Living in the Moment JIM BUSHA 20 FEBRUARY 2013
EAA WOA Member Profile John O Connor The best thing about aviation is the people. When I look back at my path in aviation I just thought that flying these warbirds were the greatest airplanes in the world. I never had a goal that I was going to fly a Corsair or a Mustang or in this case a Bearcat. I always live in the moment, I always enjoy the moment, and that s the best way to do this aviation stuff. Live in the moment and pick and choose good mentors. John O Connor John O Connor was certainly living in the moment when I tried to interview him during the 2012 Sun n Fun International Fly-In & Expo as he was fielding a myriad of questions from a large crowd of admirers while standing in front of his Bearcat. What is it? Did it really fly with the Blue Angels? Can it really beat a Mustang in a dogfight? What s it like to fly? Although John had heard these same questions dozens of times before, he acted as if he were hearing them for the very first time. He treated each person as if his question was the most important one ever asked. He realized early on in his warbird flying days that you need to show respect to all those who show interest in these treasures because you never know who you might be influencing to become the next warbird pilot. Standing beside a warbird was déjà vu for John because the same thing happened to him back in the mid-1980s when he was on the other side of the fence. Warbird Influences John got involved in flying shortly after high school. He had tried to get in the military to fly but was turned by Jim Busha warbird #5791 down because of astigmatism. Since then, I have had it corrected, but I always wanted to fly, he said. So as soon as I got enough money to go take lessons, I went off to an airport down in Crestwood, Illinois, and I started out in a 152 and then right away to a 172 and a 182. And I did my instrument checkout in a 210. I never wanted to go backwards; I got spoiled with higher horsepower. One day John found himself flying over Naperville, Illinois, in his 210 and looked down to see three T- 34s landing. That was the beginning of the end for John s Spam can flying days as his attention would soon turn to warbirds. I followed them down to a private field, he said, and I met a guy by the name of Gene Martin who was one of the founding fathers of www.warbirds-eaa.org 21
JIM ALLEN the Lima Lima T-34 group. Bill Sherman was there as well as Lou Drendel. Gene Martin looked at me and said, Well, you flew in a 210 and you got a pilot s watch. Why don t you buy a T-34 Mentor and we ll teach you formation flying? I thought, aw, this is pretty cool. The very next day, I met these fellows and ended up formation flying with them up to Janesville, Wisconsin, back in 86. After I landed, all I am thinking is this is more dangerous than I thought this is nuts. I am not going to do this. I went home that night and I thought about it. And next Sunday, guess what I did? I went up for another flight. And the next Sunday, I bought part of one of the planes and wound up with about 450 hours of flying with them in T-34s. After John scratched his itch with the T-34, he decided to upgrade to something bigger, badder, and that burned a heck of a lot more fuel! Suddenly I convinced myself that I got to buy myself something bigger. I BRADY LANE kind of went backwards. I got a T-28A model and I did a few hundred hours with that. That was a lot of fun, and I wound up formation flying with a young doctor that is now one of the premier T-28 pilots Dr. Ralph Glasser. He and I were novices back in the late 80s, early 1990s. I remember two particular flights in the T-28. One was when we were flying off a B-25 in Oshkosh. And, man, this is really hot stuff! It got me hooked on warbirds. But the second memorable flight is one of my most treasured. I am coming in over the Warbird Island at Oshkosh back in 89, and I call myself as a silver T-28. My buddy in the back seat says, O Connor, be careful. Look who is on your wing. I look and see two P-51 Mustangs, one being flown by WWII ace Bud Anderson, painted in his Old Crow former colors. I said to the guy in the back seat, This is my only chance to show these Mustang guys what a T-28 can do. I break to land, and I am on the ground before they are finished making their Mustang break. Later that evening we went and had a couple beers with them; that s when it hit me how great this warbird flying can be! John eventually wandered over to the tail wheel side of flying and after 22 FEBRUARY 2013
