My Crazy Buddy Bob

[Perknose]

Blog.Perknose.com:

My buddy Bomber Bobby B. is a balls to the wall kind of guy. We go back a long, long, long way. While he may well have had nine lives like a cat, he's probably used up most of them by now.

Some years ago, we were both thinking of getting ultralight airplanes. I've long been intrigued by the ease of entry (relatively low cost and little regulation) and freedom of being up there where the air is rare that they afford.

Long story short, he got one, I held off . . . not that he hasn't harassed me on a consistent basis to get one myself. How did he get his? Why, with the insurance money he got for being hit by a truck while on his motorcycle and nearly dying, that's how!

Needless to say, his endlessly forgiving wife Wendy was not amused. However, you soon learn not to get between what Bob and what he wants.

He's tried multiple times to get me to go along with him to flying meets in different parts of the country, and he regularly sends me pics and stories of his flights, which do make the sport ever more tempting. But so far, I've demurred, perhaps wisely.

Well, hey, true to his gonzo path through life, he just survived a crash (his second, btw.) Here's the email I got, delivered with his distinctive lack of proper grammar, which I asked him to send me after his phone call telling me same:

I was only minutes from crossing the Delaware when she quit Saturday at Fort Mott State Park at Pennsvillle NJ yesterday. My SOP is to cross the
Delaware at the Fort Mott island which is my designated for a forced landing LZ for crossing in the middle so I can stay at safe altitude as there is a of big boy traffic. When the 503 started losing power more throttle didn't help and I knew I was going down.

I got her in to a corn field that had been harvested next to the park and I blew on the forced landing. I haven't practiced one in over a year and if I had I could have gotten her down without damage if I done it Wright as I was up at 1500 and could have over flown the field and turned around and landed instead of forcing her in with a forward slip. The speed generated from going in almost was to much for making the field and how I lost the nose wheel . It was a long push to getting her out of the field. As I got out of the cockpit someone was yelling if I was alright which I yelled back yes. Soon afterward me and 2 others pushed the GT out of the field of a good 300 yds.

Doesn't look like the forward boom tube is damaged where the nose wheel got nocked off. I have several inches left of the nose wheel coming out of the pod and it turns smooth so the boom tube might be OK. Next weekend the pod comes off and I will see for sure if the nose wheel damaged the boom tube when it came off.. I have 2" of the fork for the wheel is there and it turns smooth.. >)

My best girl really bailed me out and drove a 24 box truck to haul my GT back home.. she is the best. Thanks Wendy!

Keep flying for those lading zones..and practice your engine outs at a field open at both ends where you can get up and turn her off and practice circling for a save (safe) landing!

Bob's a fearlessly fun guy, the kind of guy you'd be glad to share a foxhole with . . . literally. He regularly falls for right-wing, pseudo-patriotic chain e-mails, which he diligently sends me, after which I call him up and chew him out in an attempt to set him straight.

But, seriously, nothing could really come between our friendship, which was forged in the crucible of hell long, long ago.

I batch downloaded his pics of this incident to google+ and made them "public." I'm too lazy to do more.

Still might get me an ultralight one of these days, I dunno.

/End blog. ()

 

[CPA]

The most surprising part of this tale is your friendship with someone who leans to the right.

Take a risk, get one.

 

[Perknose]

The most surprising part of this tale is your friendship with someone who leans to the right.

Take a risk, get one.

Lol, you don't know me that well, do you . . . even from my posts here.

I've mentioned several of my "legacy" friends in my posts many more times than once. Case in point.

As for getting an ultralight, it's most certainly not about any risk -- it's more about the time sink. You buy an expensive toy (like a boat), you can get overly wed to it, you know?

Still might do it at some point, though. But I would want an open cockpit one (Bob's is enclosed), and, ideally, some sort of gyrocopter-like thing that I could feasibly land (and take off from) in my (2 and 1/2 acre) backyard -- but that might be beyond the land of the possible.

 

[CPA]

Lol I'll admit that most of what I know about you comes from P&N.

As in any hobby, there less the risk of becoming overly we'd to it. However, by not doing it you also have the worse risk of regretting the decision not to.

 

[Perknose]

Lol I'll admit that most of what I know about you comes from P&N.

Yeah, I often wish P&N never happened. To me, it sets up a BS ideological divide between people who would otherwise find much to resonate with in each other.

As in any hobby, there less the risk of becoming overly we'd to it. However, by not doing it you also have the worse risk of regretting the decision not to.

And, yeah, there is that -- the road not taken.

I wouldn't necessarily need or want to take huge, long-distance, fuel stop flights like Bob does with his fellow enthusiasts. I just want to get up -- not even that high up -- with the birds and such with nothing between me and them, and to be able to look down on the land around me, with that "bird's-eye" view. It smells like small-scale freedom to me.

But I really would like something I could take off from and land right in my own back yard, rather than having to drive somewhere to where I'm paying to have my airborne apparatus ensconced.

Meanwhile, more regulation of ultralights will almost certainly be coming down the pike, which may make my personal dream of flying out of my backyard unobtainable, or at least exponentially more complicated.

Case in point: Bobby told me on the phone that a park ranger arrived on the scene of his crash, as it was on or next to a state park. Luckily, the guy turned out to be an aviation enthusiast.

He pointed to Bobby's twin fuel tanks and said, "Those are both 5 gallon tanks, right?" Bobby said, "Sure!" They were obviously 15 gallon tanks, which are apparently illegal w/o further regulation or some such.

 

[Perknose]

I thought this was yet another endlessly forwarded, right-wing rant of the type my buddy likes to spam me with, but this one brought a smile to my face:

What a terrific - true story!!!

This story is confirmed in Elmer Bendiner's book, The Fall of Fortresses.
*Sometimes, it's not really just luck.*

Elmer Bendiner was a navigator in a B-17 during WW II. He tells this story of a World War II bombing run over Kassel, Germany, and the unexpected result of a direct hit on their gas tanks.

"Our B-17, the Tondelayo, was barraged by flak from Nazi antiaircraft guns. That was not unusual, but on this particular occasion our gas tanks were hit."

Later, as I reflected on the miracle of a 20 millimeter shell piercing the fuel tank without touching off an explosion, our pilot, Bohn Fawkes, told me it was not quite that simple. On the morning following the raid, Bohn had gone down to ask our crew chief for that shell as a souvenir of unbelievable luck.

The crew chief told Bohn that not just one shell but 11 had been found in the gas tanks. 11 unexploded shells where only one was sufficient to blast us out of the sky. It was as if the sea had been parted for us. A near-miracle, I thought.

Even after 35 years, so awesome an event leaves me shaken, especially after I heard the rest of the story from Bohn.

He was told that the shells had been sent to the armorers to be defused. The armorers told him that Intelligence had picked them up. They could not say why at the time, but Bohn eventually sought out the answer. Apparently when the armorers opened each of those shells, they found no explosive charge. They were as clean as a whistle and just as harmless.

Empty? Not all of them! One contained a carefully rolled piece of paper. On it was a scrawl in Czech. The Intelligence people scoured our base for a man who could read Czech. Eventually they found one to decipher the note. It set us marveling. Translated, the note read:

*"This is all we can do for you now...
Using Jewish slave labor is never a good idea."*

 

[skyking]

Both cool stories.
One of my instructors started out in ultralights, and had some funny stories. The best was carefully folding your chart so you could read it, then losing it back through the propeller. They were open cockpit ultralights.

 

[disappoint]

Build a solar powered ultralight:

Or this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSwijLbfjPY#t=80