Warbird Information Exchange

Was passing through Stephenville, Newfoundland a couple days ago on my way home from the desert war. The locals seem very proud of their runway's US heritage - the former Ernest Harmon AFB. I was thrilled when our cab driver took a quick detour to show us an F-102 on display. See the link below.

Any of you who are fans of Ernest K. Gann may remember Stephensville (sic) as the locale for Chapter 15 of "Fate is the Hunter", titled 'A Hole'. Gann experiences a hydraulic fire under the cabin floor and, spying a sucker hole, makes a steep spiral descent to a quick landing in poor weather.

Taxiing out to leave yesterday I couldn't shake the feeling that one of aviation's greatest authors may have been peeking over my shoulder.

http://www.roadsideattractions.ca/popfi ... nville.htm

http://www.airliners.net/photo/USA---Ai ... _id=NEXTID

Ken

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"Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves."

Thank you my friend and welcome home. To stay, I hope!

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"There are old pilots and bold pilots but few old, bold pilots."

Welcome home! Last time I went through Harmon was also in March,(several years ago) in a C-124 enroute to participate in the Congo Airlift operation.
There was chart in base operations showing they had 325 inches of snow so far that winter. The sides of the streets were lined with walls of snow 6 to 8 feet high. The snow of course covered all street signs and they had used spray paint to paint the stop signs on the walls of snow at intersections.

AHH! The deuce-living within a five minute drive of KPAE, and with P. Allen moving his collection to KPAE (the V-2 was moved from Arlington WA. to KPAE this past afternoon) I would just love it if old Paul and his huge bucks could find and restore to flight, a 102.
They had quite a history here at Paine AFB in the 50's and early 60's.
The bonus would come in having them fly it over Mukilteo (where they live under the approach and constantly whine about the noise) so those yayhoos could really appreciate AIRPLANE NOISE!!!!!
As I recall as a pre teen, you could still see and hear a deuce for about 20 minutes after it left, lots of noise and clouds of very black smoke.

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

My dad was an RCAF flight engineer on Dakotas (C-47) in the 50's flying out of Goose Bay. On approach it was normal for the USAF F102 to use the Daks to practice interception. The deuces would form up on the Dak and the RCAF guys would then throttle back, lower the flaps and undercarriage anything to slow the aircraft down. As airspeed dropped the F102 would gradually have to break off.
These photos bring back some great memories of our days at Goose Bay Newfoundland.
http://www.rcaf-atc.org/photos/photo-21-59.html

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“Try to fly in the middle of the air. The edges are filled with mountains and oceans and rocks and it’s much harder to fly there.”