a thorough checkout by legendary air show pilot Gene Littlefield, he then purchased an SNJ-5 that he has owned for the last 15 years. But John still had an itch or two or three to scratch and wanted to continue to upgrade. His choice was in the fighter realm, and his first selection was a Mustang. Fighter Influence John knew it was now or never to go to the next level. He also knew that before he bought a Mustang, he had to find out all he could about flying them. John went out to see Dan Vance in Santa Rosa, California, and Dan agreed to check him out. When he looked at my logbook, he said, You actually got around 700 hours in a T-6? I said, yeah, something like that. He goes, Well you got a little problem, and Dan Vance in a typical Dan Vance style goes, Unless that s not true. I said, yeah, it s true, but it s over a lot of years. He puts me in Lady Jo and we went up and made three landings. On the final one he said, Yeah, you can fly it, but I want to see one other thing from you. Dan sets me up with a long approach, a long drag in approach. I flew it just like my mentors Linc Dexter, Gene Littlefield, and Rick Siegfried taught me how to fly I don t drag it in. All these guys were my teachers, and they taught me to keep the power up and don t drag the plane. Dan Vance did a wonderful job getting me to transition into a Mustang. From there I went to Lee Lauterback at Stallion 51 Corporation. Lee gave me a Mustang lead card and a wing card. Lee was another great mentor and taught me a lot, too. You can t get enough education. I mean, if you can afford to buy the plane, get the education, too, and be humble about it. John eventually purchased P-51D PAUL BOWEN PAUL BOWEN www.warbirds-eaa.org 23
BRADY LANE
BRADY LANE Mustang American Beauty and put over 250 hours on it before deciding he wanted a Corsair. John sold his Mustang to Chuck Greenhill and quickly snapped up from Frank Arrufat FG-1D Corsair Kathleen that was just freshly restored by John Lane. I got checked out in the Corsair by another great warbird mentor, Stu Dawson, and flew the Corsair all over the country. A short time later I received an offer I couldn t refuse, so I ended up selling it. Now I found myself out of fighters, but thankfully that was short lived when I purchased a F8F Bearcat from the Lone Star Flight Museum. Bearcat History John s Bearcat, N68RW, S/N 1217761, is an F8F-2 built by the infamous Grumman Ironworks in 1948. It was accepted by the Navy on November 11 and then delivered to Naval Air Station Alameda on December 2. After assignment to a number of Navy bases in the United States, this Bearcat was placed in long-term storage in 1953. The Lone Star Flight Museum in Texas obtained it from storage in Quantico, Virginia, in 1997 and performed a meticulous rescue and restoration, returning the Bearcat back to airworthy condition before John purchased it in 2011. One of the most unique features about this Bearcat according to John is its Blue Angel paint scheme. The Blue Angels actually flew the F6F Hellcat before switching over to the Bearcats in August of 1946. There were five Bearcats painted all blue with yellow trim like you see on mine and another one painted in reverse all yellow with blue trim that was nicknamed Beetle Bomb that was used to attack the main formation of Bearcats. The Navy continued to fly these propdriven fighters until replacing them with F9F Panther jets in 1949. When I bought the Bearcat it was already in Blue Angels colors, and I was really contemplating painting it in a shiny dark Navy blue paint scheme. I was concerned that the Blue Angels might take offense to it and think that I was misrepresenting them. Boy, was I ever wrong! I have flown at some of the same shows they were performing at, and all I get is adda boys and high fives from the pilots who are thrilled that someone is making sure their lineage is honored. So for now I guess I m going to keep the Blue Angel colors. Flying the Cat The Bearcat is much different than the other two fighters I have owned, 26 FEBRUARY 2013
Grumman F8F-2 Bearcat Crew One Wingspan 35 feet 6 inches Length 27 feet 6 inches Height 13 feet 10 inches Empty weight 7,650 pounds Maximum weight 13,460 pounds Engine 2,250-hp Pratt & Whitney R-2800-83AM4AD radial engine Propeller Aero Products Armament Four 20-millimeter M3 cannons Performance Maximum speed 455 mph Service ceiling 40,800 feet Range 2,200 miles Climb 6,300 feet per minute Avionics Garmin GNS-430 GPS/comm/nav King KTR-905 Gold Crown comm King KXP-755 transponder Encoder Options Smoke system Halon fire system Drop tank (150 gallons) Cargo baggage compartment in aft fuselage by Jean Barbaud http://jeanbarbaud.blogspot.com John said. The Mustang has a boiler in it a radiator, and from that aspect it is more sensitive. The Corsair has a radial engine, and it s a little more bulletproof in some regard. It doesn t overheat. The Mustang needs 5 degrees of rudder trim to take off. You are putting a lot of trim to keep that thing tracking straight. The Corsair is 7 degrees of rudder trim. Now the Corsair is similar to Bearcat, same engine, R-2800, but the Corsair is over 3,000 pounds heavier. So when you look at the Bearcat, you think, wow, that thing is going to have a lot of torque. That aircraft takes zero aileron trim and zero rudder trim to take off, and it takes off like an elevator. We are at Pensacola, and I got a Helldiver behind me. And I got Dave Falk in his Corsair ahead of me, and I am in the middle. Dave takes off, gets up in www.warbirds-eaa.org 27
