This is the place where the majority of the warbird (aircraft that have survived military service) discussions will take place. Specialized forums may be added in the new future
Sun Jan 04, 2009 11:16 pm
If you have ever noticed, most of the 450-powered Stearmans have the four aileron modifications. I agree what was said in an earlier post about John Mohr....bet he has huge forearms from wrestling that dude around. We always had a joke about airshow Stearman drivers in that they all had arms like POPEYE! We had two long-time 450 Stearman acts based at our airport...Bob & Pat Wagner and Darrell Montgomery & Jimmy Dorsey.
Our little Waco RNF will be like flying a sportscar compared to the Stearman. A better match would be a Waco UPF-7.
One funny story. My brother flew his Waco CRG to the Stearman fly-in at Galesburg and sat around listening all day to the Stearman guys saying how their stock Continental or Lycoming powered Stearmans would climb like this and cruise at that (all over 100 mph...if you can believe that). A group went to take off to fly around...a couple of the guys he actually knew. Needless to say the Waco got off the ground and outclimbed them all with ease. Then he joined their formation (all indicating the normal 90 mph) and then proceeded to add throttle, go past them, climb and circle back and go around them again. He was not asked to join the games anymore!