-
Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?
Go here:
Edit Account Details and Profile
Pilot Extraordinaire: Bob Hoover
- Thread starter Homer J
- Start date
ryan1234
Well-Known Member
Another truly amazing pilot - amazing story
How do you go and get that job? I want a job flying a P-51 or F-86 around the country.
Maybe someone could start a website offering gouge on that... :icon_smil
Lindbergh did as a Vought Tech Rep in WWII.
If by 'job' you mean paying out of pocket to get to airshow sites, then flying the warbird to another show site, and then paying out of pocket to get back to your residence, there are plenty of opportunities...right after you get the required T-6 time and TF-51 training program to become insurable.
Unfortunately the pay for that is pretty low.
FlyinRock
Registered User
I recall one time at the National Air Races in Reno when Hoover taxiied his "Old Yeller" into the side of a pickup that was towing a formula race plane. Did a nuimber on both his prop and the pickup (which also had a fuel tank of avgas for the racer). Bob got out all pissed off aboout a truck on the taxiway until he was reminded that he was on a closed taxiway and it had been discussed at the pilot meeting the day before.
The next day, after all night of a prop change and engine check, Bob was taxiing out and right there at the same spot he had hit the truck were three more trucks sitting with bullseyes painted on their sides.
I've met him a number of times and always got along with him but never flew with or for him.
Semper Fi
Rocky
The next day, after all night of a prop change and engine check, Bob was taxiing out and right there at the same spot he had hit the truck were three more trucks sitting with bullseyes painted on their sides.
I've met him a number of times and always got along with him but never flew with or for him.
Semper Fi
Rocky
ryan1234
Well-Known Member
Mr. Hinton got the T-6 checkout at 150TT, and P-51 at 300TT and T-33 not too long after....imagine trying to run that by the insurance company.
That was also before the days when a Mustang cost north of $1M (in fact, in the 1970s the really cherry rebuilt Mustangs were sub $200,000 - less than a comparable light twin!)...so the insurance companies really didn't care all that much.
ryan1234
Well-Known Member
Overhauls on those Merlins aren't cheap I guess. What are the Tailwheel and T-6 hour mins for a Mustang these days?
The last time I checked with Cannon Aviation Insurance, they were looking for 200 hours of T-6 time and a checkout from Crazy Horse, Dan Vance, or one of a handful of other TF-51 instructors.
Keep in mind that Steve was literally living at Chino then. He helped tear these aircraft apart and put them back together. His level of knowledge on them was way more than most anyone with 150 hours in a T-6. Not to mention all the hangar flying he must have soaked up while doing all of this.
Hangar flying... a dying custom in today's Air Force.
Funny you should say this. It's not just in the military that this is a dying art -- the civilian sector is feeling it too, even among some pretty experienced folks.
On Thursday at OSH, that was one of the main topics discussed by the T-6/Trainer pilot group as being a root cause for all the increase in accidents they've had lately. The gist of the conversation went something like this:
- For the first time in a decade, nearly all the warbird crashes over the last year were due to pilot error, and usually due to some kind of bad pilot decision making (low altitude acro and tail-chasing).
- Most of the old school, 60s/70s/80s warbird pilots with extensive military flying background, who were the backbone of the group, are gone. Most of the current crop of warbird pilots are civilian trained or learned how to fly the Six from a civilian guy.
- The civilian method of teaching is a lot less reliant on that heavy mentorship aspect to teaching -- that there is plenty of effort to teach basic stick and rudder skills, but that the current crop of people flying and teaching warbirds aren't as heavily engaged in teaching and learning overall airmanship and judgment.
Most of the pilots felt that the answer was for training to be more deeply engaged on the airmanship aspect, at least to the point of getting equal time with the stick-and-rudder aspect.
Thanks for posting this. I read up on it, and it ends up Bob Hoover was at Stalag Luft I with my great uncle who was shot down on his first mission as part of a B-17 crew.
http://www.merkki.com/
Looks like there may be a bio-pic of Hoover in the works and the link has some of it. Great stuff.
http://thebobhooverproject.com/
http://thebobhooverproject.com/