For the past 20 years there has been a Hun based at my airport in Fort Wayne, IN (KFWA). I work full time in the Air National Guard at this airport, and maybe two or three times a year I get to see her fly. This past week has been special due to a F-100 pilot reunion at my base, and she's flown probably twelve times last week giving rides to these old pilots who last flew in Vietnam.

Neat video from our newspaper's website...

Super Sabre Pilots Return To Fly

BTW, there is another F-100 in TX I believe that has flown once last year I think, but it's currently not airworthy. They tried to get our pilot/owner Dean "Cutter" Cutshall to test fly it and he said no way...lol.

Awesome. I was reading 'Boyd' the other day.

I can imagine. Those things killed guys back when they were maintained by trained maintenance crews.

I saw one fly at a Willow Run airport airshow in 08 or 09. Beautiful sound as it screamed by.

The guys Cutshall has as his maintenance team are ex F-100 Crew Chiefs from my base who retired about 20 years ago. The dude with the other F-100 wanted Cutshall to test fly it but he told them his MX guys would have to go over it with a fine tooth comb before...and they didn't agree so he told them nope...lol.

The F100's were fast...but nothing like the 104's.
You'd think after all those produced, they have more around.

F-104

I always thought they were the best looking aircraft ever made.
Maybe a little tough to fly, but sure are purdy.....
Any flown since 2004?
No volunteers?...lol...

ahem http://www.warbirdsnews.com/warbird-vide...n-test-run.html

I've seen the other one in person while taking reference pictures..

I wouldnt get anywhere near it as a pilot, lol.

I hope they manage to get XS422 restored and back in the air

http://www.lightning422supporters.co.uk/

Awesome stuff and great video Weasel thanks for sharing. You local paper did a good job with the video article. I'd love to see a flying Hun. I figured he must have had a handpicked or at least highly experienced crew of his own when you said he so no to the Texas guys. Why would they deny a pilots request that they go over the plane with a fine toothed comb before he'd even think of strapping in? Sounds kind of disingenuous of them to ask the man to fly their plane before doing the ground work he's asking for to make sure its even up to snuff for a flight. Do they not have ex-military mechanics on their team or is their a rigorous old-school set of procedures on Hun maintenance that's too much work for them or that they don't have the proper experience for? It would be interesting to find out exactly why they couldn't come together on that.

Murphy, the Starfighter is still flying and its awesome. I've seen it a few times at the Tico Airshow. Very unique sound and faaaasst! Also that landing drogue chute it uses for landing is quite cool. From the info they give at the show the F-104 has a more difficult time flying at subsonic speeds because of its small wing span. So unless its landing its usually zipping around the show at something like 600 mph.

Yeah Coot, zipping. They nicknamed it the "Zipper"....lol....

Nice to know it's still operating somewhere anyway.
Hope they keep some for show.
My all time favorite looking aircraft.
I remember drawing it during class when they first passed out color pencils, I was in grade school.....loved it.
Built a plastic 'Revel' model of it.
Stuck in my mind, a first 'aircraft love'....lol...
I think it'll hit 1,300+ mph, or it has.
Fast.

yep the F-104 is up there, a few mph faster than the EE Lightning, we even have a 104 on a stick at a local roundabout...



They were based at the local airbase and they still have a few in their museum too

"The missile with a man in it" as the old publicity blurbs used to say.

I liked the F 105 myself, with it's nuclear capability and badass rotary cannon.

Heck, all the century series were great aircraft.

It was a F-104 that shattered all the glass in the then new Ottawa terminal when it did a low high speed pass.

Had an F-4E from Edwards AFB do a low high speed pass on our base (George AFB CA) during an exercise...he accidentally broke the sound barrier...and a ton of windows in the little town on the other side of the fence. Oopsie! It was pretty cool though, and it scared the crap out of me.

It was a clear summer day about 55 years ago I hear a roar from the airport and then silence and then one almighty roar and then an a/c going vertical at a fantastic rate till out of sight. The a/c was a 104 Found out later that it had a flame out on take off. Somehow the pilot got the engine relite, hit the AB.

Impressive climb to say the least.

Ottawa airport was also CFB Uplands.

I'd pay to have seen that......and the F-104 flameout.

Although I saw my share of F-4's during my tour, I thought they were the ugliest aircraft ever designed.
They built them up like they were the best thing since swiss cheese, then when we saw them for the first time, it was quite a disappointment. No turn fighting, and no guns. Who'd have thought.......64-66' NAF Andrews, ramp work and part time observer on some old T33's.
Then crewed on P2V's, from 67-68' NAS Brunswick, Me., chasing whales.
I guess they eventually did get guns, but I didn't see it.
Got lucky.....

I used to live in the town of Wick, and we had a little airport there with a small industrial estate in the old WW2 huts. I worked in a recording studio in one of those old huts ad we were quite careful when it came to recording even to noticing when the electricity meters changed over from one tariff to another it put a small noise spike on the mains that we noticed if we were recording, so anyway, we were very careful about the quality of the recordings.


We were recording a band in the studio after having taken a break to avoid the noise of the meters change over when all of a sudden there was an almighty ROAR as a F-4 went vertical right over us, man you should have heard the recording engineer, he was almost as loud as the F-4

Seeing the vapour shock cones appearing over an aircraft for the first time was as a F-4 went past just subsonic, it was quite the Wow moment for me.