the air, gear up, and Dave s flying. The Helldiver pilot puts his head down thinking I am going to take eight one thousand to take off, same kind of plane, same engine, R-2800. The Helldiver pilot later told me he counted one one thousand and looked up, and there was air under my tires. And I said, well, yeah, I had a little head wind. He says, You went up in like 150 feet, and I go, Oh yeah, if I got a head wind, it just jumps in the air, and I said, You got to get the gear up right away, or it goes past 140 knots and the gear won t go up. And he says, I couldn t believe it. You almost got the Corsair. That s what spoils you about the Bearcat. As far as getting inside the cockpit, the Mustang is the easiest one to get into. The Corsair, especially the original one, is kind of hard because they didn t make that ergonomically easy to get into. The Bearcat s not too bad, but it takes a little bit of athletic effort to get into. So you get in the Bearcat, first thing you do, you look at your left side. You check everything for trim. Make sure you got the trim right because you might have taken off and landed and had the trim way down. So you check all your controls, and you look all over. Make sure you got your tank on, your fuel off. You look at your other side, you look at your avionics, and you look at everything. Now you are about ready to get serious. You turn on your battery. And you turn off or unlock your oil valve so you got oil going to your engine. So now you do a pre-oil and wait until you get some pretty good oil pressure. Now you are ready to go and bump some blades. Turn on the fuel pump, get the fuel pump going, and you go and have your mixture all the way back, throttle all the way back. Some of them you might crack a little bit, but you don t need them all the way back on this one. The Corsair had three-quarters of an inch cracked, or it just doesn t want to start. So you got everything back except the props; you go and you tickle the primer just one little tick. Got the prop going through, let it go a couple of blades, turn the mag on, let it go a couple of blades, turn the mag on, zip, bang starts very easy. Now you are ready to go and taxi after about eight to 10 minutes. Out to the runway and you lock the tail wheel. If you don t lock the tail wheel, you re in a little bit of trouble. You make sure your oil coolant door is open and check your controls and get everything all set. As you re heading down the runway you close the cowl flaps to trailing; you don t want them open all the way on takeoff, and you push that power up. And you make sure this is the hardest thing of a Bearcat that you friction-lock it really, really tight; because if it s not really tight, it takes off and you re almost doing an aerobatic routine on your climb out. Your propeller and throttle want to retard and shake backwards. So here you are, a novice pilot, taking off in the Bearcat, and you re pushing all your controls back up because they are falling down on you. You need that hand to get the gear up, and if the gear doesn t get up by 140, it doesn t go up. That gear is designed like the German fighters. One-piece gear and it s really big. And it s really impressive, but it s not too heavy of a wing load; so the first thing you do in a Bearcat is you get positive rate of climb. You get that gear up because you will be going through 140 knots real quick. That s your magic number, so you got to be real careful. That s probably the most important thing on the Bearcat is that the throttle lock is set so you re not messing with that; you don t have time to mess with that, and that s the novice mistake you can t afford to make. Now all you got to do is get that BRADY LANE gear up right away and you re golden. Reset your manifold reset your prop for cruise climb, and now it s just another T-28 or T-6, but it flies really fast. You start coming downhill, close the oil coolant door, and you see 350 knots before you know it. That s the one thing I realize between the Bearcat and the Mustang and the Corsair it just comes downhill and gets speeds so much quicker. You really got to watch it. The Mustang picks up speed and it s beautiful. And it s elegant and everything, and the Mustang is visceral; it makes more noise, like a steam engine coming downhill. The Bearcat is just slippery. The Bearcat doesn t sound quite the same, but all of a sudden it sounds a little bit more like a jet. For me flying the Bearcat is the best of all the propeller airplanes I have flown. So what does the future hold for John O Connor? Well I m sure it will involve a warbird. I might try some bombers. I might try something different. I am also heavily involved in both the Christopher Reeve Foundation and the next- Steps program. We actually race these warbirds at Reno for both these foundations, and it is not only my passion but an honor to be associated with them. The best thing about aviation is the people, and I have been fortunate in my life to surround myself with the greatest bunch of people in the world warbird pilots! Bearcat Specs Grumman delivered the first production F8F-2 in October of 1947, and production ceased on May 31, 1949, with a total of 282 F8F-2s being manufactured by Grumman. Most of the F8F-2 Bearcats ended up with Navy and Marine Corps squadrons during 1948 with 24 squadrons equipped with F8Fs (F8F-1, F8F-1B, and F8F-2), but when the jet age zoomed in, the shelf life of the Bearcat became limited. A few Bearcats unfortunately were modified into a less desirable role as dronedesignated F8F-1Ds and F8F-2Ds. 28 FEBRUARY 2013