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>(To read the complete entry please click on the title of this post.)</i> <br />
Not to be missed is Old Warden Aerodrome, an hour's drive north of London. Here is a collection of about fifty original, early airplanes in flying condition with a grass aerodrome, several hangars, and adjacent workshops. Authenticity is the word for the Shuttleworth Veteran Aeroplane Society, which had its beginning in the 1920s and 1930s with a nucleus of vintage automobiles and airplanes. The present trust has grown into a knowledge center with full-time, skilled craftsmen and mechanics (see Wikipedia, and their website <a href="http://shuttleworth.org/"><strong>The Shuttleworth Collection</strong></a>). The staff is outnumbered by volunteers, many of them of long-standing, and the Trust even has an apprentice scheme. <strong>Prop-Swing</strong>, the thrice yearly journal of the Shuttleworth Collection, edited by Bill Grigg, has a distinctive flavor with a mix of articles on the flying characteristics of particular airplanes-- the Fieseler Storch, the de Havilland Chipmunk, and so forth -- along with intriguing and arcane items on early motorcycle carburetion and the operation of rotary-engines. By the way, my first visit was in January 1954, when my favorite airplane was the Bristol Fighter. I'd be hard put to to cite my current favorite but I'd settle for one of the Sopwith rotary engine scouts- the Pup, the Triplane, or the Camel.</div>
anchor watch presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02166601802029669961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776588312797489836.post-62103020066850265512013-03-07T08:17:00.000-08:002013-04-07T13:20:44.624-07:00Notwithstanding<span style="font-size: large;">A Feeding Frenzy on the Herb River</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>(To read the complete entry please click on the title of this post.)</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I was in the kitchen, fixing bacon and eggs, when Carolyn called from upstairs, "Two ospreys over the river!" I opened the window shutters (yesterday the wind was blowing out of the west at 32 knots). Five minutes later, "Dolphins!" (There were two.) Next came a gang of eleven pelicans; then, four egrets, and two Great Blue Herons. (The gulls came late to the party.) But what were the fish they were hunting?? I'll have to ask John Crawford, the naturalist on the Isle of Hope.</span>anchor watch presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02166601802029669961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776588312797489836.post-59390960131290611852013-03-07T08:09:00.000-08:002013-03-07T08:21:12.537-08:00Forthcoming<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: large;">2014<em> Sailing Across the Atlantic with a Scratch Crew: An Adventure in a 25-ton Ketch</em> by Lucas Lewin, MD </span><br />
<br /><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: large;">2014 <em> Coast to Coast in Eighteen Splashdowns: A Thirty Day Jaunt in a Floatplane </em>by Robert Hing, a reissue of <em>Tracking Mackenzie to the Sea</em> (Anchor Watch Press, 1990)</span>anchor watch presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02166601802029669961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776588312797489836.post-19203656022084194632013-02-27T13:35:00.000-08:002013-04-07T13:20:57.896-07:00The Greatest Show On Earth, Oshkosh 1986<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: large;"></span><br />
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">from <b>High Jinks, Low Hops: A Memoir of Postwar Flying </b></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>available at <a href="http://www.amazon.com/High-Jinks-Low-Hops-Postwar/dp/1475295294/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1362001387&sr=8-2&keywords=High+Jinks+Low+Hops">amazon.com</a></i></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>(To read the complete entry please click on the title of this post.)</i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">August 1 neared and 20,000 airplanes revved their engines and headed for Oshkosh and funneled into Wittman Field at the rate of 450 per hour – a stream of airplanes old and new, big and little. “I was doing great,” I overheard a pilot say, “four and a half hours out of New York – I started with five hours fuel – when my engine quit over Lake Winnebago, within sight of the airport. I put her into the water a thousand yards short of the shoreline and some boaters picked us up.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">August 1 neared and forty thousand campers converged on Oshkosh – license plates of all fifty states: Alaska, Maine, Florida, California, and – significantly – Missouri, the “Show Me” state. (Some Doubting Thomas who’d come to verify...the fact of flying machines?) And there were the Canadians: “I’ve got plenty of time for my hobbies,” one of them told me, “seeing as I live three hundred miles north of Edmonton and work in the air conditioning business.