^^^Oh, Man...I'd forgotten about the wire guided airplanes!^^^^
My son would love that! He has a ton of little deals he has collected over the years.
I had a Stuka Dive Bomber with a third wire to drop a "bomb".
First time out, (I was about 12) dad finally got the .049 engine running. The instructions said to not open the carb needle more than x rounds. (Don't remember how many) Dad didn't think it was moving enough air so he gave it two more turns and let it go. That thing almost screwed me into the ground it was going so fast. On the third revolution I lost control. Went straight up and straight down when I tried to correct busting into many plastic pieces.
Mounted the little engine to a board and would start it occasionally. Finally gave it to a guy that had some of the wire guided planes.
Ha I remember when I was young the science class had a crock of mercury for experiments. We could stick our bare hand in it to feel the pressure, I brought sinkers from home to see them float on top of the mercury. And yes I remember the Mercury space program.
I went to a few open houses out there then, lived across Douglas Boulevard on 44th St.
Cousins lived on Steed. Being a farm boy every time a C-5 landed I ran outside their house and watched it go over. They thought it was funny as hell. I thought it was amazing!
Yea C5 went into service in '69. A few came to tinker for service but they were stationed at Altus. Quite often we would be out driving around east or south of Tinker and the windshield would get covered with fuel when they were practicing refueling close to town. Saw several crashes also. Heard a lot of sonic booms at 10 AM and 2 PM if I remember right
My dad and his brothers have all told me similar stories. The teacher used to let them handle it bare handed, well, until they got kicked out of that particular class for wrapping one of the lab tables in magnesium fuse wire and lighting it. As good as stuff was built back then, they said it just fell completely in half lol
I was just talking with my cousin about the sonic boom tests. He remembers the booms well. I've heard a few over my farm several times when they were doing those tests.
Yep those were the days, no weed eaters we used old scissors to trim grass around the house, was so tickled when Dad bought a used gas lawn mower. we had been using a push reel mower on 1 acre. Security wasn't to bad then and we could walk to the south end of the runway and get under the ALS and watch the planes come and go REAL close
