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Post by millring on Mar 11, 2023 19:51:43 GMT -5
This is a pretty cool photo of Martt taken by an aerobatic friend of his.  |
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Post by TKennedy on Mar 11, 2023 20:48:36 GMT -5
Cool stuff John! I had time in a J3 Cub back in the day. Main memory was being passed by cars on the highway. It was a lot of fun.
A friend flew to Canada to scatter a fishing buddy’s ashes over his favorite lake. When they opened the window they all blew back in. The vacuumed the plane out with a shop vac when they got back and never told anyone.
It’s apparently pretty dangerous trying to scatter ashes from a light plane. There was a fairly recent fatal accident caused by them blowing back and blinding the pilot at low altitude.
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Post by billhammond on Mar 11, 2023 21:08:32 GMT -5
It’s apparently pretty dangerous trying to scatter ashes from a light plane. There was a fairly recent fatal accident caused by them blowing back and blinding the pilot at low altitude. The pilot's ashes were lovingly poured into a Hefty bag and tossed into a ditch. |
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Post by millring on Mar 11, 2023 21:16:41 GMT -5
I think the red one was the one he rebuilt. The yellow one is a baby cub? I'll have to ask him if they dropped ashes or flowers. Now that I've told the story, the only thing I remember for sure was the golden gate part.
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Post by drlj on Mar 11, 2023 22:21:12 GMT -5
Back in my flying days, I knew a few guys who had Cubs. Guys in the EAA liked to rebuild, restore, and fly them.
Reminds me of a small plane with no power story.
We had a fly-in at Grissom Air Force base in Southern IN once. It was sponsored by one of the pilot groups. I don’t recall which. Anyway, my ex and I flew there in a Cessna 150. We landed and came to a stop on the chevron before ever reaching the actual start of the runway which was huge and looked like it went on forever.
We thought it was funny, but suddenly over the headsets we heard, civilian craft exit the runway immediately. You have two fighter jets coming in hot behind you.
We goosed it and made the turn off just as two fighter jets touched down and shot past us at a very high rate of speed.
Scared and impressed us at the same time. Mostly scared.
If I remember correctly, the base is just north of Indianapolis.
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Post by Rob Hanesworth on Mar 12, 2023 10:08:03 GMT -5
Grissom, formerly Bunker Hill AFB, is north of Indy about 70 miles, between Kokomo and Peru. It housed B-58 bombers during my high school days. Have been there many times, but always by car, except the one time by school bus.
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Post by drlj on Mar 12, 2023 10:12:20 GMT -5
Grissom, formerly Bunker Hill AFB, is north of Indy about 70 miles, between Kokomo and Peru. It housed B-58 bombers during my high school days. Have been there many times, but always by car, except the one time by school bus. It was a fun trip. The Air Force pilots treated us like pretend pilots and, compared to them, we were. I think about 15-20 planes flew in, but it was a long time ago so I don’t recall exactly. We had a nice lunch in the officers’ mess and took a mini-tour before we all flew out. We used up about 1/50,000th of the runway to take off. It was an another life ago. |
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Post by billhammond on Mar 12, 2023 10:14:37 GMT -5
Grissom, formerly Bunker Hill AFB, is north of Indy about 70 miles, between Kokomo and Peru. It housed B-58 bombers during my high school days. Ah, the B-58, a terribly costly, difficult to fly creation that quickly failed its mission, too, but ye gods it was sexy (and fast). I built that one as a Revell model more than once.   |
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Post by Cornflake on Mar 12, 2023 10:16:08 GMT -5
One of my wife's grandmother's wishes, in her 90s, was to have her ashes scattered on a particular mountain in the the Verde Valley. I was very fond of her and was invited to share in scattering her ashes. Because of the prevailing wind they blew right back in my face. She was the kind of woman who would have found that amusing.
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Post by millring on Mar 12, 2023 10:20:39 GMT -5
Dar's cousin is involved with a program that flies WWII vets out of Grissom. Maybe "Honor Fights"?
