Warbird Information Exchange

I think its a pretty simple answer why some people come up and ask such questions...because they are model builders and want all the detail they can get to build therer model.

the owner of a warbird should know some general information about his plane.

Thanks to JDK, ASTIXJR and DAN JOHNSON II,

The information and comments you provided are very helpful. To be sure, the couple of times this has happened in the last 3 years is the exception to rule. I have met many of the people on this site at various airshows and have spent hours involved in some very detailed conversation/question interactions. However, the times when this whole, component and serial number request came up it became quite contensious when I declined to provide the info.

Background is as follows. When I first got the Skyraider it had been sitting, flown very little in the couple of years prior to my purchase. When I went to the Red Wing MN airshow, the carb failed and it had to be overhauled. The aircraft ended up sitting in a hangar at Red Wing for a few weeks, while I had the carb overhauled. I also decided to overhaul every accessory on the aircraft shortly after that, rather than wait for one at a time failures or leaks, seeps, etc. The process that I decided to use to do this was to find a serviceable core or yellow tagged accessory item and then have it gone through or yellow tagged as necessary, and then put it on the aircraft and have the item from the aircraft overhauled and put "on the shelf" as a spare. When I say all accessory items, I mean all, it hasn't been cheap, but we haven't missed a show for mait in 2 years.

Anyway, this lead to the following. Guy comes up and asks me what failed when I was at Red Wing (2 years ago) and I told him. He asked what we did to fix the problem, I told him and he asked if the carb was removed and overhauled and the same one was replaced. I said yes on the carb, but explained the process detailed above about the rest of the accessory items (big mistake in this conversation). He then asked me the carb type and model #, which I provided. He then asked for the CARB SERIAL # and asked in a very condesending manner, if I "planned to put the real accessories" back on the aircraft in the future, and did I have the Serial # info for the items I had on the aircraft and the "correct" items I had on the shelf. As this point I aked him why he wanted this info and he told me he uses this info "to track the authenticity" of various aircraft. At this time I politely attempted to chew my arm off and get away from this idiot. (If it was you ,Mike, sorry for the idiot comment, but I didn't catch the guys name).

I won't bore you with the details of the second encounter, but a guy called the airport and left me several messages about coming by to get info about the airplanes. I called him back and he told me he wanted to come by and look the airplanes at the hangar. I said fine, he then asked if there was a time that would be convienient, that they would all be uncowled, I let him know that that almost never happens at the same time. He seemed annoyed but said he would come by "anyway". I travel for work, 4 days a week, but have a full time mechanic, so I set up a time that he could come to the hangar while I was gone. Guy shows up, tells Dave (my mechanic) that the airplanes are all susposed to be un cowled and that he will just look through the items in our parts room, while Dave uncowls the airplanes. Dave calls me, I talk to the guy, who says he wants to write down the "detailed info" about the components on the airplanes and there is no way to get to it with the airplanes cowled up. I decline, and he tells me that " the least I can do is let him write down the info from all of the yellow tag shelf stuff". I tell him this isn't going to work out and have Dave show him out. (Sorry if that was you, Mike, but I wasn't properly introduced to this guy either).

So, as you can see, this isn't about stupid questions at airshows. 99% of the people and their questions (good or bad) are fine. It's just the idiots who want info they have no business asking for or want to ramble on about making lists of questions that should be allowed that I have no use for.

No offense taken. I've met some idiot Warbird pilots before, it just hasn't been you yet.

Truce?

2) anopther from the early 1990's; A fellow crew chief and friend of mine from my Air Guard C-130 unit were at Oshkosh and he couldn't believe the F4U-5 had fabric covered wings and tail surfaces. We were looking at the left horizontal stabilizer fabric and without even realizing it, while talking one of my fingers had touched one of the fabric seams so lightly I didn't even realize it. The owner had positioned himself anbout 40 feet away and came swooping down on us like a hawk. He started screaming "
"Hands off my airplane! I spent 850,000 dollars having every nut and bolt and piece on this airplane restored to new condition!