It's 2010 — Finally My Jet Pack is Here!

[Opcom]

antenna deployment hmmmmm.  Here Hold on to this insulator and fly up to 300ft or so when i say go-------- And Don't touch the wire!!!!

Wayne
KB3RRX

My military brother did jobs where he and 6-8 other guys would go into the desert for a week or more looking for stuff that needed to be destroyed.
To deploy the HF antenna, his operator would bungee the center insulator to a 24FT painters pole which ws then extended and held straight up by one or two soldiers (no joke) and then have a couple other soldiers take the ends of the dipole by the insulators and run out 30-50FT each way holding it at arm height. Each with a buddy toting the pair's M16's just in case. No one got tired.. the transmissions were very short.

[K5WLF]

Kevin -- The Hawk Arrow II is a nice bird. We had a guy at Turlock Airpark (9CL0) in CA when I was working there in the early '90s that had one. I worked on it a couple times. Taxi-tested it, but never got to fly it. :-(

John -- Great shot of your Dad. Love those radial engines. Greatest engine sound in the world. There was a duster with a R-1340 in his plane that used our strip (9CL0) quite a lot. He had finger pipes on the engine and I'd stand right by the edge of the runway on his takeoff roll just to 'feel' the sound of that big round engine. Best I ever heard was a low fly-by of three B-25s (2 X Wright R-2600 each) during an airshow at Rialto CA (L67). I'm going to the big CAF Airsho at Midland TX (MAF) this year. Been trying to get there for the last 13 years. This year is the winner. All those round-engined warbirds in one place. Radial engine heaven!

ldb
K5WLF

[WB2EMS]

Kevin -- The Hawk Arrow II is a nice bird. We had a guy at Turlock Airpark (9CL0) in CA when I was working there in the early '90s that had one. I worked on it a couple times. Taxi-tested it, but never got to fly it. :-(

They fly really nice. Chuck did a great job with the control harmonization, and they have a big tail so lots of rudder authority.. Just really pleasant to fly and I love having a stick instead of a wheel. Very docile, no bad habits. Only downside is the light weight and wing loading. In bouncy air it's a rougher ride than something like a Cherokee. OTOH, you can throttle back to idle and soar. I've been in a thermal climbing 1000fpm with the engine at idle, flaps out and the nose pointed down.

John - that is a great pic. Looks like a Grumman Ag Cat. I too love the sound of those radial engines. Nothing like them. We used to have a duster at the strip I trained at that had two of them, one with a 2 bladed prop, and one with a 3 blade prop. On the two blade, when he wound it up for take off the tips would go supersonic and just create the most amazing ear splitting noise! Once he got up in ground effect, he'd back off a couple of hundred RPM to get them subsonic and I swear the noise level would drop 20-30 db, leaving nothing but that great radial roar. Now that's *power*.