That’s the only word to describe my feelings watching these two videos, and thanks to SJBill for turning me on to them.
When I was a wee nobbut, maybe 9-10 years old or so, I built my first airplane model. It was an F-4U Corsair, and I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for that great, wild beast ever since. All of that engine up in front. The marked wing anhedral. Never got my hands on one. Don’t expect to. But damn, she’s a beautiful airplane.
And complex too, for her day. All that talk about cowl flaps, blowers and intercoolers makes me glad that I took to flying when the world was a simpler place. Mostly glad. A little regretful too. The Hornet was easy to fly, but hard to master – mostly because of the variety of exotic weapons she could carry.
The Corsair? That would have been something else entirely. They tell me she’d snap roll on you in a heartbeat if you let her get slow and then tried to torque her out of it. They tell me she’d spit on your grave afterwards, just for the spite that was in it. That’s what they tell me.
Watch, and be transported:
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[ev type="youtube" data="IM2rbFFzrYI"][/ev]
By the way, for my bruthas that have been through it, can you hear the man stomping his feet on the gouge numbers? Do you sense the continuum between what we did, and what they did?
Can you feel it?
Damn.
There’s still something about looking past the gunsight and through the propeller arc that bring out the fangs..
extremely cool videos. and Corsair is just the coolest name for a plane, too.
When I was a wee nobbut, maybe 9-10 years old or so, I built my first airplane model. It was an F-4U Corsair…
I built one too, at about the same age. And the ceiling of my bedroom had a veritable constellation of aircraft, all meticulously hung with thread, and all in various swoops and dives…a real hazard to any adult venturing into my bedroom. I’m quite sure I built every model Monogram and Revell produced in the ’50s, and more than a few from Airfix, too.
My earliest boyhood dream was to be a pilot, and I was simply crushed when the Ol’ Man explained I could never realize that dream, given I was three degrees removed from total blindness without my glasses… {sigh}
I too fell I love with the ‘ol Hose-Nose, when my Dad got me a Cox chrome flying one. Crashed it soooo mant times it couldn’t fly anymore with all of the epoxy on it. Then my buddy got the P-51 and I asked him “what’s wrong with the wings on that thing”?
Sigh. I remember when we used to have “Aviation Day” at the local airport, here, before the security weenies and scared-of-loud-noises old wimmin of both sexes forbade it. We ordinary folk got to walk around on the ramp and commune with the airplanes, with the cops just looking at us un-understandingly, forbidden to interfere with our honest avian fun. There was a guy with a Mustang, and a Grumman Mohawk, and a PT-22, I think it was, and a PBY, and yes an F4U. The F4U was *pretty*. It was shiny. It was , well, yummy. I walked all around that thing, getting as close as I could without actually touching it, and when the day was over, I stood behind it when the owner started up the Double Wasp, to get the full sensory experience
Oh, BTW, the F4U is not really a good subject for a scale model, unless you put a (spit!) radio in it, or fudge the moments and areas and maybe increase the dihedral. Something like a BE2C would be ideal, for maximum scale and flight points, both. Now, I’ll grant that the F4U is long enough to hold a decent amount of rubber, but really the Martin-Baker MB-5 is much superior in that way, especially in Peanut Scale, where wing area is more important than aspect ratio, and length of fuselage relative to wingspan is even more important.
Seriously, though, there are always problems with making scale models and having them fly well, which is why we should not even try, but make small airplanes that do not look like big airplanes, and don’ need no pilots, but fly away in thermals all by themselves. I write as one who has lost at least a dozen hand-launched gliders of his own design and construction out of sight overhead, in thermals.
I like airplanes. I like to design and make airplanes.
Some airplanes need pilots. That’s a necessary evil, I reckon.
Oh, what I wrote above is only valid for small itsy-bitsy values of the Reynolds Number.
For the high-speed, militarily-useful aviation, we will prolly need Naval Aviators for a while, yet. I’d hate to be halfway across the Atlantic in a yacht and get blown to smithereens by some robot airplane which thought I resembled a target barge.
I believe Lex has written something about something like that.
I did the same – loved the F4U – used to watch Baa, Baa Blacksheep every week just to see those planes fly, and built the models as a kid. Can still remember trying to get the decals on just right.
And I too cried when I got glasses at about 10 and dicovered that one anchor wasn’t to be. But you bloom where you’re planted, and I moved on and earned my pair of anchors and didn’t look back. Life goes on and all…
Still, I do wish I’d had the chance to be the stick and rudder guy. I’m pretty sure I’d have been good.