Post by jetmex on Jul 30, 2004 10:32:59 GMT -7
From this morning's paper--some neat goings on in Oshkosh. He is from Texas, of course!! ;D
ANGLETON - Bruce Bohannon peered out of the yawning door of the hangar next to his mobile home and watched as a skunk lazily ambled across the grass runway.
Bohannon's Flyin' Tiger Field, on a gravel road north of Angleton, seemed a very long way from the world of record-breaking aviation.
But at high noon on Saturday, weather permitting, Bohannon, 46, plans to point the long nose of the little airplane he calls the Exxon Flyin' Tiger almost straight up into the thin air above the country's biggest annual aviation gathering at Oshkosh, Wis., and go higher than any American has ever gone in a propeller-driven, piston-powered airplane.
The American record of 47,910 feet was set by an Air Force crew in a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber over Guam in 1946 — a dozen years before Bohannon was even born. To make it official, Bohannon needs to beat the old record by at least 3 percent (49,347 feet), but he wants to make it to 50,000.
"I like nice round numbers," he said with his customary grin.
Bohannon, who grew up in Alvin, has been around airplanes most of his life. He started working at an airfield as a kid and was flying crop planes at 19. He's flown corporate aircraft and raced planes. He started going for records to get sponsors to pay him to fly.
Breaking records is nothing new for him. In the past decade he has set 33 national or world records. He holds all the world time-to-altitude records (for 3,000, 6,000, 9,000 and 12,000 meters) in his plane's classification — piston engine aircraft weighing 1,102 to 2,205 pounds. He holds all of those records for any size piston airplane except the 3,000 meters.
"My dream is to get them all," he said. "I'd love to say this is the fastest climbing airplane in the world."
One of a kind
Bohannon's tiny plane could easily sit in the shade beneath a B-29's wing. It started life as a kit for a two-place plane called a Van's RV-4, but Bohannon and his technical crew have beefed it up so that it's become something unique.
There's a bigger tail to help control it in the almost nonexistent atmosphere up where the records live. The nose is longer to accommodate a supercharged and highly modified six-cylinder engine. The wheel struts are longer to keep the bigger prop from digging into the ground.
It's got a snazzy, tiger-stripe paint job in honor of ExxonMobil, his main sponsor. The logos of other sponsors festoon the tail area like a NASCAR racer.
The snug cockpit that Bohannon squeezes his 6-foot-2-inch frame into sits farther back than the original. "I sit where the rear passenger sits," he said.
Unlike military jets and most airliners, his cockpit isn't pressurized.
Bohannon uses a special oxygen-delivery system that blows air into his lungs. "You have to forcibly breathe out," he said.
He wears an electrically heated suit designed for motorcycle racers.
That keeps him warm, but experts have warned him not to attempt to go above 50,000 feet without a pressure suit. As it is, he has to breathe pure oxygen for an hour before taking off so the nitrogen in his blood won't turn into bubbles when he reaches high altitudes.
Quick recoveries
Plenty can and has gone wrong while Bohannon is flying up in the rare air.
He was 70 miles out above the Gulf of Mexico one day, flying in an area where controllers let him do some of his high-altitude experimenting, when the engine just stopped.
He turned toward the shore and as he slowly lost altitude he tried everything he could to get the engine to relight. After he made a dead-stick landing at the Brazoria County Airport, he saw that part of a wing was smashed in because the fuel tank inside it had imploded.
He's fairly used to his exhaled breath forming frost inside the cockpit but was amazed one time to see his breath turning into snow right in front of his face. "I've done a lot of things in an airplane before, but that was the first time I'd ever made it snow," he said.
As he watched the phenomenon, his breathing system stopped. It had frozen shut and he had to head down quickly to denser air. "After that, jet pilots warned me that whenever you see your breath turn to snow, you better blow HARD into the mask to blow the ice out of it," he said.
Bohannon wears a parachute for emergencies, but said he doubts he'll have to exit the little plane while seeking an altitude record.
