Before it was Rare Bear

[MRE]

Re: Before it was Rare Bear

John, did you guys ever have any issues with the fabric covered control surfaces. Would have been interesting if you guys had gotten a Mustang.

[wingman]

Re: Before it was Rare Bear

Great pictures, John. Did your Mom take them?

The shot of Lyle is fascinating. There's the "Naviness" of course, but there's also a presence. This is the guy who's about to ride the fire breathing dragon. What a decade he would have...

I fussed with it a bit -- is this OK?

[BellCobraIV]

Re: Before it was Rare Bear

So I have a question.

Corky Meyer (I think) wrote about F8Fs having break away wing tips. The idea was that the wing could be lighter if it was made to break in a controllable way when certain G loads were reached.

My question is: is that breakaway point where the Bear got its wings clipped?

(P.S. Navy pilot with cigar. Boy in spiffy red shirt. Yellow Luscombe with windmill generator.)

Yes, the wings got clipped at the production break. Note; there were three aileron hinges. You wanted to keep at least two of them.

Just for reference. Everyone is commenting on my"spiffy" red shirt but hey! look at how clean my white tennis shoes were. Couldn't do that with a round motor!

[L.E.D.]

Re: Before it was Rare Bear

So I have a question.

Corky Meyer (I think) wrote about F8Fs having break away wing tips. The idea was that the wing could be lighter if it was made to break in a controllable way when certain G loads were reached.

My question is: is that breakaway point where the Bear got its wings clipped?

(P.S. Navy pilot with cigar. Boy in spiffy red shirt. Yellow Luscombe with windmill generator.)

[AAFO_WSagar]

Re: Before it was Rare Bear

Navy pilot with cigar. Boy in spiffy red shirt.

Don'tcha wish photographs could record the subject's thoughts at the time of exposure...

Having the world by the ass has to feel pretty damn good!

[Jan]

Re: Before it was Rare Bear

The canopy is the same one in both pictures, however here are two pictures of WAY before it was Rare Bear. At this point unbeknown to us a wreck was in Valparaiso waiting for someone to love it. There were a LOT of cigars around then.

Navy pilot with cigar. Boy in spiffy red shirt.

[BellCobraIV]

Re: Before it was Rare Bear

Intermediate stages...

The canopy is the same one in both pictures, however here are two pictures of WAY before it was Rare Bear. At this point unbeknown to us a wreck was in Valparaiso waiting for someone to love it. There were a LOT of cigars around then.

[wingman]

Re: Before it was Rare Bear

Intermediate stages...

[wingman]

Re: Before it was Rare Bear

Connor,

The stock canopy was used until the 1971 era, after that the first canopy modified was the "cut down shaped canopy" with the fibreglass rear section. Lyle didn't really like how much that canopy interfered with cockpit lighting and shadows, but it's what we had so no priority was set for it's replacement.


So after Reno 1972 the new all plastic canopy was made using the same windscreen as the previous one.

The shape was made by making a plaster piece and basically removing plaster where it didn't look right. There was one of the aerodynamic guys I think from Douglas that came by the hangar to look at it and he said that everyone had done a good job, he commented that the fineness ratio was ten times better than Darryl's little bubble canopy so we were all happy and the guy that made everybody else's canopies made that one as set from the plaster mold.

We would eventually in the 1980s replace that canopy due to age and sun damage from when the airplane sat outside after the belly landing in Mojave. That new canopy had an integral antenna on the inside rear surface which allowed us to remove the wire antenna and their resultant drag. At that point the area behind the canopy on the fuselage was built up slightly and the rear of the canopy frame modified to match, also at this point the rollers were replaced with Teflon slides that reduced the amount of rocking and play the canopy had making the whole assembly really tight.

That is the canopy story.

You know, John, that this is a pretty disappointing story. I've always really admired this canopy -- it is just so "right" -- it's a work of art. It has also gone 550 mph without complaint. I've always envisioned some genius in the Bear Brain Trust secretly planning out a magical shape just to show the Bolands and Greenamyers and Zeuschels of the world what a "touring canopy" could be.

