Warbird Information Exchange

The H model definitely deserves more love. I was on a trolley over to the warbird area and I mentioned to the guy next to me that that looks like an H model he said, what there was it no E, F or G model. I got pictures of it static but I never heard from the announcers that it was ever flying during the 3 days I was there, too bad...

Phil.

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A man's got to know his limitations.

Agreed. It was relatively easy to get a clean shot of the H in the paddock during the week. Based on what I overheard, a lot of people assumed it was a D model, and not the prettiest one on the field, so they kind of ignored it. Their loss!

It was great to see the H flying during the Thursday Mustang fest. A notable thing was how much higher it was on takeoff than any of the Ds by the time it reached my position along Rwy 18. I don't know if this speaks to the performance of the plane or just Mr Coutches' style.

I was only there 2 days, and you expect to pay a penalty for such a short stay in terms of not seeing things flying. In my case it was the XP-82. But I got more than I expected in terms of seeing the Mosquito (in my past experience, the Lewis planes stay on the ground while at OSH, so an unexpected treat), P-51H, Spitfire, Firefly (twice!), and other rarities airborne.

August

I'm not sure if it was just a strobe-effect on video or not, but while watching the Mustang run-up on the KOSH airshow feed it looked like the H-model's prop was rotating in the opposite direction as the others. Does anyone know if this was actually the case and, if so, was this "backwards" Merlin a standard feature of the P-51H?

Same rotation direction as the A, B, C and D-model Mustangs.

The prop rotation is just an illusion created by the camera.

Originally, P-51H's were fitted with -9 Merlins, which offered a bit higher performance than the -7's used in WWII P-51D/K's (plus the benefit of much higher WEP in military use through water injection), but with the mix-match of -7 and -9 parts in many of the Merlins powering Mustangs today, all operating on 100LL (and of course no WEP), there isn't necessarily any engine performance difference in the Merlin installed in the Coutches' H-model vs. any of the other Merlin-powered Mustangs, but of course the Coutches' H-model is a lot lighter than any of the others. It was great to see the H-model and the XP-82 together, as casual observers could see where the P-82's cowl/fuselage lines came from. The P-51H was not a development of the P-51D, it was a completely different design, which was the result of designing a brand new Mustang to the load factors that were being used in the design of British fighters, rather than the load factors being used in American fighters, allowing them to shave off a lot of weight.

Amidst all the warbird anniversaries being celebrated at Oshkosh, it was easy to miss a quietly impressive one - the 90th anniversary of the first flight of the Pietenpol Air Camper.



A good turnout of very nice Pietenpols were on hand for the occasion. They had a variety of engines - most sources say that more than 50 different engines were fitted to Pietenpols at one time or another. I freely admit to being a snob; I mostly pay attention to the ones powered by Ford Model A engines and their derivatives. It's not that I'm a purist - it would be silly to be a purist about a design that was meant to be modded from the outset. I just think the Ford engines look the best on that airframe, with their jaunty upturned cowlings.



The Pietenpol above was a relatively recent (2010) build, but I liked the big wheels with skinny tires and the vintage commercial paint scheme.

Here, on the other hand, is a true vintage machine. Built in 1933, it has been coming to Oshkosh for decades.



These next two were built in the 1980s and are fine examples of how this pioneering homebuilt participated in the homebuilding boom of the 1970s and 1980s as both a nostalgia trip and a viable choice for the modern builder.





August

I was only there two days. One day the A-26C took off then the XP-82 and a couple minutes later a B-29 flew over. I just knew they were going to do a formation flyover. What I’d call an “ an invasion of Japan” types that would’ve been used had there been no nuclear bombs used.
Two F-35s flew passes repeatedly for about 20 minutes doing a loud “yank and bank “ non aerobatic display. The next day while looking at the XP-82 , I heard the pilot say “ yeah we joined up and circled for twenty minutes. They wouldn’t let us come in because the jets wanted to burn up some fuel. Then they had us land because there wasn’t any time left in the schedule for us to do a photo pass.”
There are hundreds of F-35s and they will be around another 40 years. You can see them at dozens of airshows. I didn’t drive thirteen hours to see a piece of current govt. equipment. The EAA dropped the ball again.

Love those Air Campers, thanks for posting!

I'm the current caretaker of the Air Camper 13691, although my friend Chris Price flew it to Oshkosh since I was bringing my Travel Air. I like to tell people that it's the most historic airplane on the airport, as it has been flown by Paul Poberezny and Steve Wittman, as well as by Bernard Pietenpol himself. The data plate says 1933, but it was actually finished in August of 1934. I think the data plate was put in post WW2 when CAA inspectors started caring about those kind of things on homebuilts. It was also at the very first Oshkosh fly-in, which was in 1956. In those days EAA moved the fly-in to a different airport every year, and '56 was Oshkosh.

For more:
https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of- ... -11000788/



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Marvelous, Baldeagle! I bet that if I searched my late friend Dick Kamm's files, I could find pics of 13691 going back at least to the 1960s. I may look into that this evening.

August

Two of the more colorful and visible aircraft at Oshkosh had drab warbird counterparts on the field, if you went looking for them.

When I was watching the webcams with live chat turned on before I left for Oshkosh, the two planes everybody wanted to know if they were there yet and where they were parked were the "Plane Savers DC-3" and "Draco." Not being much of a viewer of airplane reality TV, I had never heard of either of these planes. The Plane Savers DC-3 was easy to figure out, but what the heck was Draco? I looked it up, and thought, "Huh, ok. It's a Wilga with a PT6A bolted on." Which is basically true, although it's more modded than that. Owner-builder Mike Patey clearly has some talent for building airplanes, but it's his talent for self-promotion that really made this plane into a social media celebrity.



Over in the warbird area was a stock Wilga 80, an earlier version of the Wilga 2000 on which Draco is based. I wonder how many Draco fans made the trek out to the warbird area to get a look at the design on which Draco was based.



Throughout Oshkosh, you couldn't miss Red Bull's MBB Bo 105 helicopter which was parked out in front of the crowd with the other airshow performers most days and performed its usual impressive routine in the daily shows.



You could, however, easily miss the warbird Bo 105, built just a year before Red Bull's (1984), which is operated by a Canadian owner wearing its old Luftwaffe colors and military gear. This was parked way at the north end of the warbird area, almost at the crowd line for Ry 09-27. Quite cool to get a close look at this stock version of a significant foreign helicopter. Unlike Draco, the Red Bull chopper isn't much modified from a stock unit. Red Bulls' routines just show off the existing capabilities of this remarkable design.



August

Patey's Draco and his mods have consumed ooodles of my youtube time. Hot ship!

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DBF

I find Draco kinda interesting, and definitely fun to watch when being wrung out ... but then any STOL ops are definitely fun to watch. I was a big Wilga fan long before Draco took the world by storm, however, so mucho thanks for the pics, August. I spotted it via web cam right away as an early arrival, one of the first on the field. How I would like to have seen it in the STOL competition!

In other news, I'm in a bit of shock that the fabulously weird and wonderful Boeing YL-15 was there, but didn't seem to attract any attention. At least I believe I caught glimpses of it here and there (via www), maybe I only imagined it?

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Cheers,
Kurt Maurer
League City, Texas

PIC, Ford 6600 pulling Rhino batwing up and down the runway

The Boeing YL-15 was there.

Phil

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A man's got to know his limitations.

August, Great Posts! Thank you for great information. Bald Eagle, thank you for caretaking such a great and historic plane. My family and I enjoyed looking at it, I had no idea she was so special!

Joe