12/28/2023 0 Comments T 6 texan ii cockpitNo doubt aware of its reputation as “The Pilot Maker,” the pilots who seek out T-6s also know that the minimum requirements for a T-6 owner-operator can still be daunting. “I didn’t know anything about T-6s other than watching them and seeing them in the pits.”īut most budding T-6 pilots arrive at their choice of aircraft more carefully. “I thought, ‘I could do that, that’d be fun!’ My wife looked at me like ‘Who are you kidding?’ ” he recalls, laughing. Fred Telling jumped into T-6 racing after watching the trainers compete at the Reno air races. Gordon Stevenson, Taylor’s dad, bought his after seeing one at an airshow-but before he’d had any flight training. Sometimes the decision to buy one can be almost impulsive. “You fly stuff that you’ve got,” Henley says. Aeroshell team leader Mark Henley was 14 when his father bought a Texan, in 1973 flying it seemed like an ordinary thing to do. He made his first solo flight in the aircraft at 22. “The first time I flew in the T-6 I was about two or three,” the younger Stevenson recalls. Taylor Stevenson, 26, says his family has never been without a T-6 since he was a baby. While modest compared to warbird fighters and bombers, this is no Cessna Skyhawk. Besides a willingness to learn, there’s one thing a T-6 pilot needs, says Ginter: money. But a newcomer still has to learn to fly the airplane, and that’s not easy. So whatever the role of a T-6 today-for pleasure flying, racing, airshows, rides, or, as ever, training-there’s support for it. Taylor Stevenson at a formation clinic in Fredericksburg, Texas. It helps bring the cost of the inspection down if I do all the grunt work.” “With a Zeus tool and a screwdriver, it takes me only eight hours to take off all the panels,” he says. Mike Ginter is living proof to save cash on its annual inspection, he disassembles his T-6 himself. “They were the last of the cars that any person with a basic level of mechanical ability could take apart and put back together.” “I compare the T-6 to a 1957 Chevy,” he says. They last a long time when they’re overbuilt in the first place.”įred Telling, president of the T-6 Air Racing Association, says it isn’t just that Texans were built to last-they were also built to be easy to fix. “They were still rebuilding them in the ’50s as G-models. “There were a lot of them left over ,” says Steve Larmore, a T-6 and P-51 instructor at Stallion 51 in Kissimmee, Florida. But what distinguished the T-6 then is what keeps it alive now: It was over-engineered, yet easy to maintain-and it didn’t become obsolete for a very long time. A little more than 17,000 were built by North American Aviation and its overseas licensees. Like most World War II aircraft, the T-6 was built in vast quantities. The T-6’s endurance comes down to the numbers. He too loves the airplane: “The T-6 is rugged and sturdy and tough as a battleship.” Nobody made any of those things any better.” Scully Levin leads a T-6 aerobatic team in South Africa. “It had a North American airframe, a Hamilton Standard prop, and a Pratt & Whitney engine. “I tell people it was the best-built airplane that ever was,” he says. When Goyer got out of the Navy, he bought two Texans from the service for $450 each. He made his orientation flights at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn in the summer of 1945. Norm Goyer learned to fly in the Navy’s Aviation Cadet Training Program toward the end of World War II. Why? Because as warbirds go, the T-6 is remarkably affordable and accessible. And anyone who attends airshows can tell you that the T-6 Texan is ubiquitous. According to the North American Trainer Association, an advocacy group for enthusiasts of the T-6, T-28, and other trainers, at least 500 T-6s (and variants, SNJs and Harvards) are flying today in the United States alone. More people hear the T-6, see it, smell it, touch it, and fly in it than any other warbird on the planet. “We feel you gotta have plenty of noise, plenty of smoke, and be big enough to see,” he says. “It’s just really fun.” But it’s more than the sound, says Mark Henley, lead pilot of the Aeroshell Aerobatic Team, which has been performing in T-6s since 2001. “The roar of that engine is the biggest thrill in the world, as you power down the runway, coming off the ground, going through all these monkey motions to get the gear up,” says Martha Lunken, who has been flying since the early 1960s. It’s that T-6 howl-that MMMRRROWWRRMmmm that deafens and pierces at the same time.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |