Warbird Information Exchange

For the record, the pilot's name was Joe Guthrie, who was working for Flight Systems at Mojave. There are two sides to the story, but the jist of it is what was supposed to be a 'high speed taxi' down the runway, coupled with a serious aft c.g. situation that the owners claim they knew about, resulted in a very unstable aircraft becoming 'airborne'...at which time the pilot proceeded to wrestle the aircraft around the pattern and land it.

He was either 'dismissed' for not following orders, or quit not wanting to kill himself in a death trap. You choose.

Skip Holm never flew Wildfire...but only because he didn't get a chance to, not because he was afraid to. They were doing some high power run up's on the engine out at Mojave back in the mid-late 80's, and the aircraft was situated with it's back to one of the hangers. The propwash bounced off the hanger and 'lifted' the tail of the plane up suddenly--dinging one of the prop blades.

Though the owners have said that they switched from a 4 bladed prop to a 3 bladed prop because it was 'more efficient', I think the real reason is, they only had 3 blades to work with after the 4th was nicked badly.

I'm actually kind of excited that this project may be coming to fruition. I don't care if they fly around in last place in the Bronze...just the fact that they show up and fulfill a 30 year dream-in-the-making is 'winning' enough for me!

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Does anyone have pictures of wildfire?

http://www.wildfireairracing.com/history.htm

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Looking at the web site, there is no mention of the first flight, nor any other flights, and the last up date was a year ago.

I doubt Wildfire will be there,

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Matt Gunsch, A&P, IA, Warbird maint and restorations
Jack, You have Debauched my sloth !!!!!!
We tried voting with the Ballot box, When do we start voting from the Ammo box, and am I allowed only one vote ?
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Well, just because the website hasn't been updated does not mean activity is not going on out at Mojave. Dave Morss is the test pilot, and from my understanding, RARA has said that since Dave is a qualified race pilot, they can bring Wildfire to Reno as long as it has the requisite FAA 'time' flown off on it.

I've known 'new' planes like Dago Red, Tsunami, Super Corsair, etc. to not have their first flight until mid/late August, and be on the ramp two weeks later. Heck, Dago Red won in '82 less than three weeks after it's first flight. So even if it has not taken it's first flight as of the last week in July, that does not count for much in the overall scheme.

Of course...first flight was actually in 1983...it's just that second flight has been a bitch to knock out.

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other than Tsunami, all the others were modified designs of a known airframe. Wildfire is the P-75 of air racers, a part from this plane, and a part from that one, and if we make it look like a plane, it should fly. It is not doing as well as the P-75 did, at least the P-75 flew more than once in 20+ years.

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Matt Gunsch, A&P, IA, Warbird maint and restorations
Jack, You have Debauched my sloth !!!!!!
We tried voting with the Ballot box, When do we start voting from the Ammo box, and am I allowed only one vote ?
Check out the Ercoupe Discussion Group on facebook

ISTR about 15 years ago there were 2 other 'P-75' types in the works. One was supposed to use parts from a T-2, Sea Fury & a couple of other a/c. The other was a similar P-75 mix n match. Don't know what ever became of them.

one of those "frankin race's is on it's" way to completion at sanders i believe'it's now owned by rod lewis the owner of rare bear amongst others.
there's no new on the other

The two you are probably thinking of are the Matt Jackson/Dave Cornell "American Spirit" and the Greenameyer racer "Shockwave".

Rod Lewis purchased American Spirit late last year...perhaps to be finished? Unknown what the status of Shockwave is.

American Spirit:

Thread showing photos of the airplane at Stead after Lewis purchase:
http://www.warbirdaeropress.com/smf/ind ... pic=1445.0


Shockwave (model):


A better photo of the model here: http://www.aafo.com/hangartalk/showthre ... =10&page=2

Yeah, those are the two! I had (or have, somwhere) a few articles with drawings and/or sketches of them that I'd been planning to build models of them. I was really looking forward to seeing those get in the air! (The real ones, not my models. ) Thanks.

Now, also ISTR one of them was a conventional gear, it used a Piper Commanche nose gear for the tailwheel. The other was a tri-gear & used an F-100 nose gear. I don't recall which was which, tho. Another racer that ended up never being, AFAIK, was "Really Gotcha", a suped up Corsair (the drawing looked like a -4) & was by the racing T-6 guy "Gotcha". This was in an early - mid '70s Air Classics.

Well, there's this little beast, John Parker's JP 350:



There was also the "Pony Express", another homebuilt that was tricycle gear and appeared at Reno in 1982....photos in this link:

http://www.warbirdaeropress.com/smf/ind ... opic=574.0

Non-Reno photo here: http://www.abpic.co.uk/photo/1148139/

And, of course, we couldn't forget Bill Montagne and David Rose's Machbuster.

http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-p ... 801827.jpg

That was Pat Palmer and Jim Landry. The plane was eventually restored as Landry's "Big Hog" in 1982...it's over in Europe somewhere today. But the plane was VEEEERY slick...it was obvious that they had done a lot of work smoothing the wings and fuselage for racing.

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Sadly not in Europe any longer, it went to New Zealand in late 2005/early 2006.

You know, it's kind of funny...I used to be very 'possessive' of the warbirds here in the states. "GASP, HOW COULD THEY POSSIBLY LET THAT BEARCAT GO OVER THERE???", yet felt like we pulled off a coup when we'd steal a Mosquito or something.

But as I've gotten older--especially after my trip to Duxford with Hacker a few years back--I've come to realize that it doesn't matter 'where' the things are, or who they are with. Now it's just amazing that they are still around SOMEWHERE, flying, and being enjoyed by people. My immediate thought at Duxford was something akin to "This is where warbirds DESERVE to fly out of...as natural as breathing."

Someday we'll need to put together a World-Wide-Warbird bash of some kind...a two-week long extravaganza with the goal of getting as many flyable warbirds from all over the globe together at the same place. Think of a Flying Legends on steroids.

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