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">August 1 neared, and I abandoned the plan to fly my Maule airplane to Oshkosh. A big old Bermuda High had been sitting out over the Atlantic for weeks, pumping hot, moist air over Virginia and the southern states. It was sunny, and it was IFR (instrument conditions) – thick haze and scattered thunderstorms. “Robbie, throw the pup tent in the trunk of the car, and let’s hit the road.” Then it started to rain. As we drove onto the Pennsylvania ’Pike, a big Pontiac, “a grocery getter,” with the Confederate flag in lieu of a front license plate, cut in front of us on the entrance ramp and then spun out on the first curve, sliding back toward us head on. We avoided him and got into the middle of a long-distance, 18-wheeler truck race. No state police were in sight. We passed a car on fire on the shoulder; later one blazing fiercely, a Cadillac. Like they say, the biggest risk in flying is driving to the airport.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Beyond the Appalachians, we got into a big pool of cool, clear air, and stayed in it ’til our return. Now we were wheeling across Indiana. Waves of airplane consciousness radiated from Oshkosh. Even the high-powered WLS radio station in Chicago was talking airplanes instead of blasting away with their “Rockin’ America” program. “Y’have to fly these new planes IFR,” explained an excited caller, “’cause the CG is so far back.” We got to Oshkosh at 12.30 PM the following day, the first day of the convention, just in time to miss Jim Bede’s lecture, “Design Problems of Supersonic Homebuilts.” (Darn! I wanted to hear that.) We paid our entrance fee and pitched our tent near a Dakota tipi, a single piece of canvas wrapped around 25-foot poles, its seam secured with 12-inch dowels.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Did the Indians use canvas?” </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Yes, after the buffalo were gone.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">That night the rain came down heavily, and the press of vehicles churned the tenting fields into mud.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Saturday morning, sunny. Imagine Disneyland with a crowd ninety percent white males, predominantly middle-aged, roving restlessly in search of...what? Reinforcement for our individual, nutty schemes? Well, yes. And there were 250 technical seminars, 500 exhibits, 20,000 airplanes, and gurus and pundits too numerous to count from whom to glean ideas.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Steve Wittman </i>was eighty-two years old at this time. A skinny guy in a check shirt, he could have been your friendly local hardware clerk. In fact, he was an air racer in the ’thirties, and airport manager of Oshkosh Airport for many years. He designed a number of race planes (one of them hangs in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.), and a classic 1953 homebuilt design, the Tailwind (one of them hung from the roof of my barn).<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He said, “The aerodynamicists at the University of Mississippi wouldn’t believe this little plane could cruise 165 mph at 70-percent power. I let them test it: they calibrated the airspeed indicator, removed the prop and towed me to twelve thousand feet. On the way down we recorded the speeds and rate of descent. It’s equivalent to a wind tunnel test. They admitted I was right – even a little conservative.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“My new design— you can see it on the flight line, in row 31—was designed to take me and my wife non-stop from Ocala, Florida, where we live in the winter, to Oshkosh. I call it the Model O-O.” </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“It looks like a Super Tailwind,” I said.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Oh, no! It’s a completely new design.” </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">If Wittman were asked to design a replacement for the Boeing 747, would it be tube-and-fabric and look like a Tailwind sized up a hundred times? (Just kidding.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><em>Of Bob Hoover, aerobatic pilot</em>. "Did you see that guy Hoover? He checked his airplane out for forty-five minutes before he went up. <em>Forty-five minutes</em>!"</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Igor Bensen</i>. We came upon Dr. Bensen – the disciple of Sikorsky and the designer of the gyrocopter – explicating in one of the red-and-blue striped forum tents. Despite his Russian accent and machine-gun delivery – he talked in short bursts – his audience was deeply absorbed. “Vertical control vehicles have unlimited potential. It would be very easy, for example, to convert a suitable family-sized vehicle, say a Jeep, to cross any type of terrain or river by means of a mechanism incorporating a balloon for ascent, a propeller for motion through the air, and a parachute to land. Very easy. Check out Santos Dumont. He was doing this sort of thing in 1901, landing in the gardens of his friends in Paris.” (Why not? Last year there was a man here from California with a pedal-powered blimp.)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> A. No. (Explanation extremely long, incomprehensible, and off the point, the whole illustrated with little chalk diagrams that cluttered the blackboard.)