Warbird Information Exchange

In this photo, Paul Allen's (N512AF) has yellow wingtips:

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Dassault ... /0564134/M

There is an outfit at Arlington that imports the ex-German AF birds...the paint on this one still looks "original".

Is that Arlington Texas or Virgina?

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Bill Gorin
Vintage Flying Museum
http://www.vintageflyingmuseum.org
https://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=57513906106

Arlington Washington, it may belong to these guys http://alphajetsusa.com/index.htm

I was told it wasn't a gear collapse. He just forgot to put them down.

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Brad

Was the pilot, by chance, the highest time F-14 pilot in the world, or a pilot current on the FJ-4 Fury?

To be fair, throwing spears at high-profile guys who that has recently happened to isn't really the right target.

Remember, when it comes to retractable gear aircraft, "there are those that have and those that will". Snort and the Doc are simply those that have...right along with hundreds of thousands of others.

Also, they probably fit into the 'checking obsessively' percentile at the moment...

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James K

"Switch on the underwater landing lights"
Emilio Largo, Thunderball.

www.VintageAeroWriter.com

A few points:

1) I made that comment as more of a humor thing than anything else, not particularly a serious "spear" at them.

2) The comment, ""there are those that have and those that will" is not accurate across the board for everyone. I would expect a student pilot or an inexperienced pilot to forget to lower the landing gear, but not highly experienced professional pilots of the caliber that we are talking about. A blanket statement like that applies mainly to "weekend" recreational pilots, not professional aviators with several thousands of hours. I know a LOT of experienced aviators, and I know only perhaps 1 or 2 who have landed gear up from forgetting to put the gear down. It just doesn't happen that often at all, and it is EXTREMELY rare for pilots of their experience level to land gear up.

3) I have in excess of 12,000 hrs. of flight time, and I have never forgotten to lower my landing gear. I can only remember one time, very early in my training, pre-solo, where I forgot, and that was some 20 years ago.

4) Yes, I realize that pilots are human and make mistakes, we all do. But you would think that by the time you have as much experience as they did, that their "habit patterns" would be so rock solid and ingrained as to prevent such an occurrence.

5) To me, a mistake such as forgetting to lower the landing gear is inexcusable for a highly experienced pilot. That is just as inexcusable as saying an experienced pilot crashed a plane because they ran out of gas (***aahhhemm, Chief Boeing Test Pilot, Model 307***).

You know, I'm always the first person to raise the "professional aviator" flag.

In this case, though, I simply say "there but for the grace of God go I."

Mistakes are made on EVERY FLIGHT by EVERY PILOT, regardless of experience level. The "perfect" flight is still yet to be flown. Some mistakes turn out to have zero impact, and some have fatal impacts. Everything else is somewhere in between.

Fair enough.