Airborne Hot Rods

Thanks to the HAMB I found out about the gathering of P-51 Mustangs at Rickenbacker Field in Ohio last weekend. Left Indy at O' dark 30 on Sunday morning and headed over there. I did not realize that the Mustang deal was part of a big arse air show until we got close and there was traffic all over the place. The $25 ticket price hurt a little but the pain quickly went away when we found a near endless line of P-51's and lots of other cool fly guy stuff too. Before I left Indy I bought a 1 gig card for the digital camera so it was no problem to blast off around 125 photos while drooling over the stuff on the ground and in the air. Here are a few of the photos.

Roo

 

Thanks for sharing, I love that stuff.

 

Very cool rooman! More please! What's that #38?

 

very cool..love those p 51's...rooster

 

Was that Aircobra able to fly or was it just on static display?

 

post some more here is the original thread hope more people post pictures


http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=211527

 

Wow. Those things are just amazing!! Thanks for sharing, Rooman!

Malcolm

 

wow. i love airplanes....someday, i'll have one.

 

Thanks for the pics! Can you share some more?

#38 AKA Precious metal is a Real Hot Rod Mustang air racer.
Back in the 80's while I was still working on aircraft they tried to
set a piston powered airspeed record with her. Bunch of big blue
bottles behind the seat and all. Think they set the record one way
and then blew a oil hose on the return. Engine oil pressure controls
the pitch on the counter rotating prop,so as it was losing oil pressure
the prop blades were also flattening out sending the rpm to the moon
till it kicked all 12 rods. Now it already had the outer couple feet of
wing chopped off for speed and now had six prop blades
windmilling in the breeze like a big ole airbrake. Still somehow he
managed to deadstick that bitch with a glide ratio like the
space shuttle back to the runway (Iirc he took out a couple
runway lights in the process). Stored it in the hangar where I
worked for a long time after that. I scored a piece of that Rolls
Royce crankcase and part of a rod as a trophy...

 

model started as a p-39 but evolved into a p-63 kingcobra is it's name,

that is the first picture BELL p-63A aircobra


the plane is airworthy and here is it's warbird registry page
http://www.warbirdregistry.org/p39-p63registry/p63-4269021.html




to tie a bunch of these threads together the aircobra was a rear engine with the prop shaft running up the tunnel between the pilots legs, who but BUD ANDERSON he flew these p-39's before they moved to mustangs p-51 and BUD"S plane was the OLD CROW

in honor of that there was many threads about the OLD CROW belly tanker built and shown on the HAMB


to quote BUD,
its engine behind the cockpit, and the propeller drive shaft running between the pilot's legs. It had a tricycle landing gear, unlike anything in our arsenal except the P-38. And the cockpit was more like a car's, with a door instead of a swing-up or sliding canopy, and windows that actually rolled up and down with a crank. You could taxi the thing while resting your elbows on the sill, like cruising the boulevard on a Saturday night.


i think there is the beginning of "CRUISING"in your hotrod started

 

I think that the 4 bladed prop would make it a Kingcobra
(Allison-powered) and that the Aircobra was Continental powered
and had a 3 bladed prop. I could be wrong though as I seem to
recall they made a shitload of different models, maybe even
Merlin powered. I do remember reading somewhere that they
had the quickest roll rate of ANY WWII fighter....

 

you mean this engine