Looking for photos of old racing Bearcats

[C_roundy]

Re: Looking for photos of old racing Bearcats

Forget the Bearcat, what I wanna know is who's driving that badass Grand Prix with what appears to be the longest right arm in the history of mankind...

Dunno, definitely the most civilized looking knuckle dragger I ever did see though.

[supercub]

Re: Looking for photos of old racing Bearcats

Does anyone have pictures of Bud Fountains Bearcat Race 99. Was anyone at the race when I believe it caught fire? I've never heard or read much about it.

[stuntflyr]

Re: Looking for photos of old racing Bearcats

Yes,
It was ugly.
Chris...

[Big_Jim]

Re: Looking for photos of old racing Bearcats

Does anyone have pictures of Bud Fountains Bearcat Race 99. Was anyone at the race when I believe it caught fire? I've never heard or read much about it.

Check your PM's.

Fountain's Bearcat was actually the old John Church/Chuck Klussman #11 from 1966/67. N148F, if I recall. It only appeared as #99 in 1969 where it had engine trouble and failed to qualify. It next appeared in 1973 as Hawke Dusters, which was Bud's crop dusting company. Beautifully polished (they had to grind off the anodizing from the metal) with red and yellow trim.

As Chris pointed out...the crash and fire at Mojave was not pretty.

[Nobody]

Re: Looking for photos of old racing Bearcats

Forget the Bearcat, what I wanna know is who's driving that badass Grand Prix with what appears to be the longest right arm in the history of mankind...

Note the WASH 63 plates on the GP and the trailer hitch. Possibly one of the Seattle teams (Chuck Lyford, Ben Hall) cruising the flight line. That arm on the back seat looks dirty as a mechanic's arm might look.

[Nobody]

Re: Looking for photos of old racing Bearcats

Does anyone have pictures of Bud Fountains Bearcat Race 99. Was anyone at the race when I believe it caught fire? I've never heard or read much about it.

Catastrophic engine failure/fire during a race heat, fire very likely got into the cockpit, Fountain was probably incapacitated (much the same way Mike Geren was incapacitated with his own engine fire at San Diego when N5005 went in), the airplane went up, over the top, and straight in.

"Bubba" Beal, owner of several Bearcats in the '60s and '70s, once said that most of the Bearcats on the civil register had been hastily de-militarized and almost all of them had holes left in the firewall where military hardware had been removed. When men like Geren and Fountain experienced massive fuel-fed engine failure/fires the fire and smoke easily entered the cockpit and made an already very challenging situation fatal.

[supercub]

Re: Looking for photos of old racing Bearcats

I was once told, that Bud Fountain was advised NOT to fly the plane in the race till a bad oil hose could be replaced. Anyone ever hear this? or what the cause of the fire was?

[Idaho_cowpony]

Re: Looking for photos of old racing Bearcats

Good-day,
I do not know the details of Mr. Fountains accident, however with #99 and Mike Geren, I believe a fuel line broke, starting the fire. It is believed that a master rod also let go? I know there were other issues with the engine during that race, as it was consuming a very abnormal amount of oil. Mr. Reynolds said that smoke coming in through the wing ducts, and then into the fuselage, especially once the gear was lowered, is was incapacitated Mr. Geren. I do not know if there were holes in the firewall or not? Interesting though.

It seems many similarities between the two. Very unfortunate.

Joseph

[Nobody]

Re: Looking for photos of old racing Bearcats

Geren's engine failed and sent rods through the second row of cylinders and could have damaged the fuel line. The intense fire was fed by engine oil and fuel, possibly from a severed fuel line, and air/fuel from the induction system via the holes where the rods let go. Beal's theory, as I stated in my previous post, was that Geren, in keeping power on the engine during the attempt to make the runway, actually may have made the fire more intense.

Geren's Bearcat had also been taken up on an unauthorized flight at Mojave after the races there and then ground-looped on landing when the right main did not extend and lock properly. The propeller struck the ground and it was thought that damage to the 2800 went unnoticed or was not considered to be worthy of deeper inspection/replacement.

Remember that in those days WWII fighters had not yet become the precious investments of the very rich that we see today. They were still owned and flown by men such as Fountain (who was a crop duster operator and Geren was a TWA copilot) and flown hard in air racing events. Crashes and crash-landings at races were not that uncommon before the mid-80s. Many of those guys bought engines in cans, like 2800s, and simply bolted them on, ran them up and blew out the dust and dirt and went to the races. They kept the oil topped-off almost regardless of how much oil the engine was using/throwing overboard. Anyone remember the Hinton/Maloney Super Corsair constantly belching clouds of smoke from its 4360 every time it taxied out, or in, at Reno back in the '80s? That was a C-124 engine right out of the desert scrapyard. Remember what it did at Phoenix too in 1994.

Jack Sliker, flying N7701C, was thought to have been suffering carbon monoxide poisoning on his flight from Reno '75 to Flagstaff and Beal felt that Sliker, trying to make Flagstaff in one hop, probably didn't care when his F8F ran out of fuel short of the runway because he was incapacitated from breathing his Bearcat's exhaust on the long flight from Reno. Again, the way Sliker's Bearcat had been demilitarized could have resulted in exhaust gases entering the cockpit through holes in the firewall.