"You'd be amazed at how well it runs up there," he said, as if gunning for a 58-year-old record were just another day at the office
ANGLETON - Bruce Bohannon peered out of the yawning door of the hangar next to his mobile home and watched as a skunk lazily ambled across the grass runway.
Bohannon's Flyin' Tiger Field, on a gravel road north of Angleton, seemed a very long way from the world of record-breaking aviation.
But at high noon on Saturday, weather permitting, Bohannon, 46, plans to point the long nose of the little airplane he calls the Exxon Flyin' Tiger almost straight up into the thin air above the country's biggest annual aviation gathering at Oshkosh, Wis., and go higher than any American has ever gone in a propeller-driven, piston-powered airplane.
The American record of 47,910 feet was set by an Air Force crew in a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber over Guam in 1946 — a dozen years before Bohannon was even born. To make it official, Bohannon needs to beat the old record by at least 3 percent (49,347 feet), but he wants to make it to 50,000.
"I like nice round numbers," he said with his customary grin.
Bohannon, who grew up in Alvin, has been around airplanes most of his life. He started working at an airfield as a kid and was flying crop planes at 19. He's flown corporate aircraft and raced planes. He started going for records to get sponsors to pay him to fly.
Breaking records is nothing new for him. In the past decade he has set 33 national or world records. He holds all the world time-to-altitude records (for 3,000, 6,000, 9,000 and 12,000 meters) in his plane's classification — piston engine aircraft weighing 1,102 to 2,205 pounds. He holds all of those records for any size piston airplane except the 3,000 meters.
"My dream is to get them all," he said. "I'd love to say this is the fastest climbing airplane in the world."
One of a kind
Bohannon's tiny plane could easily sit in the shade beneath a B-29's wing. It started life as a kit for a two-place plane called a Van's RV-4, but Bohannon and his technical crew have beefed it up so that it's become something unique.
There's a bigger tail to help control it in the almost nonexistent atmosphere up where the records live. The nose is longer to accommodate a supercharged and highly modified six-cylinder engine. The wheel struts are longer to keep the bigger prop from digging into the ground.
It's got a snazzy, tiger-stripe paint job in honor of ExxonMobil, his main sponsor. The logos of other sponsors festoon the tail area like a NASCAR racer.
The snug cockpit that Bohannon squeezes his 6-foot-2-inch frame into sits farther back than the original. "I sit where the rear passenger sits," he said.
Unlike military jets and most airliners, his cockpit isn't pressurized.
Bohannon uses a special oxygen-delivery system that blows air into his lungs. "You have to forcibly breathe out," he said.
He wears an electrically heated suit designed for motorcycle racers.
That keeps him warm, but experts have warned him not to attempt to go above 50,000 feet without a pressure suit. As it is, he has to breathe pure oxygen for an hour before taking off so the nitrogen in his blood won't turn into bubbles when he reaches high altitudes.
Quick recoveries
Plenty can and has gone wrong while Bohannon is flying up in the rare air.
He was 70 miles out above the Gulf of Mexico one day, flying in an area where controllers let him do some of his high-altitude experimenting, when the engine just stopped.
He turned toward the shore and as he slowly lost altitude he tried everything he could to get the engine to relight. After he made a dead-stick landing at the Brazoria County Airport, he saw that part of a wing was smashed in because the fuel tank inside it had imploded.
He's fairly used to his exhaled breath forming frost inside the cockpit but was amazed one time to see his breath turning into snow right in front of his face. "I've done a lot of things in an airplane before, but that was the first time I'd ever made it snow," he said.
As he watched the phenomenon, his breathing system stopped. It had frozen shut and he had to head down quickly to denser air. "After that, jet pilots warned me that whenever you see your breath turn to snow, you better blow HARD into the mask to blow the ice out of it," he said.
Bohannon wears a parachute for emergencies, but said he doubts he'll have to exit the little plane while seeking an altitude record.
"You'd be amazed at how well it runs up there," he said, as if gunning for a 58-year-old record were just another day at the office
