What's the dumbest thing YOU'VE done at an airshow?

Airlift48 · **Joined:** Sat Oct 29, 2005 7:01 pm **Posts:** 746

Gone home with the baggage compartment key...
:oops:

RyanShort1 · **Posted:** Thu Jan 17, 2008 8:43 am

Hellcat wrote:

hehehe ... I shouldn't tell you guys, but I will anyway ... lololol,
again at Chino and I was trying to be "ALL knowing about all things warbird" to my friends, who are nowhere near interested as I am in warbirds. We were proceeding to crawl under a B-17 to stand up in the bombay .... I was jabbering to these guys, who had the look of "shut up already", and wasn't paying attention to where I was. I stood up .... WAY TOO SOON .... "BANG!!!!" .... ouch my F**KING HEAD! ... I yelled. I hit the bottom of the fuselage so hard I almost passed out. My friends just laughed and laughed, while I was lying there getting all kinds of "dumb Sh*t! looks from everyone ..... I guess the noise traveled all over the field, because not long later the P.A. announced to everyone to be extremely careful not to hurt yourself around the aircraft. And I could have swore I heard him say .... "especially the guy who tried to add an extra bombay to our B-17" ...... When you have small kids looking at you and saying ... "Ouch!!! dude ... did that hurt?" .... and mothers asking if they can give me any water .... :shock:

....

That's just one .... and probably all you get .... I think I have a good rep here, I don't want to ruin it.

Oh yah! ... and then there's that guy who said ... "No, I got it" and then fell face first out of a Corsair cockpit to the pavement. OUCHHHHH!!!!! ... hehehehe ....

From a B-25 manual...

Ryan

RyanShort1 · **Posted:** Thu Jan 17, 2008 8:47 am

Dan K wrote:

Sometimes I would actually listen to the PA announcer at airshows.

The CAF Spirit of Waco B-26 Invader was at a local airshow nearby - and the announcer kept calling it the "Spirit of Whacko..." My whole family got a kick out of that!

Ryan

Tom Moungovan · **Posted:** Thu Jan 17, 2008 9:47 am

I went to the Merced, CA airshow in '65 with my dad & was wandering around by myself. The owner of a Waco Cabin offered me a ride and I hesitated...well, someone else spoke up & I missed out. My own fault & I'm still hoping for that ride someday.
I learned my lesson & feel that I made up for it while stationed @ Edwards AFB when I was offered, & accepted rides in one of our F-4Cs and our lone F-106. The 106 was the last aircraft that I worked on there...late May of'69. Her crew chief was a civilian & a friend of my boss.

Zachary · **Posted:** Thu Jan 17, 2008 9:52 am

mustangdriver wrote:

I was looking at the calendar girls at the Gathering of mustangs, and walked into a parked jeep.

Holy crap - I did the exact same thing!

TAdan · **Posted:** Thu Jan 17, 2008 9:55 am

Zachary wrote:

mustangdriver wrote:

I was looking at the calendar girls at the Gathering of mustangs, and walked into a parked jeep.

Holy crap - I did the exact same thing!

And I bet someone parked that Jeep and said "Hey watch this, its gonna be funny" :lol:

Jesse C. · **Posted:** Thu Jan 17, 2008 10:05 am

Leaning on an M-60 mounted on a Marine Huey only to find out it was not latched down! The best part was the pilot not missing a beat and telling me I did not have to bail out of the chopper since it was not moving!

Oh yeah, the chicks where impressed!. :oops:

spookyboss · **Posted:** Thu Jan 17, 2008 10:18 am

Offutt AFB 1980's I was Very lucky to be getting some co-pilot time with Tired Iron in the B-25, Sat. after the show my girlfriend and I went back to the hotel to clean up for the Hanger party and the First thing I did when we got back out to the party was grab a cold one. the sun had just set and Dick Wright came over and said lets go fly, One look at my beverage and I was out as flight crew

But we did get to ride in the back and it was a lot of fun.

Mudge · **Posted:** Thu Jan 17, 2008 10:21 am

This didn't happen to me. It happened about me.
Duxford '04. Sitting in the front row of the Fighter Collection enclosure. Every now and then I would have to momentarily stand to get the picture I wanted.
My size (6'6" 250 lbs.) evidently made quite an impression on one lady sitting behind us.
As Mrs. Mudge was returning from a "snack run", the lady stopped her and asked.
"Is your husband a pituitary patient?"
Mrs. Mudge, being the lady that she is, didn't break into gales of laughter, as would have been appropriate, she merely said,
"No. He's just big."
When she told me of the encounter, I (being the boor that I am) broke into the appropriate gales of laughter.

Mudge the large :shock:

Dan K · **Posted:** Thu Jan 17, 2008 10:23 am

Jesse C. wrote:

Leaning on an M-60 mounted on a Marine Huey only to find out it was not latched down! The best part was the pilot not missing a beat and telling me I did not have to bail out of the chopper since it was not moving!

Oh yeah, the chicks where impressed!. :oops:

Did you stick the landing? :wink:

FG1D Pilot · **Joined:** Fri Mar 04, 2005 10:42 am **Posts:** 450

mustangdriver wrote:

I was looking at the calendar girls at the Gathering of mustangs, and walked into a parked jeep.

That was you? I saw that. Could have been many others though.

Sean Curtiss · **Posted:** Thu Jan 17, 2008 12:38 pm

Zachary wrote:

mustangdriver wrote:

I was looking at the calendar girls at the Gathering of mustangs, and walked into a parked jeep.

Holy crap - I did the exact same thing!

Holy Crap times 2. It happened to me, but this time it wasn’t a jeep, it was a propeller blade. Three beautiful girls passed by me, I looked back amazed and when I turned around I had no time to deviate. Everybody looks at you, some ask “Are you OK?”, “Are you alright?”. Although the tremendous pain you’re in, you act like a bleeding face is a common thing in your life. It’s not the first time I felt like Woody Allen in one of his films.

51fixer · **Posted:** Thu Jan 17, 2008 1:00 pm

It was Oshkosh, I believe 78. The year the Mustang ran over the 195 on the runway.
I went to lunch with Bill Muszala and Rob Patterson in a van Bill borrowed from someone he knew. It only had the 2 front seats but did have a large cooler sitting in back. I pulled it over and sat on it between the 2 front seats. Bill gunned it to make a turn when the light turned yellow.
I ended up upside down pinned to the rear set of doors at the back after doing a few cartwheels to get there.
Rich

Bill Greenwood · **Posted:** Thu Jan 17, 2008 1:29 pm

Here's one I saw, but did not happen to me. Practically all warbirds start with some type of on/off toggle switch or rotary switch or push button. It would have been pretty silly during military service to not be able to fly a mission because you didn't have the key. But there is always someone who's smarter than the system, and wants to improve things. The CAF Mustang was one plane that got "improved upon" by relacing the normal ignition system, which worked well in the other 15,000 P-51s, with a civilian type lock requiring an ignition key. So here they are at Oshkosh, all fueled, all briefed, but no go because the other pilot took the key with him. In the long run, no harm done.

Second Air Force · **Posted:** Thu Jan 17, 2008 2:10 pm

Bill,

Your story jogged my memory to another of my exploits. A few years ago we cleaned up our airplane and put it into the EAA show at the Bartlesville Fly-In. It was easy to get ready to show since we only had to taxi 500 yards from the hangar to the display area.

When it was time to taxi back to the hangar, I found I had dropped the #%@$%^ keys. A forty minute search on hands and knees in the grass around the airplane was fruitful, but you should have heard the guys at the temporary FAA control tower give me the business!

Scott

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