Tweet
Re: #9239
Thanks, Hank and Marty.
That would explain the irregularities of some planes with them and some without. I'm 99% certain 9239 didn't have them - not even certain it had nav lights.
A bit of history on my very limited aviation "experience":
When my folks asked me what I would like for my 11th birthday, I had no hesitation expressing a desire for an airplane ride.
So after school that September afternoon I found myself in the rear seat of an Aeronca Champ gathering speed down the runway with an ex-Liberator pilot who had flown the Ploesti raid at the controls. I loved the flight despite some of the roughest air the pilot said he had ever flown in.
During the days I rode my bike the 3 miles to the airport to watch airplanes, every once in a while somebody would be making a short hop and didn't mind hauling a kid along as a passenger. Nearly everything was a tail-dragger (I remember seeing my first Tri-Pacer landing one day, kind of odd-looking to me, having the tailwheel under the engine cowl like that).
But getting to go up in a Fairchild 24, and the T-craft a few times, and the pair of resident Champs, and going along with a guy in his Cessna 120 doing loops and spins and stalls as he logged some aerobatic hours toward his commercial license kept my aviation love burning, despite the fact I would never qualify for flight training in the military because of extreme nearsightedness (though I noted with irony over the course of my enlistment that poor eyesight never got me out of any of the sh!t details).
Liability and lawsuits weren't hanging over everyone's heads then as they are today, and that they are is sad. I likely would have never had the thrill of feeling the tail come up on take-off or the thump of the tailwheel hitting the runway on landing.
I'll always love a tail-dragger, and most especially a Taylorcraft.
jimh
Thanks, Hank and Marty.
That would explain the irregularities of some planes with them and some without. I'm 99% certain 9239 didn't have them - not even certain it had nav lights.
A bit of history on my very limited aviation "experience":
When my folks asked me what I would like for my 11th birthday, I had no hesitation expressing a desire for an airplane ride.
So after school that September afternoon I found myself in the rear seat of an Aeronca Champ gathering speed down the runway with an ex-Liberator pilot who had flown the Ploesti raid at the controls. I loved the flight despite some of the roughest air the pilot said he had ever flown in.
During the days I rode my bike the 3 miles to the airport to watch airplanes, every once in a while somebody would be making a short hop and didn't mind hauling a kid along as a passenger. Nearly everything was a tail-dragger (I remember seeing my first Tri-Pacer landing one day, kind of odd-looking to me, having the tailwheel under the engine cowl like that).
But getting to go up in a Fairchild 24, and the T-craft a few times, and the pair of resident Champs, and going along with a guy in his Cessna 120 doing loops and spins and stalls as he logged some aerobatic hours toward his commercial license kept my aviation love burning, despite the fact I would never qualify for flight training in the military because of extreme nearsightedness (though I noted with irony over the course of my enlistment that poor eyesight never got me out of any of the sh!t details).
Liability and lawsuits weren't hanging over everyone's heads then as they are today, and that they are is sad. I likely would have never had the thrill of feeling the tail come up on take-off or the thump of the tailwheel hitting the runway on landing.
I'll always love a tail-dragger, and most especially a Taylorcraft.
jimh
Comment