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Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 20,472 
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Post by Dub on Mar 12, 2023 11:02:06 GMT -5
I’ve never been up in a military plane but I’ve seen a few up close. When I worked for Collins Aerospace (née Collins Radio) I occasionally flew in the company planes down to Dallas where we also had facilities. We’d land at Addison Field NNW of Dallas where the company kept a hangar. Addison Field was also where the then called Confederate Air Force kept a bunch of historic planes. It was fun just to walk among them and see the detail up close.
The coolest plane I’ve seen wasn’t at Addison, it was in Long Beach, CA. The Hughes H-4 Hercules (so-called “Spruce Goose”) was housed there in a great domed museum right next to the Queen Mary. The Wright Brothers could have conducted their history making flight on one wing of that plane. A space shuttle could fit under one wing with room to spare. For some reason, they weren’t offering rides.
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Post by TKennedy on Mar 12, 2023 11:04:51 GMT -5
“We used up about 1/50,000th of the runway to take off. It was an another life ago.”
I learned to fly at the airport in my little home town of Alliance NE. Only about 7500 folks but home to a massive WWII paratrooper training base built in 1943 to train troops for the D-Day invasion and abandoned in 1945.
Four eleven thousand foot runways, all operational when I was learning in 1967. (Commercial and military planes used to land there if they had an emergency over the wasteland of western NE)
You could take off and land a 150 or Cub several times before you used up all the real estate. When ranchers flew in for supplies they’d sometimes just take off from the ramp or a taxiway.
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Post by Marshall on Mar 12, 2023 15:45:22 GMT -5
Back in my flying days, I knew a few guys who had Cubs. Guys in the EAA liked to rebuild, restore, and fly them. Reminds me of a small plane with no power story. We had a fly-in at Grissom Air Force base in Southern IN once. It was sponsored by one of the pilot groups. I don’t recall which. Anyway, my ex and I flew there in a Cessna 150. We landed and came to a stop on the chevron before ever reaching the actual start of the runway which was huge and looked like it went on forever. We thought it was funny, but suddenly over the headsets we heard, civilian craft exit the runway immediately. You have two fighter jets coming in hot behind you. We goosed it and made the turn off just as two fighter jets touched down and shot past us at a very high rate of speed. Scared and impressed us at the same time. Mostly scared. If I remember correctly, the base is just north of Indianapolis. My Brother-in-law was an airforce pilot. Flew Phantom F4s in Nam. On leave when he was dating his future wife he decided to take her for a flight on a Piper Cub. He rented one in Florida. The guy who gave it to him saw he was an airforce fight pilot and said, "You know how to fly this. Here's the keys." So they went for a flight. But Charlie was used to bringing in a fighter jet at high speed with full flaps out. Apparently he brought the Piper in with full flaps and was flying horizontally with the nose nearly straight down to keep the thing in the air. It was a bumpy landing. |
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Post by TKennedy on Mar 12, 2023 17:20:58 GMT -5
A college friend who I have mentioned here before was a family doc and Navy flight surgeon that switched careers to aviation when he was about 40 and wound up as an MD-80 captain for Alaska.
I asked him if he was going to keep flying upon retirement. He said “naw, those little planes are too dangerous”
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Post by millring on Mar 14, 2023 19:05:04 GMT -5
Dar's cousin is involved with a program that flies WWII vets out of Grissom. Maybe "Honor Fights"? |
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Post by Marty on Mar 14, 2023 19:58:27 GMT -5
Question. Why is this thread? Mime Because. It's doing exactly what we should be doing, having fun and wandering off topic. |
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Post by Village Idiot on Mar 14, 2023 21:14:51 GMT -5
Cool stuff John! I had time in a J3 Cub back in the day. Main memory was being passed by cars on the highway. It was a lot of fun. A friend flew to Canada to scatter a fishing buddy’s ashes over his favorite lake. When they opened the window they all blew back in. The vacuumed the plane out with a shop vac when they got back and never told anyone. That was your job. |
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Post by drlj on Mar 15, 2023 7:21:34 GMT -5
Dar's cousin is involved with a program that flies WWII vets out of Grissom. Maybe "Honor Fights"? My neighbor is involved with Honor Flights and has some interesting stories about some of the participants. They fly out of Chicago. It’s quite a project. |
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