On 9 Jan 2007 04:47:41 -0800, " wrote:

Seriously, have you flown the Fly Baby to OSH? THAT would be a
heckuva trip.

Our EAA Chapter brought the Fly Baby prototype, N500F, a couple of times in the
1980s after the restoration was completed. This was just before I joined the
chapter. IIRC, it took about three or four days there and back. The plane
never went alone. On one trip, it was escorted by a Grumman Cheetah...imagine
flying *that* throttled back on a ~4000-mile round trip.

The Chapter got a different pilot to fly the "there" and "back" legs each time.
What kind of sticks in my mind is that most of those pilots *never flew the Fly
Baby again* after the trip. Fly Babies are NOT comfortable airplanes to fly
long distances in. The basic description I heard is that the first day was
hell, the second day was a bit better, but by the third day they were starting
to enjoy it a bit. But after they delivered it, they didn't feel too inclined
to fly it again.

This wasn't universal. The pilot who flew it to Oshkosh '82 had flown it there
before, and on one trip was escorted by the Story Special (very similar
aircraft) flown by the main club member both ways.

(The Story Special was one of flying homebuilts when our Chapter was started
about 51 years ago. Read about it starting at page 3 at)

http://www.eaa26.org/sept06.pdf

Or see just a picture at:

http://www.bowersflybaby.com/stories/story.jpg

One difference in these two cases: Both of these repeating pilots were kind of
small, but the other guys (and myself) are rather large. They likely had some
room to move around, in the air, but the other guys (like myself) would be stuck
with a single seating position.

Other folks have flown Fly Babies long distances and enjoyed it. In 2003,
Wendell Davenport flew his Fly Baby from California to Kitty Hawk, stopping at
Oshkosh 2003 on the way. Even so, he didn't make it a continuous trip...he'd
fly the Fly Baby to a convenient airport, then hop an airline flight back to his
home in Hawaii, then show up a month later to take the plane on the next leg.

My long-distance flight experience in Moonraker is pretty limited, but a ~5 hour
trip a few year back darn near killed me:

http://www.bowersflybaby.com/stories/long.htm

I am reminded of that old saying, comparing flying to sex: "I can never get
enough, but sometimes I've had all that I can stand."

I've been tempted to take Moonraker to Oshkosh. Since it's almost 25 years old,
I could even park it in the "classic homebuilt" section. But I'm afraid it'd be
sitting there with a "for sale" sign on it. :-)


Ron Wanttaja