USAF aircraft question

T28 is the sound of money being consumed.

Spent numerous hours hanging out with Julie Clark, who owns both a T28 and a T34. Hourly operating costs on the T28 are something like 2x-4x what they are on the T34. The T34 is not the most inexpensive aircraft to operate, either.

In reply to Beer Baron:

True enough, T-28 burns 50 gallons of fuel per hour

I did a little Googling yesterday. I didn't know the T-28 was as fast as it was.

Running costs may be high, but damn they seem good value for a war bird.

this is just $120K, 7.5K hours on the airframe and less than 400 SMOH on the engine

In reply to Duke:

That ride sounds awesome, you know some cool people, want to share your friends?

In reply to RealMiniParker:

Awesome vid thanks

Adrian_Thompson wrote: In reply to Duke: That ride sounds awesome, you know some cool people, want to share your friends?

The same guy also took DW and I up for lots of Jet Ranger rides when he was going for his rotary wing ticket and needed to log hours. He would land in the back yard, poke his head out, and ask if we wanted to ride along. He was a partner in Summit Aviation which does a lot of military decommissioning and overhauls for Chinooks and Hueys. He also used to train low-level attack pilots in those Cessna Skymasters linked above, over our houses (see "rural living" thread), allegedly for Honduras or some Central / South American government. In the early '90s when one of the big dictators / drug lords down there got assassinated on the tarmac in his private jet, the plane showed up at Summit the next week. He flew 747 transports for Flying Tiger (which did lots of military charter and was rumored to be a front for the CIA). Overall a pretty interesting guy.

Adrian_Thompson wrote: Running costs may be high, but damn they seem good value for a war bird. this is just $120K, 7.5K hours on the airframe and less than 400 SMOH on the engine

According to our local air museum (Shameless Plug: The "Air Zoo" in Kalamazoo, MI is pretty awesome), the real costs for a warbird are in maintenance and insurance. They used to fly a P-40, P-47, F4F, F6F, F8F, Corsair, Grumman Panther and various trainer aircraft. They did most of their own maintenance, but basically had to cease flight operations primarily because of insurance costs. Their flight operations had had a few . . . incidents . . . over the years (nothing excessive or catastrophic, just what you'd expect from operating high performance aircraft in their 6th or 7th decade) and they were basically priced out of the market for coverage. It was also rumored there was a shortage of rated pilots who weren't pushing their physical limitations flying some of these planes. (Some of the old dudes looked like they would need a walker to get from the plane to the terminal, but man could they fly)

kazoospec wrote: ....It was also rumored there was a shortage of rated pilots who weren't pushing their physical limitations flying some of these planes. (Some of the old dudes looked like they would need a walker to get from the plane to the terminal, but man could they fly)

I noticed this and was worried about this a few years ago when paying attention to the Reno Air Races. Some of those guys were getting up there, and air racing is very physically taxing.

In the last few years though I have notice a bit younger crowd of pilots, so there is some hope. Honestly, I can't imagine it would be difficult to "get" someone to fly these planes. Many of them seem to be ex-airforce types.

Here is a good example:

He is the son of a well known warbird pilot Steve Hinton (one of the few check pilots for warbirds), who is somewhat famous for surviving this:

In reply to aircooled: Interesting un/semi related trivia. My dad built the Aviation Heritage trophy for Rolls Royce (the woodworking portion at least). This was presented for the best vintage aviation restoration and was timed to coincide with the air races. Sadly, either the web site hasn't been updated or the trophy hasn't been awarded since 2015. The whole thing fits together like a jigsaw puzzle, so there isn't a single nail or fastener in the trophy. It was a pretty impressive piece of work.

Pic:

EDIT: On, and he didn't build the cheap looking stand it's on.

Yeah, unfortunately I think they did stopped doing that. They had a spot at the end of the ramp where they assembled all the contenders during the races. They got some pretty nice planes (kind of an abbreviated EAA show). I believe they stopped doing it to make more room for air show performers.

aircooled wrote: Because of the holiday, it was likely some sort of historic memorial flight / visit, so likely not an active inventory plane.

Either this, someone's personal plane, or most likely a weather balloon.

In reply to yupididit:

I didn't realize personal planes would be allowed to use an active base/runway?

Where I'm stationed a few people fly their private planes here. And the aeroclub has odd planes too.

Update: Crappy pic, but it flew over several times today while we were at lunch. 

Looks like a U-28A

Flown by some SOCOM types.  

That's looking more like a T6B Texan II that about anything else, especially the tail.

In reply to Karacticus :

Thanks! That looks pretty much like the paint scheme I saw as it was banking. That said, seeing it closer in your pic makes me think the first plane I was might have been something different. Oh well.

In reply to Pete Gossett :

Karicticus nailed it

USAF used to have 7 or 8 motor gliders, down to only 2.  Doesn't look like the pic, the fat fuse near the tail confuses me.

Interesting this thread popped up again.  Up thread we were talking about qualified pilots getting older for war birds and 'aircooled' mentioned the pilots at the Reno air races.  Right now I've got a thing for Miami Vice and the drug runners from the 80's.  so I ended up listening to some old episodes of 'Dinner with Racers' again as they talked to several people from the old drug fueld days of IMSA including Don Whittington, Randy LAnier and John Eversley (who worked for John Paul Snr).  Anyway, Don Whittington was/is a total bad ass speed freak.  Other than running IMSA, winning LeMans and running Indy cars and still racing dirt bikes at 70, he also raced a P-51D in the Reno Air Races back in the day.

Karacticus said:

That's looking more like a T6B Texan II that about anything else, especially the tail.

 

That is my guess. 

Adrian_Thompson said:

Interesting this thread popped up again.  Up thread we were talking about qualified pilots getting older for war birds and 'aircooled' mentioned the pilots at the Reno air races.  Right now I've got a thing for Miami Vice and the drug runners from the 80's.  so I ended up listening to some old episodes of 'Dinner with Racers' again as they talked to several people from the old drug fueld days of IMSA including Don Whittington, Randy LAnier and John Eversley (who worked for John Paul Snr).  Anyway, Don Whittington was/is a total bad ass speed freak.  Other than running IMSA, winning LeMans and running Indy cars and still racing dirt bikes at 70, he also raced a P-51D in the Reno Air Races back in the day.

I believe Whittington is also well know for his smuggling activities.  Someone here mentioned they where staying over night at a track they owned (?) and remember hearing planes fly in in the middle of the night and land on one of the straights, then fly off.

This was Whittingtons plane.  The only flying Griffon modified mustang (which is what the crashed plane shown above was).  Whittington was never able to make it competitive, but its doing a bit better these days with it's new owner.  It makes some very cool sounds BTW.

In reply to aircooled :

The Whittington brothers owned Road Atlanta and laundered their drug-running profits through the track's finances.  The back straight is long enough and flat enough to accommodate a variety of private aircraft.

I think they fly the T6B Texan II here where I'm currently station. My good friend Jason is flying them I believe. Ill ask him.

oldsaw said:

In reply to aircooled :

The Whittington brothers owned Road Atlanta and laundered their drug-running profits through the track's finances.  The back straight is long enough and flat enough to accommodate a variety of private aircraft.

Yup, hence the Miami Vice mention and the others.  Randy Lanier also owned Road Atlanta at one point.  Both Lanier and the Whittingtons deny having used RA for landing drugs there although both are totally open about the drugs and money laundering they did.  As they are so open about their past I see no reason for them to lie about RA.  Whittington does talk about landing at RA on the dinner with racers episode though, just not for smuggling.  Randy Lanier's brother worked at Road Atlanta until he passed away a few years ago even while was doing his 27 years behind bars.