Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in
:


Every now and then at some of our shows I'd get a chance to sit down
and jaw awhile with the Formula 1 race pilots. Steve Whittman was at a
few of these ("war stories" gab sessions) Steve had some amazing stuff
from the "old days", and would have us all laughing like idiots
telling us about flying some of the old planes.
I actually got a taste of what he was talking about when I flew a
Cassutt race plane one afternoon. Actually, you don't really FLY a
Cassutt, you WEAR a Cassutt :-) Even the Pitts wasn't as sensitive on
the controls as that beast. But it was great fun and I caught on
quickly after it scared the s**t out of me on take off. I rotated and
went to 100 feet before I could ease off the tiny bit of back pressure
I had used to do that :-))
In my opinion, the guys who flew those early planes were REAL pilots!!
:-))

You were lucky to have met him. I'd seen him at Oshkosh and sun n fun a few
times, but wasn't part ofthe elite that got to meet him.

Elite? Not THIS bunch!! More like us being us covered from head to foot
with engine oil and hydraulic fluid and all of dying for a cold coke
with Whittman the only guy there with enough loose change for the
battered old coke machine in the back of the hangar:-))

Any of those things had to be a handful. the fuselage area, even on the
inline engined ones, was vast ahead of the CG and the tail surfaces tiny.
Add that to some fairly sensitive wings and pilots with fairly limited
experience in low performance airplanes and it's a wonder that any of them
survived! Lots didn't, of course.


Bertie

Yeah, true enough. Even Whittman came to a tragic end after all he had
accomplished and done. I seem to recall hearing both he and his wife
died when the fabric failed on their Tailwind some years back.


--
Dudley Henriques