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Burt Rutan </i>was down on the flight line, sitting on the grass next to one of his canard designs, surrounded by a circle of disciples and admirers. His brother Dick was elsewhere on the field. The next month, Dick was going to fly around the world non-stop. It was Burt’s idea. When Dick got out of the air force, he didn’t have a job, so he went over to Mohave and Burt gave him a job in his airplane factory. But Dick soon got in Burt’s hair – Dick wouldn’t do nothing useful, just wanted to test airplanes – so Burt said, “Dick, why don’t you go fly around the world. I’ll design the plane, and you take the project from there.” That was five years ago. Then Dick decided the co-pilot should be his girlfriend, Jeanna. “No girlfriend,” decreed brother Burt. But what with the fourteen gas tanks, and the feeder tank, and Dick’s sideburns and cowboy boots, there wasn’t room for anything but a very small co-pilot. So Burt relented onthe girl. (Never mind the scuttlebutt, Rutan and Yeager made this flight in December 1986. For a definitive account, see <i>The First Unrefueled Flight Around the World</i>, by Richard Taylor, 1994.)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Jim Bede</i>. We missed his first forum (the one on supersonic homebuilts), and he didn’t show up for the second. Jim was conspicuous by his absence. But in his days of glory, before his business collapsed, Jim was No.1 personality in the amateur airplane builder’s world. A corpulent figure in a red jumpsuit and matching red hat, sometimes mistaken by the uninitiated for a Coca-Cola delivery man, Jim had dreams to sell, pretty potent dreams. I first heard about the BD-5 in 1970, when several Chapter 86 members put down deposits for kit packages from Bede Aircraft. (The gory details are available on <i>Wikipedia</i>.) Now, in 1986, Jim was a Personality. Hadn’t his jet airplane design, the BD-5J, featured in the opening sequence of the film <i>Octopussy</i>, outstanding cultural event of the known world?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I asked a man from NASA about the BD5 and took down what I thought he said. “It’s really a good design concept, though it’s difficult to build and tricky to fly. It looks like it flies a lot faster than 200 mph, because it’s small like a bullet. Eleven thousand orders were taken for kits, 55 were completed, and twenty pilots killed so far. It’s a nice design, though the narrow- chord wing operates at a Reynolds number of about one million, so it sacrifices some lift. It’s not so hard to fly except for pilot-induced oscillation. Of course, with that high thrust-line, she’ll pitch up if you lose power – that’s a killer. The jet version is <i>sweet </i>to fly, though I got G- lock on two occasions. But I love the BD-5.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Dave Blanton</i>, a peppery man from Wichita, held forth on Auto Engine Development: “I told Rutan, ‘It’s stupid to fly around the world with an air-cooled engine.’” Then Dave got going on the Ford V-6 aluminum engine. [Robbie: “Dad, that’s the engine we’ve got in our car!”] “Change the camshaft to move maximum torque to 4400 RPM; junk the EPA package; junk the stock carburetor and replace it with a two-barrel 500 cfm Holley carb. The Holley’s a good one, though their legal department is a bunch of idiot fools. Then put on a 2:1 belt-driven reduction gear [Dave sells this], and you’re ready to go.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> A. I won’t work on them. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Q. What about fuel injection? </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Q. What about diesel engines? </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A. Too exotic. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Q. Do you like oil treatments? </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A. No.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Q. Can I port the intakes? </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A. This is America. Do as you damn well please. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Q. Where do you get your power figures? </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A. I use a dynamometer on everything.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“He never even seen a dynamometer,” said Beachner, who flew a Buick-engined homebuilt, until it quit on him and he was killed later in the week. I was sorry for that. A giddy feeling was engendered in the thronging crowds from all the possibilities.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Duane Cole</i>, dean of aerobatics. “I can list you pages of people who have killed themselves at air shows – flying too low, attempting maneuvers beyond their ability, and flying too low. I fly <i>higher </i>than anyone else. And I’ve flown <i>longer </i>than anyone else. Think about it! There are only 220,000 general aviation aircraft in this country, and we lose 1,000 pilots a year. (Plaintively) When are guys going to look out for themselves?”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>No sleep tonight</i>. 