Homebuilder's Workshop - October 2011
Vance AFB, Oklahoma
By Ed Wischmeyer
Ninety minutes north of Oklahoma City by car is Vance AFB in Enid, Okla., where my nephew recently got his Air Force pilot wings.
Leon Vance was a native of Enid – the Air Force folk refer to them as “Enoids” – and a WWII bomber pilot who won the Congressional Medal of Honor. The transport plane bringing him home was lost over the North Atlantic, after he survived a harrowing and heroic ditching of his B-24. But the relationship between Air Force and community is deeper than that – the citizens of Enid bought a wheat field and donated that for the then Army Air Corps to build a training base.
Wheat? In Oklahoma? Yes. Enid actually has the world’s third largest wheat storage capacity, and a grouping of maybe 30 concrete silos is referred to by the pilots as “the battleship.” This year, though, the drought is ferocious and this July was a contender for being the hottest month ever. Cloud bases were at 9,000 feet and the 25-knot wind did no cooling but only parched those out on the 100-plus degree flightline. Coming back into the air-conditioned flight ops building, there is a large fan at chest level to help you cool off.
Vance AFB hosts three kinds of trainers – the T-6 “Texan II” (what an unimaginative name. You’d think that the folks at Army Air Corps II could think of something better); the venerable T-38 which first flew in 1959, the year that my ancient Cessna was built; and the T-1, known in civilian circles as the Beechjet. Everybody starts in the T-6, and then, giving the best students first choice, the tracks are assigned: T-38 for the fighter and bomber pilots, T-1 for the tanker / transport pilots. And of course, those latter two are referred to (as ungraciously as possible) as gas passers and trash haulers.
I’m told that the T-38 is a hot jet only in one sense – its air-conditioning is pretty minimal. It certainly looks odd to see them taxi in 100-plus degree weather with the canopies open, but that’s the cooler alternative. Low-level training missions are apparently not much fun in high temperatures. And the plane is underpowered too, a notion that we two-bladed propeller folks may not be entirely sympathetic to.
Vance normally has three runways open, and each aircraft type nominally has their own runway. But with one runway closed for repairs, the T-6s stay on their short runway, the runway only they can use, and the T-38s and T-1s alternate hours on the other runway. The sky is filled with airplanes to two effects: one – it’s very clear that training is the mission of this busy base; and two – if you hear an airplane overhead, you probably know what it is and don’t need to look up. There’ll be another along shortly.
I got a personal tour of the flightline and got to look inside a T-6 cockpit, not all that impressive with the electronics turned off; and I got to fly a T-38 fixed base simulator. I did kind of okay, and we’ll attribute this to a compressed timetable and no pre-flight briefing. The T-38 is not all that easy to land, I’m told, and final approach speed is 164 knots, only a little slower than the cruise speeds of the Bumblebee Cessna and the AirCam combined.
Graduation was a nice 90-minute ceremony, and family members were encouraged to come up front and take pictures of the new pilot. There were 25 graduates: 15 T-1 pilots, and 10 T-38 pilots, of whom two were Italian and one was from Iraq. (He’s to be the first Iraqi F-16 pilot). Later that night was a banquet, and the relieved tension was obvious among the happy graduates.
I had my chance at Air Force OCS, but I chose grad school at MIT. Am I jealous? Of course I am, but my body instead has aged to the point where I’d probably have tremendous difficulties doing all that my nephew will be doing, like pulling more than nine Gs in the F-22. I really wouldn’t mind trying out the F-22 at 6 Gs, though.
AirVenture
Had to leave Oshkosh early this year for reasons you just read about. Got to meet old friends, some of whom have impressive credentials and I was honored to be with them.
Maybe I’m getting jaded, or maybe there wasn’t that much new aeronautical. There was an LSA legal aerobatic plane, and the pilot explained that they weren’t going to kit it because it cost almost as much to put out a kit version as a fully assembled version. Besides, he said, this plane was high tech. Hmm, thought I, looking at the pop-riveted aluminum wings, what’s high tech? He patiently explained that the wing was high tech because it was a 9 G wing – 9 G ultimate and 6 G design load. Right thought I, that tells me all I need to know.
I did have dinner with Ken Krueger, all around good guy and chief engineer at Van’s Aircraft. He told me, on the record, that they are working on a new airplane. It is a twin engine, turbine, biplane canard that is aerobatic. And amphibious. You read it here first.
The antiques were way down in attendance this year, and some of that may have been due to a line of storms across Illinois about even with Chicago. Those storms blocked arrivals from the eastern half (by population) of the country. Too bad, for the antiques are, I think, the most photogenic airplanes on the field.
The big news from Garmin is that they have slashed prices on the G3X series to gain market share, as the smaller manufacturers were eating their lunch in that market. They’ve also announced some price cuts in electronic database subscriptions. As I’ve noted before, electronic data is now so expensive that you can go for the $100 hamburger without even having to go to the airport.
Tom Poberezny surprised people by announcing his retirement. His whole career has been at EAA, and I’ve got to believe that it was a tough ride for him, what with all the conflicting egos and opinions he dealt with. EAA is now a major force in the aviation world, especially because of AirVenture, and much of that happened on his watch. I wish him well.
