Warbird Information Exchange

I'm so excited, I can hardly contain myself! I just won several auctions of F2G Super Corsair stuff, including patches of fabric from Race 57 and Race 74, photos of Race 74 and Race 94, and about 20 Goodyear engineering drawings and a rigging diagram of the F2G. I never thought I'd actually have a piece off a real Super Corsair, much less off two of them!

There's also a patch off of the P-39Q Race 11 flown by Chuck Brown in 1948. This aircraft won the Thompson Trophy in 1946 with Tex Johnson as Race 84, and took 3rd in 1947 with Jay Demming, with a different paint scheme as "Cobra II". http://www.airrace.com/1948%20NAR.htm

Cool! You can stop pinching yourself now...you will be ALL bruises if you don't stop it! Not your everyday eBay acquisition for sure!

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Aviation Illustration Website
http://shepartstudio.com/illustration/

Here's some links to the auctions, so you can see the engineering drawings too. I want to be very careful not to damage those - I'm thinking white glove treatment.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Thompson-Trophy-Ori ... 4aa4b2cc2a

http://cgi.ebay.com/Goodyear-F2G-1-Cors ... 4aa4b2a6fd

http://cgi.ebay.com/Goodyear-F2G-1-Cors ... 4aa4b29dee

http://cgi.ebay.com/Goodyear-F2G-1-Cors ... 4aa4b29313

OOohhhh! That's cool stuff Keep 'em like museum pieces and they'll be around a very long time. Excellent score on those photos!

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Rob Mears
'Surviving Corsairs' Historian
robcmears@yahoo.com
http://www.robmears.com

You know we would have gladly bid against you if you would have told us about all of this before the auction ended.

Now next time you need to wake up your WIX buddies here so we can come out and play.

In all seriousness you got some fantastic stuff there! Please remember me in your will! I sure hope the restoration team doing the #74 F2G kept lots (no, make that ALL) of the old fabric, etc., to make available for sale in little display pieces like your find to Thompson Trophy Race fans down the road. I would even hope the folks involved with present day Furias, Dago Red, September Fury, Galloping Ghost, White Lightning, Anson Johnson N13Y,etc. rebuilds will keep a BIG box of someday-souvenir pieces for us to buy.


BTW, there's a guy selling some pretty good original snapshots of Cleveland racers right now on eBay. His prices are high, but he's got some good ones of Tucker's #30 P-63 (I think taken AFTER 1949 in Prescott, AZ--can anyone confirm? My avatar is race #28 at Prescott in 1946); #77 P-51D "Galloping Ghost"; a rare shot of the P-63 NX69702; the 1938-39 Keith Rider R-5 NX284Y Jack Rabbit #22 Racer; Steve Wittman's P-63 race #4; James Harp race #95 P-39Q; and several more pre-war and post-war Cleveland. Here's a couple of the addresses:

http://cgi.ebay.com/1949-Thompson-Troph ... 1959wt_852


http://cgi.ebay.com/1940s-Bell-P-63E-Ki ... 1562wt_704

Thanks! I was sitting there nervously watching the auction timers count down to zero, and I was sure that someone would snipe them out from under me at the last second. I couldn't believe that nobody bid against me, and that I got all four lots.

I guess now I need to track down something from Race 94 and Race 18 to complete the set. I've heard that there are parts of Race 94 out there that were scavenged over the years before it was burned and buried, but I don't know if anything was saved from Ron Puckett's machine. Apparently it had it's engine sold off, and then got burned for practice and scrapped too. I have to believe that nothing would have survived from the fatal crash of the Race 84 F2G.

I got the picture of Race 74 for $1.00 - that was a deal. The same guy had a great picture of Race 94, but I missed it.

All in all, I feel very lucky, and I wanted to share it with you guys.

Hi,

Did the seller tell you who's estate it came from. Most of the drawings were areas the were modified on Cook's Corsairs. It would be interesting if they came from someone on his crew.

I would recommend storing the velumns flat or hanging as my experience is old rolled velumns tend to tear as you unroll them.

Prints are nice too. I would recommend that if you have prints made, get two of each and store one copy with the origional, and one to drool over. By playing with the contrast, the copy can sometimes be made more legable then the origional.


[]

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May all your bent wings be F2G Corsairs!

I'm waiting to hear back from the seller on where these came from. He's in Hebron, OH, and bought all this, plus some desk models at an auction. He was going to talk to the auctioneer, and see if he remembered the name from the original estate auction. I had the same thoughts that the drawings might have been used by Cook Cleland and his team. I would love to be able to tie them back to him.

They were apparently stored rolled in a tube, and as I got them, they are rolled pretty tightly, about 1". I haven't even pulled them out yet, so any advice you've got about how to store/handle them, and where to get prints made, would be greatly appreciated. I think they're likely too big for my scanner. I want to preserve them, but also be able to share them with other fans of the F2G.



There was also a plaque with 8 small pins, and a patch. Clockwise from the top they are: NAA, AWA, PRPA PROFESSIONAL RACE PILOTS ASSOCIATION, EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT ASSOCIATION, CAP, a winged star with a red dot in the center, AAHS, and SAW. The patch says ANTIQUE AIRPLANE ASS'N.

very nice

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" I am a nobody in aviation, but somebody to my family."

I use the self-service large copier at Kinkos. It can handle up to a 3' wide sheet. I don't know if the self-service copier is set-up to save to a file. You might have to use the full service person for that. I wouldn't leave the origionals. You also might run into issues as the prints are from a company. I once had a drawing 4' x 12" that I scanned in by marking a copy with 8 x 10 grid, scanning each grid on my scanner and assembling the scans in Photoshop. Then I erased the grid and cleaned-up the drawing. Took all my free time over a month but it worked! I was too cheep to pay to have it scanned in -2- halfs and just assemble the two scans that way.It looked really good when I got it finished.

Kenn

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May all your bent wings be F2G Corsairs!