(MLenoch) wrote:

(and eventually the founder and namesake of Dillon Precision--the
company that makes probably the most famous ammunition reloading
pressses in the world.)

Mike Dillon?
Is he still around?
VL

Yes. The event I relate was around '69 or '70. I'm pretty sure he's
still kicking.

One of the neat things we did at the time was get approval for a piece
on jet undergraduate pilot training for Air Progress magazine. We
carried Mike, who wrote the piece and Nyle Leatham, who photographed
on two T-37 formation flights. Flight one we got formation shots of
the little jet as well as spin photos and a lot of traffic pattern
shots---the local UPT training commandoes were aghast when we started
flying formation traffic patterns for the pictures.

The second flight was a rendezvous with a PT-18 Stearman for a
formation shot of the classically painted bi-plane and the T-37. We
had a tough time getting the Tweet slowed down to fly formation with
the Stearman--finally had to drop gear and flaps, then pull the
spoiler circuit breaker to get the last couple of knots scrubbed off
without stalling.

We finished the sequence with a bootleg photo of the Stearman, my
KC-135 buddy's Havard (T-6) and the Tweet in a three-ship. Wish I had
a copy of that one.


Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (ret)
***"When Thunder Rolled:
*** An F-105 Pilot Over N. Vietnam"
*** from Smithsonian Books
ISBN: 1588341038