Warbird Information Exchange

Was this an April Fools post? The video is not of a replica 190 and i doubt if anyone ever tried to tow one away from a show.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

Bill

yup, I think that was an April fool's joke; I believe that the video is of the '190 that is being restored for FHC (or is it done already?), when it was discovered.

cheers

greg v.

Several years ago when I crewed the AMHF Harpoon, I would be the one inside explaining what everything is and what it did during the tours. This PV-2 has the interior fairly open, and kids would love to run down the slope of the fuselage. We would do our best to stop them, but we would get the "your picking on junior!!" syndrome. However, the airplane did get it's revenge. At the bootom of the slope, Lockheed installed a Martin (?) turret with armor plate. If you are 5 feet tall and running towards the tail at high speed, this is forehead height. I saw several kids(and a couple of adults) laid out flat on their backs. Justice is sweet.

i have one... at a small airshow in bristow ok i was working on the flight line and I get a strong smell of avgas. i look over and i see i small pool of gas on the ground. and about 5 feet away from that was A LOCAL SHERIFF with a big cigar in his mouth. i quickly yelled for him to put it out. he then walked over to me and got right up in my face and said, "are you sure about that" he looked like he was about to punch me. so i simply pointed to the pool of gas and said yes. he put it out on the ground and walked back to his trailer. boy he could have really made a mess of the TBM avenger that was right next to the pump.

Never mess with the local "Barney Fife's"...they have way too big of a chip on their shoulder. At least you "nipped it in the bud though"

John

This thread is waay too good to fade away.

So back in 2003 we were handing out a small number of coupons at a couple of events that allowed free admission to our museum. One saturday afterwards a gentlemen and his family of middle eastern descent came in with one of these coupons. Obviously there were some language difficulties, as he claimed that he was there to use his "free flight" coupon. That was sorted quickly.

His family of quite young children soon had their run of the place. Running, screaming, touching anything they could get their hands on. Eventually they decided it would be a good idea to get a family picture with an airplane. They gravitated over to a members Emeraude which was there for the day, and proceeded to pose themselves sitting on the wing, and standing on the wheel spats. Colourful language followed. Not more than 5 minutes later we found the father standing on the wood and fabric lower wing of our Fokker D.VII, peering into the cockpit. Ugh.

I'd have paid money to watch that!! I have an airshow to attend this coming weekend. Reading all of this I'm tempted just to stay home - or bring my .45!

I was at the Porsche museum in Stuttgart two weeks ago and some guy was opening the doors of the display race cars...to take video. Not something I would do. I thought it was pretty bold to be touching the displays at all.

I was stationed at RAF Akrotiri for 3 years and every year they have an open day , even though most of the people there are members of the services or family of , they all seem to forget about FOD....rubbish everywhere ...

I had always wanted to try that.., my dad, who flew them., said it was a BS move and no one that he knew ever entered that way.

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S.

A couple of years ago at the Olympia,WA Airshow I thought it would be nice to display our J-3 in an area where kids could actually get close enough to look into the cockpit. What harm could occur as I had my lawn chair a few feet away.

Large under estimation. Being that a Cub isn't very intimidating to start with, and I was one of the only dummies who made his plane accessible, it got swamped I was busy the entire day.

The poor plane suffered everything from little hands flinging seat belts around the fabric cockpit, to ice cream cones and sno-cones spilled directly on the fabric.

One of the children (old enough to know better) reached in, grabbed the stick and started slamming it back and forth to the stops and fast as he could. He actually got a couple of swings in before I could stop him.

One teenager re-enacted his favorite movie by swinging the propeller on an engine that has successfully started on the first pull for several years. The hand propper was outdone only by the Dad displaying to his son that the airplane was indeed fabric covered and demonstrated such by pushing his index finger almost first knuckle deep into the fuselage. The depression remains to this day.

Suffice to say, the plane made a hasty departure mid-day back to the hangar. That was my last attempt at displaying my planes to the public to anyone other than a fly-in crowd of other pilots.

The only good lesson was during the entire scene; my 4 and 7 year old sons were witnesses to the events and they were shocked. So far it has stood as a testament and justification of why we're so hard on em'.