12.30 AM on the third night. I was awakened by voices outside the tent. It was Bill Cahill and Joe Schweitzer, ancient companions and backyard airplane builders. “Can you get us in on your pass?” “Sure.” I left Robbie asleep in the tent and went off with them to the parking lot, to Joe’s truck. We reminisced, drank two six-packs of beer between us – and forgot all about getting Joe’s truck into the camp grounds. Bill said, “Witherspoon has been a student pilot for thirty years. By trade he’s a parts man. He has a remarkable head for numbers. It’s really a shame clouds don’t have parts numbers.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Joe, what is this switch on the steering wheel?”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“It’s the solenoid switch on my fuel transfer system,” said Joe, “With four tanks, I can drive non-stop from Chicago to Ogallala. I’m testing the system before putting it in my plane. Don’t forget, if you get lost in the air, you are going to need extra fuel. Like when I was a crew member flying in a B-36 over the Pacific. Eventually we got lost. So we flew around until we spotted a ship and asked for her position.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Dawn was breaking; aero engines revved on the field. A flight of four P-51s took off and flew over the camp ground, over the 655 portable toilets, the 256 pay-phones, the 200 shower units, the 40,000 campers, and the 20,000 airplanes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><em>Workshops galore</em>. Welding guru showing tyro how to weld chrome moly tube: "Let the puddle melt the rod!" Aside: "God! It's so simple. You'd think I was teaching him how to do a slow roll."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Tent No. 9 </i>was where the FAA gave non-stop sermons on flight safety. I listened spellbound to an Elmer Gantry who recounted blood-curdling stories, true and tragic tales, of rash printers, foolish paper-mill operatives, and fledgling mechanics who launched into the air in the face of every principle of airmanship. “The airport operator pleaded with him not to take off, but he flew away in the fog and crashed within seconds.” (<i>Turn back, o man; forsake your foolish ways!</i>) And to what avail, these sermons? When a big thundercloud drifted over the airfield, crackling forked lightning from its base, pilots forgot the lectures on micro-bursts, forgot about prudence altogether. Still giddy from all the things they’d seen and heard at this convention, they jumped into their airplanes and rose joyfully into the air: columns of airplanes – warbirds and ultralights – rose up from Whitman Field toward the dark underside of the thunder cloud, like metal filings to a magnet, like sinners to sin. Said Robbie, “Gee, Dad, if we get hail, it’ll take out half of general aviation in the United States!” But the storm drifted off and dumped seven inches of rain on Milwaukee.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Airframes and Engines</i>. “Bill,” I said, “how do you suppose I can inspect the insides of my Tailwind’s wings for rot?” “The best advice I can give to you is to take a match and burn them," growled Bill. "I wouldn’t mess with wooden structures over ten years old. And I trust wooden constructionmore than amateur welding – or composites. Or metal, come to that. You’ll remember Al took me up in his T-18 that morning, and it fell apart in the air that same afternoon.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“Don’t forget engines,” chimed in Bob Polaski. “You remember Jim Daniel’s Volksplane?” [I did remember it.] “He sold it to a guy I knew. Soon after he got the plane, the new owner didn’t return from a local flight. The CAP was called out. I went up in my [Cessna] one-fifty to help out. It isn’t easy to spot a downed plane from the air, but I found it in the corn. When we reached him he was dead in the cockpit, almost within sight of a farmer mowing his yard. That pilot had survived two years flying gunships in Nam. I don’t know why it crashed but I blame the Volkswagon engine – they don’t belong in airplanes.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">“The most beautiful sound I ever heard was a twelve cylinder Jag,” said someone, <i>a propos </i>of nothing. “It sounded like ripping silk.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Best of the Flying Displays: The Harrier, in perfect hovering flight, and able to rotate about its vertical axis. The Helio, a fixed-wing airplane that can land in one hundred feet. A Boeing 747 flying by on one engine – the other three shut down – and climbing away!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Robbie and I stayed seven days at the convention. When we drove back to Virginia I found myself fixating on....gyrocopters—whirling along under that free-spinning rotor, landing in my own backfield, parking next to the tractor.</span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>anchor watch presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02166601802029669961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776588312797489836.post-17597238203686726252013-02-14T13:04:00.002-08:002013-04-07T13:21:09.284-07:00The Arctic-Pacific Portage<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL-iDNpqm3V3vBauGVOB1pgnlSvH8ERSb8VrPOgKB7i3piCzbagkUZQimJI30sPE8UwEg9E6J8nNVelLJom44BK6DDK6POJ5b2wLgOLUW0IGzN6XPRkK7W7u8xek_MQhV1a64wFT4ReCo/s1600/Canada+095.