Stearman in Rogue's Gallery

Hey Bill & O-ring,

My friend's got a beautiful 36' Waco that he let me fly a few years
ago but it's been parked for a few years. One of us is going to sign
off the A&P portion of the annual and go flying (probably not me,) but
the thing's been in the desert forever and he said the glue joints are
probably in bad shape (gulp.) But the guy's not planning to redo that
until he recovers the whole thing in a few years. (Vietnam vet,
completely fearless, but a great guy.) I think I'll convince him to
pull back some fabric before he goes. What would you look for on
this? (didn't do much wood and fabric work, read about it mostly.)
Just a wiggle test, shrinkage/cracks in the glue joints? Chem test?
What?

They just had a great show on the National Geographic Channel tonight
called "Minutes to Meltdown" about the Three-mile Island nuke runaway.
No one could agree what was going on in the out of control (coolant
wise) core so they sent this fearless son-of-a-bitch over the top of
the reactor structure to check it out with a helicopter. He flys that
sucker right over the top and puts it into a hover right on top of the
reactor building! Man what a sight! The hover looked a little tricky
in the wind way up there. And he found significant radiation coming
out of the building… (double gulp!) What was that? A Hughes 500? Was
that you in that thing by any chance Bill? Have any photos of that
disaster that we can post up on Jay's Rouge's Gallery? Come on.
Please? While this thing was pressurizing with Hydrogen gas, and
about to explode like the Hindenburg, gov Scanton admitted the
bureaucrats were talking about evacuating the seat of government (not
the people!) Meanwhile you guys are marching right up to this ticking
radiation bomb! We probably all owe you a beer.

Cheers,

pacplyer

(they said this was the biggest threat at the time every faced by the
U.S. on American soil, so I guess Bill didn't have time to take
pictures now that I think about it. Duh..)


(Badwater Bill) wrote in message . ..
I wanted to set the record straight. I didn't own that Stearman in
the photo. I just remember flying in it with O'ring. We had a buddy
who owned it. Our buddy was a great guy but a marginal pilot. O'ring
helped him come up to speed in that airplane. In fact I shot the
photo that is on the gallery while O'ring and Steve were flying it
back in about 1976 or so. Those guys sort of taught themselves
aerobatics in it. I rode in it a few times and got to fly it with
O'ring. It was not my airplane. I just got to have some fun in it at
the time it was in our lives.

I remember one day everyone thought it was about time to recover it
with new cloth. I think the fabric that was on it was cotton. When
O'ring and Steve yanked that fabric off, all the rib-stitching had
been eaten by mice and the fabric was not held tight to the ribs.
Hell, it didn't matter a bit. The thing still flew great. We all had
a ball in it. I wish we still had it now.

If you look at that photo I took you'll see the bottom has a big patch
on it. I can't remember why they did that, but I'll bet there's a
story behind it if you could get O'ring to tell it.

BWB