Mike-

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[b][color=#0000BF]Silver Wings Flying Company,
Stewart Airport, NY (KSWF)

About 20 years ago, Flight line at Dx with aircraft backed up the fence. Woman in a white pantsuit was standing directly behind one of the Corsairs & it was about to fire up. Pointed out that round engines spew a metric buttload of oil etc & she might want to stand aside.


So she went & stood behind the P47 at EXACTLY the wrong moment. She wasn't very happy.

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Those who possess real knowledge are rare.

Those who can set that knowledge into motion in the physical world are rarer still.

The few who possess real knowledge and can set it into motion of their own hands are the rarest of all.

About 1979 or so I was in the Annex at Dayton and had to focably remove a kid from using the XP-75 tail as a sliding board. The parents argued so what, it's already wrecked.......

I always had problems as a guard (work-study) while working at the Crawford Museum.

It's no different with the model shows. I had a toddler run and break the wing in half of my scratch-built Controline B-25 while mommy & daddy watched. The CAP kids were supposed to be watching our modles while we held the awards ceremony but they were more interested in watching the girls.....


On the other side of the spectrum, way before 9-11, while at the Air Hertage Museum, My -5- year old was invited to sit in the C-123 while she was undergoing a post-flight check. he was brought-up to respect other's property and could charm any-one (still can at 18!)

Also before 9-11, we were up on the observation deck at Hopkins and I was explaing to my now -10- year old son how the different control serviced worked on the 737 before us and a gentlemen behind us offered him a tour of the cockpit. He was the pilot and was doing a visual inspection of the plane.....Needless to say my son was was on cloud nine !

They even offered us discounted round trip tickets as they were flying almost completely empty and would be back in -2- hours but my late wife was afraid to fly......

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May all your bent wings be F2G Corsairs!

The show sites are an accident waiting to happen for display pilots who don't have their aircraft under direct supervision at ALL times!
I've had many incidents with fans getting a bit too close to my airplanes while on site. In fact, one of these experiences I have always included in safety briefs with display pilots.
Concerns preflight inspection habit pattern development for show pilots.
Naturally, proper preflight is a pilot's best friend normally, but on a show site you need to go a step further.
I had a rule I never strayed from when on a working site with one of our airplanes.
ANYTIME the airplane was out of my personal sight for 30 seconds or more, I did another preflight.
This practice was proved out in spades one summer afternoon when I preflighted the airplane, then on a sudden urge (it was hot as heck that day) I ran across the ramp and grabbed an ice cold coke from a vendor wagon passing through.
The airplane was out of my sight for about 3 minutes. In that time, some child had left a stuffed animal in the carb intake tunnel under the spinner. Probably a kid being lifted up by a father as the carb tunnel on a 51 is pretty high up for a small kid with a stuffed animal
Coming back with the coke, I re-preflighted the airplane and found the animal.
Could have been a real problem had I accepted the first preflight and simply started and taxied out to do the display.
Rule 1 for display pilots working a show; preflight it of course...............but out of sight for ANY reason........preflight it AGAIN!

Another time down at Transpo in 72 I just managed to stop a kid from grabbing the rudder trim tab on Bill Ross' Mk16 Spitfire and trying to bend it to see if it moved! Lucky Bill had parked next to us that day.
All in all, pilots in the community look out for each other's airplanes pretty well. This has been true all through the years I've been associated with these people.
Dudley Henriques

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Dudley Henriques
International Fighter Pilots Fellowship

Great post Dudley! I think we are all constantly reminded of the stupidity of the general public. But, then again we all drive an automobile, and most of the idiots have a driver's licence!
I recall an airshow at Pompano Beach, Fl in the late 70's. Kermit Weeks had flown his P-40 to the show and I was approaching it while it was parked on the grass and I had squatted down to look in the gear wells when I saw him approaching. I knew who he was and that he was probably going to run me off so I spoke first and said, "don't worry Mr. Weeks, I would never touch it, I was just admiring the restoration work on your aircraft". I shook his hand and introduced myself and also told him that if I saw anyone else attemting to touch it I personaly chase them off. I had a great conversation with him and told him of my father working on the P-36 (P-40 with a radial) and I was always fascinated with the gear making the 90 egree pivot while retracting. Had a nice conversation with him and he was pleasantly surprised that I knew so much about him (National arobatics champ in his Pitts at the time).

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tracers work both ways