So it turns out that the guys just crank out a low shape (why the solid rear portion anyway?) and fly it til it breaks. So then they use the old windscreen and mock up a new shape til it just "looks right". They then win multiiple Renos in various racing eras and set records and all sorts of stuff.

So it just looked right?

Neal

[BellCobraIV]

Re: Before it was Rare Bear

First flight day, I think, by Birch Matthews.

In flight -- a couple of years later, by Pete Behenna

Did you partake in the libations that night after the first flight, John? You would have been what age? 11 or so?

Neal

Neal,
I was 10 then. I still remember my Mom had bought Champagne for the celebration of the airplane's first flight. She wanted to crack one of the bottles on a propeller blade to christen the Able Cat....yeah, she was stopped, I did have a small cup. We drove out to Chino as did most of the people we knew. I remember that everyone was really upbeat as there were issues, but no major issues with the Cat.
John

[wingman]

Re: Before it was Rare Bear

The handful aspect is partially a frame of mind.

So the Jekyll and Hyde aspect was a mindset. I think after the first flight, there was probably a yellow sheet on things to fix. He probably talked to Cliff Putnam, Bill Hickle about the flight. We celebrated with champagne at Aero-Sport in Chino that night.

First flight day, I think, by Birch Matthews.

In flight -- a couple of years later, by Pete Behenna

Did you partake in the libations that night after the first flight, John? You would have been what age? 11 or so?

Neal

[BellCobraIV]

Re: Before it was Rare Bear

You got to admit, though, that we got some good mileage out of that Pete Behenna shot of the exhaust being welded up...

Absolutely! I'm trying to get deeper into the conversation about what we did, what worked, what didn't. I'm not trying to bash the new owner for what he did. Once upon a time someone was trying to get Lyle to criticize Rod for something they were doing on the Bearcat. Lyle just said, "He bought the airplane, it's his to do things with however he wants."

To be clear Rod wanted Lyle to be there in Reno for the races. He offered to send a jet down to Bakersfield and supply Lyle with rooms. The first year Lyle was in so much pain from a back injury, the second year he just had no desire to go back to Reno.

[wingman]

Re: Before it was Rare Bear

Let's take a second to align ourselves with what this thread is trying to accomplish. In the last couple of days we as a group participating in this thread have deviated from the concept of the thread.

You got to admit, though, that we got some good mileage out of that Pete Behenna shot of the exhaust being welded up...

[BellCobraIV]

Re: Before it was Rare Bear

John, do you have any recollection or know of what Lyle's comments were after the first flight in the airplane?

I'm just imagining what a thrill the early flights must have been like, the ultimate piston fighter with even more power... -Before the clipped wings, I imagine it was less of a handful?

The handful aspect is partially a frame of mind. Lyle did a couple of airshows where he did aerobatics in the airplane in the 1971 to 1974 era and enjoyed them. When Lyle was doing test flights out of Inyokern if he liked the way the airplane was running we could watch the purple stripe on the left wing swap to right to left to right to left. On more than one occasion he would lose our visual scan flying off towards the mountains and sneak back around going to a very low level and from the opposite direction than he'd been flying off inhe would "attack" us by flying over the old B-29 "A" bomb hangar just clearing it's roof. Once when we had towed the Bear out to the runway to save the brakes, he started the engine got ready to take off, he took off retracted the gear did one half of a Cuban 8 and buzzed us as we sat out there on the end of the runway. Lyle enjoyed the airplane, Skip took the Bear to the Paso Robles airshow. I got a phone call from friends of mine that were at the show and told me how awesome the aerobatic act Skip had done. So the Jekyll and Hyde aspect was a mindset.

I think after the first flight, there was probably a yellow sheet on things to fix. He probably talked to Cliff Putnam, Bill Hickle about the flight. We celebrated with champagne at Aero-Sport in Chino that night.

[CJAM427]

Re: Before it was Rare Bear

John, do you have any recollection or know of what Lyle's comments were after the first flight in the airplane?

I'm just imagining what a thrill the early flights must have been like, the ultimate piston fighter with even more power... -Before the clipped wings, I imagine it was less of a handful?