This morning, Cheryl and I forgot everything about cancer and headed off to Ellington Field, just South of Johnson Space Center in Houston to visit the Collings Foundation Viet Nam Aviation collection, home of the only privately owned F4D Phantom II fighter jet airplane still flying in the U.S. Supposedly the Iranians have a few still flying, but I do not want to try to confirm that!
Rick Harris, head of Acquisitions and Logistics, met us at the gate and gave us a tour of the foundations hangers where we saw an TA-4 Skyhawk, an F100 Super Saber, my baby, the F4D Phantom II, and a brand new, built from blue-prints made from an original ME 262 on display at Willow Grove Naval Air Station in Philadelphia, German ME-262, one of only 3 flying in the world. Sme folks believe that if Germany had gotten more of these in the air WWII might have had a different ending. Who knows.
Naturally, we spent most of our time climbing over, under and around my F4. My bucket list ride in that bird was our topic of conversation, and it will happen as soon as they get a few parts for one of the engines. We will do an hour ride out over the gulf, go right up against the speed of sound, honk around the sky a bit, then scare Cheryl with a few high speed passes over the field before bring her (the plane) back to mother earth. According to Rick, no one ever de-planed without a big grin plastered on his face! I plan on not breaking that tradition!
My F4 history
I have told parts of this history elsewhere in this blog, but the memories keep coming back, so I will tell a few more here.
First love
I fell in love with this plane while still in high school. I worked in the Falls Church Hobby Center and remember opening up a box of new plastic model kits and seeing one of the F4C I think. I thought "that thing just look so mean, it is beautiful". When I learned it was build by McDonnell Aircraft in St. Louis, my interest got even higher. My grandmother lived there. Maybe when we visited her I could get to see the plant and maybe even see a few of these in person. Know what, on my next trip, i did just that. While taxiing to the terminal, I could see F4s parked outside the plant, all waiting to fly off somewhere. I never got close enough though!
I remember drawing pictures of the F4 in art class. I even drew a formation of four of them flying over a background image of the Wright Brothers first flight at Kitty Hawk. I have that picture framed in my home office.
Off to college
When I graduated from high school, I wanted to be an aerospace engineer. So my parents scraped up enough money to get my tuition and books covered for one term at Virginia Tech, but I had to pay for my Corps of Cadets uniform, and I was short $250. I ended up borrowing money from a friend at the Hobby Center, (Phil, I owe you to this day, even though I paid you back right away!) But I had no money for a second term. So, I spent all available time trying to figure out how I was going to pay for any more schooling.
The Cooperative Engineering program offered a way to do just that. You worked in industry one term, them went to school one term. It took a four year program out to five years, but you earned enough to pay your way. Great! All I had to do was find an aerospace company that build a cool plane.
VPI had several candidates on the East coast. One that looked promising was Lockheed in Georgia, who was building the YF-12 spy plane. But I knew no one in Georgia, and that meant I would have to pay my own living expenses out of my earning, and that would mean I might not be able to pay for all my school expenses.
Just on a whim, I went to the Co-op office at Tech and asked them to call McDonnell in St Louis and ask if they had a Co-op program, and if so, if they would be interested in letting VPI join in. They did and McDonnell said they were interested, and yours truly was student number one in their new program. I started in September of 1965, living with my Grandmother, and banked all of my paychecks, (minus mad money) and started working in heaven for an aviation freak. Every morning, I rode the bus to within a mile of the plant, walked to the assembly line building, then walked down this line:
I climbed up the ladder and sat in the pilot's seat on more than a few of these, even eating breakfast (carefully) on several occasions. What fun.
Flight test
Two terms, I was assigned to Flight Test and got to monitor actual test flights run to test systems on planes before they were delivered to the services. I even got to write up the "Flight Test Results Memorandums" on those flights. On one test, they taxied out a plane for a rain removal test where the diverted engine exhaust gas through ducts across the front windshield and measured the temperatures across the glass while the engines were running all the way through full after-burner.
I got to sit in the pilot's seat with the canopy closed while a technician monitored instruments on a cart beside the plane while the test was running. Oh yeah, the tail hook was down and engages in a big steel hook buried in the end of the runway to keep the plane from blasting down the runway. Phooey.
Still, I got to sit in the beast, and play pilot. I got to hear the noise and feel the vibrations as two huge, powerful J-79 jet engines did everything in their power to hurl that plane down the 12500 feet of runway in front of the nose. Hey a kid can dream!
Sigh!
Then I got to sit in that bird, canopy up, while the technician towed the plane back to the hanger at the end of the test. It was a great day for a college kid!
This is my bird
As soon as they dig up the parts, I will be scheduling the ride in this ship. Jim Petty will be invited as my ground film crew, Cheryl will be there, and I will tear a few holes in the sky in this ship. This has been on my wish list since that first day in 1965 when I first walked down that assembly line at MacAir in St. Louis. It is time!
Cars, anyone?
Planes are not the only things I am interested in, how about old cars?
On the drive back from Houston, outside La Grange Texas, there is a Classic Car outfit that is always closed as we sail by. Today it was open, so we stopped. They had a wide range of interesting cars. In front they had a bunch of Thunderbirds from the 50s and 60s, a few Metropolitans, some 50s Chevrolet pickups. Inside, a 1964 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport 409 caught my eye. That was my first car. This one was red, mine was blue. Sorry to say, mine only had a 327, but otherwise, the same.
We talked to the owner about his business, which seems more like a hobby than a real business. Most of the cars are there on consignment, meaning they want a lot of money for them. There were some neat cars there, but I do not want to shell out $38,000 for that 64 Chevy (I should have kept mine!).
Home again
We finally got home after a great trip. The medical part was a huge success, and the side trip was a blast as well. Now we are trying to unwind enough to get back to work (ugh!)
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