[Big_Jim]

Re: Looking for photos of old racing Bearcats

Geren's Bearcat had also been taken up on an unauthorized flight at Mojave after the races there and then ground-looped on landing when the right main did not extend and lock properly. The propeller struck the ground and it was thought that damage to the 2800 went unnoticed or was not considered to be worthy of deeper inspection/replacement.

Since both parties are no longer with us, I suppose I can bring this up safely. Ron Reynolds was absolutely positive that it was Wally McDonnell who pranged the airplane at Mojave. Ron had pulled out of the 1970 Mojave 1000 with an oil leak and after the races they parked it in Wally's hangar over the winter until they could fix the problem.

All of a sudden, the plane mysteriously gets taken up on a joyride and groundloops on landing.

McDonnell denied it to the end. Ron accused him to the end, saying that one of Wally's employees confirmed who did it.

Oh well. As a result of the broken prop suffered when the gear collapsed, they went ahead and mounted a Skyraider prop on it as they made repairs...that what it was running when Mike had the fire.

I'd have to go back and look at my notes, but Ron told me that he cautioned Mike when they swapped during the pit stop that it was burning a LOT of oil and thought it would be best if they parked it. Mike said they were close enough to the end of the race that 'they'd be okay'. But everyone I have talked to about the incident agrees with the bit about Mike attempting to stay with it and using power to make the runway only made the fire worse...and just like with Bud Fountain, by the time it burned through the firewall, it was essentially too late.

My guess is that both pilots were incapacitated before the airplanes ever touched the ground.

[stuntflyr]

Re: Looking for photos of old racing Bearcats

Mike Geren was a TWA Convair 880 Captain.

N5005 was flown and ground looped by someone at Mojave. The landing gear were both down but the airframe was stressed and the gear geometry was compromised. It went unnoticed and when it was test flown after the new cylinders were installed after the '70 Mojave 1000, TWA Captain and Senior VP of Flight Ops Ron Reynolds couldn't get the right gear leg down and landed on the right wing and left gear and tailwheel.
The engine had a serviceable nosecase installed and the prop was replaced, however Frank Sanders and Wally McDonnell offered a good condition CB-17 to replace the -34W. When the offer was declined, Frank told me he offered it to them for free. He was that concerned about the engines health. The offer was not taken up by Geren.

(I didn't know what Big Jim posted before, maybe the story was softened by Frank when he told me of the engine offer. Does this mean the airplane had two gear collapses, one from the unauthorized flight and one from Ron's test flight after repairs?)

Mike Dillon reported that the front row master rod failed and the rear row was running. Reynolds, Sanders, Tony Bernard, and Lyle said that the fire was fuel fed from fuel system damage.

The linkages could have been burned off and the engine continued to run from partial fuel delivery or detonation from the superheated engine core.

Ron Reynolds said the fuel selector OFF position was rigged for ADI fuel flow. There was no way to shut off the fuel flow except the mixture control.

Interestingly, Ron owned Bearcat N7701C at this time and used the Bearcat to commute to work from Danbury, CT to JFK.
Both of these Bearcats were owned by the same person in Asbury Park, NJ in the mid-60's.
After Mike Geren's and Bill Fornof's Bearcat accidents in 1971, Ron was motivated to sell it, in 1972 he sold it to Sliker.

Chris...

[Idaho_cowpony]

Re: Looking for photos of old racing Bearcats

Okay, not a racing Bearcat, but who remembers this one? Perhaps there was some inspiration here for Greenameyer's latter scheme, with the yellow?

Joseph

[T J Johansen]

Re: Looking for photos of old racing Bearcats

This would be "Russ" Hanson's N5555H which flew into a mountain near Syracuse or thereabout in 1967. He used to do airshows billing himself as "The flying professor". I was in touch with his widow a couple of years ago, and she sent me a magazine article about him. I seem to remember that he was a lecturer at Yale at the time.

T J

[Lon Moer]

Re: Looking for photos of old racing Bearcats

Bumping another really old, but totally great thread.

Does anyone have pictures of Bud Fountains Bearcat Race 99. Was anyone at the race when I believe it caught fire? I've never heard or read much about it.

Yes,
It was ugly.
Chris...

Fountain's Bearcat was actually the old John Church/Chuck Klussman #11 from 1966/67. N148F, if I recall. It only appeared as #99 in 1969 where it had engine trouble and failed to qualify. It next appeared in 1973 as Hawke Dusters, which was Bud's crop dusting company. Beautifully polished (they had to grind off the anodizing from the metal) with red and yellow trim.

As Chris pointed out...the crash and fire at Mojave was not pretty.

Catastrophic engine failure/fire during a race heat, fire very likely got into the cockpit, Fountain was probably incapacitated (much the same way Mike Geren was incapacitated with his own engine fire at San Diego when N5005 went in), the airplane went up, over the top, and straight in.

This picture was on the inside of the back cover of the 1975 Lincoln Ca Air Races program.

[kenf]

Re: Looking for photos of old racing Bearcats

For what it is worth, about Fountain being incapacitated, around 20 years ago I had a usually reliable acquaintence (long since lost touch) who told me he was a both a team member and friend of Bud. At that time he no longer had any involvement with air racing because of the experience of "being on the radio with Bud all the way to the ground".