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL-iDNpqm3V3vBauGVOB1pgnlSvH8ERSb8VrPOgKB7i3piCzbagkUZQimJI30sPE8UwEg9E6J8nNVelLJom44BK6DDK6POJ5b2wLgOLUW0IGzN6XPRkK7W7u8xek_MQhV1a64wFT4ReCo/s640/Canada+095.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>(To read the complete entry please click on the title of this post.)</i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Geographically and historically, the Arctic-Pacific Portage is among the most significant places in North America. It took the European explorers three hundred years (1492-1793) to cross North America, and the Arctic-Pacific Portage, an aboriginal route, was the last link in the 8,300 km journey. Mackenzie and his voyageurs smashed their canoe to bits (6/12/1793) in starting down the Pacific slope on Bad River. During the re-enactment crossing (1991/2/3) by Lakehead University, this particular portage took two 16 hour days in a cold, wet drizzle to paddle and portage the 19 km.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In 1990, I traced the route of Mackenzie's 1793 crossing of North America by floatplane. In flying south from the town of Mackenzie, BC, I unwittingly followed the more inviting valley of the Pack & Crooked Rivers. I flew along the Crooked River to its source in Summit Lake, thus missing Arctic and Pacific Lakes (see map below). From <em>Tracking Mackenzie to the Sea</em> (1990) to be reissued as <em>Coast to Coast in Eighteen Splashdowns.</em></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0PaZYxq728ZEGm6zfetK4Rc4BEF-zM8t7vFMzfNoeuvR6YAI8iedU0wP8aZKeyJfLXSKIATDpXiGjrhHqrvnTCnfe3i65Nu0X5yDBeGwQfhdytLg1bUTRGv83a65kmpAM6DsdrdnnNfg/s1600/blogmap1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0PaZYxq728ZEGm6zfetK4Rc4BEF-zM8t7vFMzfNoeuvR6YAI8iedU0wP8aZKeyJfLXSKIATDpXiGjrhHqrvnTCnfe3i65Nu0X5yDBeGwQfhdytLg1bUTRGv83a65kmpAM6DsdrdnnNfg/s640/blogmap1.jpg" width="416" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Twenty years later I asked Rob Hing to photograph the "missing" lakes from the air. The photo below shows Pacific Lake in the foreground, Portage Lake (elev. 2650 feet) in the center, and Arctic Lake beyond. The evident haze is smoke from summer forest fires.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2yto309JaiCbIFV61IEkAI3YQo4MBqZjOTt5VgmJCcvnOVNbDH_KaUAFQQavK9YBR-Hn9So93wPgqbqXQUPRRxK-bsOPlOmH7rZwTKBSjPTwU7wG5YYG_jif0wzGJnJCZwQ4BxEnVh_w/s1600/Canada+107.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2yto309JaiCbIFV61IEkAI3YQo4MBqZjOTt5VgmJCcvnOVNbDH_KaUAFQQavK9YBR-Hn9So93wPgqbqXQUPRRxK-bsOPlOmH7rZwTKBSjPTwU7wG5YYG_jif0wzGJnJCZwQ4BxEnVh_w/s640/Canada+107.JPG" width="480" /></a></div>
<br />anchor watch presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02166601802029669961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776588312797489836.post-43178399517245541582013-01-31T07:54:00.000-08:002013-04-07T13:19:34.583-07:00Thirty Hours to Solo<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiazDmtdKdBo3my9nPfYUNNqI76vS3oGK1kYnpYxg_BYV-gnF1L0LUcD06pLjIKTPTjua96ZleVGCEIke3gn_dJk0X3wNtPesTq3kl1P4T3EHBhxWJqyZLUrXPit3z2cltGbBTCv36KB-0/s1600/bobscan0012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiazDmtdKdBo3my9nPfYUNNqI76vS3oGK1kYnpYxg_BYV-gnF1L0LUcD06pLjIKTPTjua96ZleVGCEIke3gn_dJk0X3wNtPesTq3kl1P4T3EHBhxWJqyZLUrXPit3z2cltGbBTCv36KB-0/s320/bobscan0012.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> <i>(To read the complete entry please click on the title of this post.)</i></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The last of the Montreal built Harvards delivered to the RAF in 1943 and 1944 (photographed at Moreton-in-Marsh, 1954). A lot of them were "pranged"- "flew into a railway tunnel", "hit tree while low flying", etc. (ref. John F. Hamilton, <em>The Harvard File</em>) After seventy hours in the Percival Prentice, I soloed the Harvard in seven and a half hours.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In the late 1940's, the USAF retired its basic trainers and put cadet pilots, sink or swim, into Texan advanced trainers, requiring that they solo in thirty hours. "The washout rate was fierce." (ref. Robert J. Powers, USAF, retired)</span></div>
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anchor watch presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02166601802029669961noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2776588312797489836.post-77313990257061120542013-01-29T08:01:00.000-08:002013-04-07T13:21:56.541-07:00Two Men, One Sky<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>(To read the complete entry please click on the title of this post.)</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">This is a compelling piece from the NY Times on capturing the hang gliding distance record, in Texas.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/sports/two-men-one-sky-the-silent-realization-of-a-purer-form-of-flight.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">Two Men, One Sky</a> (written by AG Sulzberger)</span>anchor watch presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02166601802029669961noreply@blogger.com1