RV-4 Chase Plane

Who says an RV can't fly with a jet? ...no problem when the "go fast" A-4 stays in the landing pattern at 150kts.

Three of us flew our RV-4s to Sanford, FL for the first flight of an A-4C Skyhawk, following an 8 year restoration. Dan Carr, who flew A-4Ls with me back in the '70s, has rebuilt and operates this beautiful Skyhawk, under the umbrella of Skyhawk Ventures, LLC. Another good friend, Larry Elmore, is the lucky pilot. You'll be seeing it at airshows in the near future.

Bob Woolley put his "Agressor" RV-4 where it needed to be and I pointed the camera from his back seat as we chased the jet on this first flight. I did the fun part on the second test flight, as I flew wing on the jet in my RV-4.

...just posted the video on YouTube last night.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1dWvEJImc0

This shot from the ground by George Speake.


Three weedwackers and a stovepipe.

Speeds

What speeds were you flying around the pattern at? It looks great!

Slow

The A-4 didn't exceed 150kts for the most part. It's 2,000# lighter than when the Navy flew it, so it'll fly really slow, with a stall speed less than 110kts. Our problem was when Larry, the test pilot, would make any significant power correction...adding power...the jet would visibly surge away from us. You can see that mostly on short final in the video, where he goosed it a touch and left us behind.

The A4 can really be stripped down. The Navy Mongoose version was also at least 2000lbs below the fleet configurations. We could get A4 Superfoxes down to under 10,000 lbs with the P408 engine with 11,200 lbs of thrust. It was the most fun aircraft I ever flew. You could fly the pattern low on gas at 120 Knots if you really wanted to. We normally used 150 and flew a flared landing to save maintenance.

The only question I have is what are those two big ugly things hanging under the wings! He has to get rid of those!!!!!!

George

Hide -

Nice job and great video! Wish I could have joined you guys..maybe next time!

Spank

The A4 was a good bird. It could take a lot of damage and still bring our pilots home. I was a "plane captain" for an A4E a couple of life times ago. Many good memories, one big sad one. My best to all the Scooter Drivers and the men (mostly boys) that kept them flying.

Love the "scooter"

The A-4 was a great bird. I was in the Navy a little late for them to be in widespread use, but there were still a few around. One of them "loft-bombed" us when we were cruising on the USS Ranger on Yankee Station. Cool! A good friend of mine flew them in the Marine reserves, and they used to fly over my house on their way to NAS Los Alamitos back in the day. I'm glad somebody is taking care of this one.

Jim Bower
RV-6A
St. Louis
Flying, as of August 10, 2011

I loved the video!!!!!

Dave,
Cool video! Question......Why is the plane being operated in the pattern with the speed brakes deployed? Is it so that the engine is spooled up, and just retracting the speed brakes provides immediate performance increase? It looks like he is not doing it to bleed speed or altitude.
Thanks....

speedbrakes

Mark,
You guessed it right. The speedbrakes are normally deployed in the "break" to slow down on the downwind, then are left out to keep the engine spooled up for quicker response on the approach. ....mostly needed at the ship, but normal A-4proceedure on runways also. The speedbrake switch is on the throttle, so when you push it up to go around, you also close the brakes with your thumb.

Dave Dollarhide said:

Mark,
You guessed it right. The speedbrakes are normally deployed in the "break" to slow down on the downwind, then are left out to keep the engine spooled up for quicker response on the approach. ....mostly needed at the ship, but normal A-4proceedure on runways also. The speedbrake switch is on the throttle, so when you push it up to go around, you also close the brakes with your thumb.

Click to expand...

Thanks, Dave! With the old tub that I drive, you would not want to be leaving the speedbrake out in the pattern. Excess thrust is a beautiful thing!

A lot of time spent at that Airport

I did most of my training at Orlando Sanford airport, at Comair Aviation Academy. Not sure what it is called now. I remember being on the ILS for 9L with a Pan Am 727 and an overseas Charter 747-100 behind me, and the tower asking me to go faster in my 172. Pretty fun airport to learn at. You get to where you are not afraid of airspace and are really comfortable with ATC.

Another cool morning is when we took off and headed out to the west over Leesburg (KLEE) and we were about 5,000 agl, and we turned back to the East just in time to watch the shuttle luanch at the Cape. Then we turned to the south, and you could see both coasts because the morning was so clear.

Florida is a great place to fly, except for around 3 pm when the thunderstorms that you can set your watch to start popping up.