Hello Mooney friends,
Last week the National Museum of the US Air Force had the public unveiling of the restored Memphis Belle B-17. As a part of the public spectacle three functional B-17s came in to town to land at the historic Wright Field next to the museum. The big fly-in was to be the 3 Fortresses escorted by 5 Mustangs. Of course there would be a lot of cameras on the ground but in order to get a unique vantage point I volunteered to fly a museum photographer in a formation with the warbirds. It was a good plan and I made it work.
This was my second photo shoot with my new Mooney and I can say it did really good. It was everything my IO-360 had to form up with these guys but she did me proud.
In order to set up my F model for photo work I installed a Great Lakes passenger window with the large vent opening. That combined with some strategic flying makes it so we can do some real good air-to-air photography. The airplane is very maneuverable and makes flying formation pretty easy. There are definitely limitations but I think it works out good. I am looking forward to doing more photo work like this.
On Wednesday Bill (the photographer) and I escorted the formation of bombers and fighters into the show in less than ideal weather conditions. We were only able to make one pass by the crowd (I tried to stay away from the show line) and the planes did not land on the field. On Thursday we gave it another shot and I flew in with the Yankee Lady and a a group of three mustangs on my tail. After checking off from Yankee Lady I went south to try to join up with Aluminum Overcast but never saw her. I hung by the show to get some pictures of the ground activities.
Just being able to fly with these guys was amazing but to get the great pictures we got was icing on the cake. The museum is very grateful and cited me along with Bill for the photos.
I have included two shots here for you but there are more on the museum's Facebook page. The photographer is Bill McCuddy.
Gerbil