Aviation Story

On Mon, 02 Feb 2004 02:20:22 GMT, Roger Halstead
wrote:

Many years ago, and I do mean many!

I was a teen ager out on the Farmall A, cultivating beans the first
time through.

I don't think there is anything in this world that takes less brains
than cultivating beans the first time through. You just sit there,
"in the heat", with the tractor idling along, and keeping the rows
between the shoes.

It was about mid afternoon and I had been doing this exciting job
since day break. All of a sudden my day dreaming was interrupted by
this tremendous noise. I whipped around to see an F-80 pulling up with
one whale of a cloud of dust billowing up behind me. I was headed
north, he was headed east. Couldn't have been much more than a couple
of wing spans behind me. I was still fascinated, seeing him climb out
like that when I realized the tractor was still moving, but who knew
where.

I had to get off the tractor, and count rows to get back where I
belonged. Worst case of "cultivator blight" I ever saw.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

About twenty years ago, I was sitting on a boulder just after daylight
with the sun to my back. I was mule deer hunting 20 miles north of Big
Bend National Park. Suddenly a dark shadow fell over me; and then an
earth shattering roar. My first thought was that I was breakfast for a
lion.

Three B-52's were doing terrain following maybe 200 AGL. Low enough to
feel the breeze and smell the smoke.

Three B-52's were doing terrain following maybe 200 AGL. Low enough to
feel the breeze and smell the smoke.


-----------------------------------------------------
'Oil Burner' route. Usta be a regular section in the Notams.

Interesting to see a Buf BELOW you... when you were puttering along in a Cub
:-)

-R.S.Hoover

On 03 Feb 2004 02:24:55 GMT, (Veeduber) wrote:


Three B-52's were doing terrain following maybe 200 AGL. Low enough to
feel the breeze and smell the smoke.


-----------------------------------------------------
'Oil Burner' route. Usta be a regular section in the Notams.

Interesting to see a Buf BELOW you... when you were puttering along in a Cub

There is a ridge that runs N/S about 15 miles west of US27 near Clare
Michigan The ridge is probably 300 to 400 feet high. On top is a
radio tower.

I used to end up on that tower several times a week. I don't know how
many times I was sitting up there working away when I'd hear a high
pitched whistle and have just enough time to look west and down to see
a fighter pass a few hundred yards to the west of me.

The MOA starts at 7000, but as I recall there is also a low altitude
route through there.

I nearly always carried my camera up there with me, but I never once
had enough warning to just grab it and take a shot.

Bout 60 to 80 miles east of us is an "oil burner" route right up
through the center of the thumb and across the bay towards Oscoda.
They still use it, but when Oscoda was an active base those routes
were busy. It was a place where the VFR pilots wanted to stay at
3000:-))

Yah know, I was just thinking of that F80 back in the 50s. You
weren't getting any training in Michigan back then were you Bob?

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

:-)

-R.S.Hoover

As Ron said, this is something that Gallery wrote about in the early 50's,
and it was supposed to have happened in the late 30's or VERY early 40's. A
later version of this by another writer (mid 60's) puts the event in the
late 50's early 60's. Gallery was diffinately in print with it in the early
50's though. The program manager on one of my contracts heard the story in
flight training (minus the audio recording) in 1943, and it was supposed to
have happened a "few" years before he heard it. He started as an F6F
driver, did the F4U thing, and finally the A-1, before leaving flight
status.

Because Pete heard it in 1943 I have to believe it was probably a late 30's
thing, wasn't that about the time that advanced trainers got radios? Prior
to that and there would have been no radio for the ground folks to listen in
/ record.

I have, at one time or another heard two different versions, or portions of
them, on tape. The only problem I have with all of this is.....in the late
30's what kind of audio recordings did they do? And would a training field
actually have the ability to record audio from the radio as a matter of
course? Even in the early/mid 40's (timing it with the end of the period in
Gallery's writing) it would have been a wire recording, yes? The ones I
heard did not originate from a wire, the quality was definately tape.

My personal opinion is it never happened, but a couple different people got
ahold of the story and made the tape.

There was a thread in rec.avaition.military about 6 or 7 years ago about
this, but I can not find it with a Google search now, can't seem to narrow
the search enough.

T!

A
later version of this by another writer (mid 60's) puts the event in the
late 50's early 60's.

------------------------------------------------

After returning from WesPac aboard the Hornet in the late 1950's, probably '57
or '58 (can't remember ****) I was transferred from VF-94 to NAS Alameda. The
guys at the Link trainer facility had a whole library of similar recordings,
some on phonograph records, some on tape, a lot of which they MADE THEMSELVES,
complete with engine sounds. Their building had two storys, trainers on the
ground floor, classrooms above. They had one of the classrooms fitted out as a
recording studio for making new sound tracks for WWII training films.

Some of the cuts I heard were hilarious. I was told that most were based on
real incidents but all of the ones I heard were dramatizations rather than
actual recordings. Which isn't to say real recordings did not exist, but...

-R.S.Hoover