Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: 1sum41 on November 08, 2011, 11:52:41 PM
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Hey all, I was wondering how many of us were members of the Commemorative Air force. I am currently active in the Devil Dog B25j squadron. :salute
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I liked the old name before they were forced to change it. :mad:
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I liked the old name before they were forced to change it. :mad:
Yea PCness is so goofy now a days....
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Hey all, I was wondering how many of us were members of the Commemorative Air force. I am currently active in the Devil Dog B25j squadron. :salute
if i were a member, i'd have ended that membership when they changed name from the confederate air force.
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My dad and I both were, he flew a few of the trainers, as did I. I ended my membership when they were bought out by, Fina gas, and Bill Hobby and moved from Harlingen. My dad is a life member, but he does not associate with them much, except for the guys in our QB hangars. I still go to the Brownsville hangars air shows, but I don't fly with them, they want way too much money. It has changed a lot since the guys like Loyd Nolan, lefty Gardner, and the original members either died or left. I flew another museums aircraft to an airshow, and they did treat us pretty well when we went.
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He means the Confederate Air Force :D
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Confederate or commemorative either way. It's still an awesome orginazition. It gave me the opportunity to log time in a B25.
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Hey all, I was wondering how many of us were members of the Commemorative Air force. I am currently active in the Devil Dog B25j squadron. :salute
I'm a CAF member and a new-ish (maybe still the newest) member of the Southern California Wing, hangared out at Camarillo Airport.
http://cafsocal.com/ (two new videos posted on it this week of our Zero and Stang)
Come on out any day but Mondays (we're closed), museum hangar hours are 10-4, the maintenance/restoration hangar is usually open and alive on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and the airport has a cafe nearby and in walking distance incase you're ever there but don't have the wheeles to get somewhere to grab a bite to eat. I'm usually there every Saturday (this comming scenario though will likely put a dent in my afternoon schedule for a few weeks). I recommend Saturdays personaly, usually there's some excuse (or patron purchasing a ride) to paddle at some air with something.
I liked the old name before they were forced to change it. :mad:
:rofl :lol Typical of you ol' duffers and that coffee you all sit around drinking all day long in the O'club.
if i were a member, i'd have ended that membership when they changed name from the confederate air force.
Thanks for your continued and unfaultering support. :aok (and you wonder why we don't have or care for more B-38s :rolleyes: )
My dad and I both were, he flew a few of the trainers, as did I. I ended my membership when they were bought out by, Fina gas, and Bill Hobby and moved from Harlingen. My dad is a life member, but he does not associate with them much, except for the guys in our QB hangars. I still go to the Brownsville hangars air shows, but I don't fly with them, they want way too much money. It has changed a lot since the guys like Loyd Nolan, lefty Gardner, and the original members either died or left. I flew another museums aircraft to an airshow, and they did treat us pretty well when we went.
Indeed, things change over time, least of which in the past couple decades is the cost of AvGas. The membership isn't cheap, I do agree and I did hesitate over making the plunge the first time. But I quickly overcame that hesitation when I realised one critical thing. You should look at the current going cost of 30-minute or 60-minute rides in the birds that are able/capable of doing so in - our annual membership is a fraction of that 30 or 60-minute time slot, and the costs of those rides, with volunteer pilots and personel, barely makes any (if there even is any) profit for the hangar after the expenses... cheap, no, but only a waste if you stay at home.
Out of time today, we're restoring a PBJ-1J (Navy B-25J) in our hangar that has some story behind it I think, I'll have to ask around for more of it though.
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http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,321946.msg4222955.html#msg4222955
^^ You don't want to know how much that unanticipated cost is gonna be likely dinging the budget this year, besides adding to the list of static display pieces atm.
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I signed up when it was still the "Confederate Air Force". :)
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Personally I think the name 'Commemorative Air Force' shows more pride in our historic warbirds
than their old name 'Confederate Air Force' did.
I think the 'new' name is more fitting, but that's just me.
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Very cool bab. Our B25 is a pbj1j. From vmb 612.
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Personally I think the name 'Commemorative Air Force' shows more pride in our historic warbirds
than their old name 'Confederate Air Force' did.
I think the 'new' name is more fitting, but that's just me.
Also good to consider what the organization, museums and hangars are gonna be (and stocked with) like in another 20, 40 and 60 years down the road.
