Mike

Your comments on slats now seem to track with what I remember.

I flew the 'D','H' & 'J' at Hamilton and the 'J' as AFA to Maine ANG
(Bangor, ME). Flying the 'J' I've launched a MB-1, in practice, past
vertical and just above the stall speed. (IFR at night in the middle
of the clouds). Interesting flying the bird back to level flight
starting with zero A/S and going straight up IFRG

On '39. Was told that the wing came off the F-86 line (no new
engineering) and was tough as hell. Where the lower limits were on
bird I don't know but know they were there. Always flew the '39 as a
transport not as a fighter as always had passengers on board, unless
repositioning bird. It was the General's personal bird so we couldn't
tear it up very bad (go inverted and spill the coffee G.

Miss the 'old' days

Big John


On Thu, 31 Jul 2003 18:31:17 GMT, Mike Weller
wrote:

On Mon, 28 Jul 2003 21:18:41 -0700, "Richard Isakson"
wrote:

"Big John" wrote ...
Not sure. Was over 30 years ago. They hung out on the ground and
remember pushing them into the retracted position and they would fall
out by their own weight, on pre flight. Want to say they were one
piece but ????????????????????


It's been a long time for me also, but I'm sure the slats were one
piece, with five roller guides per wing. I've never seen a de-ice
boot on one.

An interesting story that I heard, again a long time ago, was from a
pilot that had flown the F-86D and got checked out in the T-39. The
wings look a lot the same, and the plane flew about the same. Well,
they would roll and loop and dogfight the T-39s until they found out
that they were only designed for something like 3.8 Gs.

Mike Weller