Eric Presten - Author Photographer Vintage Aircraft Warbirds

[Rajay]

Does anyone know why Eric Presten is apparently no longer active on the forum? According to his profile, he hasn't logged on in almost 2 years (since Oct. 2013.)

I tried to send him a PM back in January 2014 - a year and a half ago and it's still in my Outbox.

I'm pretty sure that I traded a PM or 2 with him before that and we had one of his vintage aircraft photo books on the coffee table in the lobby of Antilles Seaplanes.

My PM to him 18 months ago was about the fact that he seems to be the only person to have any decent photos of Tom Danaher's Grumman G-21A Goose, N291VW (s/n 1188) - and they're air-to-air photos at that, but the only copies of which I have ever seen online are tiny thumbnails with watermarks on them. I was hoping to be able to get some better digital copies directly from Eric - for personal use only of course. Seems relevant to me once again since Tom died last fall and now his Goose is up for sale now on the Platinum Fighters Web site - apparently "pending" a corrosion inspection for the prospective buyer who is a friend of a friend.

I had been secretly coveting that Goose for a long time because I figured (now confirmed) that it must be about the lowest time, most original Goose in existence; it is listed as having only 2,238.5 hours TIS but that was misleadingly as of 1990 when it got its first standard CoA. In spite of Platinum's notation that it has been on the USCAR only since 1990, it has actually been on it since April 1964 after Tom bought it from the US Army Depot Command in Japan in 1963 (after JMSDF retired it and returned it to the US Navy there) and he had it shipped back across the Pacific. The archived records from OK City show that he averaged about 1.0 hour of flight time in it per year between 1978 and 1990 for example - getting "ferry permits" just to be able to fly it a little bit in his annual fly-in airshows at his private airport outside of Wichita Falls, TX.

In any case, I'd love to know what's up with Eric these days or how to contact him via regular e-mail (can anyone discreetly share that info with me via PM?)

[Mike]

I've sent Eric a link to this thread