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Oh I know how much it is to fly the birds, it ain't cheap to run even a 180 Lyc any more, but it is also the politics that are involved in it. If you are checked in the bird, let's say a PT-22, you have paid for your own fuel, and have done most of the work on it. The airshow comes up, and someone from a larger hanger that is better known than the poor slob who has been maintaining it, and flying it, well then it becomes, "hey thanks for all the work that you have done, all the fuel you have spent to fly this thing every two weeks or so. So the engine doesn't set and rust, but Mr. Williams, who by the way hasn't flown anything smaller than a 767 wants to fly it. Wy don't you go volunteer at the food court, and we will let you fly it after the show is over,,,,,,, next weekend." It has happened, and it will continue to happen, and their insurance costs will continue to go up, until they quit letting airline captains check out in anything that they can afford to pay for. The CAF is already having troubles getting insurance for this exact reason. You can not let a jet pilot, no matter how many hours he has, or how much money he has, fly the big torque birds, with a 5 minute ride in a T-6 or an SNJ. When the chips are down and he gets himself into trouble he well revert to shoving the power forward, with his feet flat on the floor. Or like the instance with the crash of the F4f a few years ago. The F4f pilot was flying formation with the B-25 and made a 360 to give spacing, the aircraft stalled in a turn, and spun in. When the smoke cleared and all the investigations were done, the MIXTURE was all the way back, and the Throttle was all the way forward.
Another instance was the PBY that went in in the bay east of the Port Mansfield cut. They were trying to get some aerial photos of the plane with some spray, a plane that takes 4 feet of water, the bay barely has that in some spots. They let down in cruise, flew it onto the water, hit a post that was just below the water, caved in the nose gear door, the plane opened up like a tin can. It killed everyone on board, the only two guys rated to fly the plane were in the back, two pilots that had no sea plane time were flying. If someone that had a rating and was checked in the plane was in the front seat, maybe they would have flown another 10 minutes out into the gulf of Mexico and not killed everyone.
The CAF is a good organization, do not get me wrong, I love what they are doing. I do not make enough money to join, sponsor, and fly with them, much less to make all the bribes, and palm greasing that you have to do, to get far enough up the ladder to make the changes that need to be made. I have been flying tail-wheel planes since I was 14. I love flying them, more than milkstools any day, and there are less and less conventional pilots every year, they need conventional gear pilots, and not airline captains. The problem is that most people that are qualed on the old conventional gear planes can't afford to be involved with the CAF, they have priced themselves out of pilots. Just my two cents, maybe 4.
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It varies wing to wing and hangar to hangar and group of people to group of people. Given your experiences, and assuming you have even a mild to average tollerance for the occasional BS that just happens and is outside your control, I'd go find better people somewhere with a better hangar.
Quality of communication and the quality of the people you're communicating with say a lot about any organization. I know at our hangar when I first showed up, there was an individual pilot who when at first I was introduced to him other members at the hangar shared the opinion that this person spent too much time flying the ac and doing nothing else, but that they had recently had a polite chat with him about their concerns. (And just to put in comparison, this person's experience/career and flight time would negate a commercial airline pilot with 30-years experince to oil-pan washing detail - so you wouldn't really expect them to do too much of the dirty work around the hangar, but still just something like walk the wings while tuging.) Not 30-minutes later, when I next saw this individual, him and one other member were hand washing and buffing the dirtiest plane in the maintenance hangar, prop to tail. Since I first met him, the other member's negative opinion of this person's character and work ethic has never been raised again, and I never formed a negative one to begin with.
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I'm a CAF member and a new-ish (maybe still the newest) member of the Southern California Wing, hangared out at Camarillo Airport.
http://cafsocal.com/ (two new videos posted on it this week of our Zero and Stang)
Thanks for your continued and unfaultering support. :aok (and you wonder why we don't have or care for more B-38s :rolleyes: )
Nothing personal, but "Scatterbrained Kid" the CAF P-38, sat in a hangar for nearly two decades after they cracked it up, and before they changed their name.
In all honesty, I find it very troubling how many of their aircraft have ended up in pieces at the bottom of a smoking hole in the ground for what often later turn out to be maintenance problems.
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Scatterbrain kid was totally pilot error. The original pilot for it, Jimmy Delahusey was killed in a 310 when he penetrated a level 3 at night. The new pilot that they threw into the cockpit, lost an engine on takeoff, instead of aborting the takeoff he decided to pick it, below controllable airspeed and it went over on it's back and rolled up in a ball. This was 4 air shows after my mom had flown with Jimmy Del, while he and Lefty were doing their thing. My mom like flying with Jimmy Del because he did not do any real hard aerobatics in Scatterbrain. Jimmys wife had told my mom that there was a roll of cotton under the jump set to plug her ears. Mom had put it in but it was bugging her so she pulled it out, just as Jimmy cranked the left engine. To this day my mom says that is the prettiest sound in the world. My mom and dad crewed on Scatterbrain for years before Jimmy got killed. On that note it was the new guys 2nd or 3rd flight in it.