Thorp Air Command - T18.net

In 1963 I bought T18 plan set 67 directly from John Thorp. By mid 1966, I was flying it. It was N2264B; John's Skyscooter was N2262B. By 1971 after flying all over the country, I snagged a cable over Shasta Lake and landed it in the lake. It doesn't float very well.

Stumbling on this group brought back a flood of really fond memories.

Thanks!
Jack

Wow!

I have some memories for you!
On April 27th, 1971 you were the test pilot for my Dad's first Thorp.

Wow! Ramona Airport.
I recall breaking ground and noticing the cylinder head temperature climbing into the red, so I throttled back and cut short the flight.
Talk about memories!
Many thanks for that.
What does it mean "my dad's first Thorp?" Did he build another one? I vaguely recall that he had a motorglider parked at that airport.

This is what "memory lane" is about; looking at photos of you taken 48 years ago, finding it hard to get to sleep at night because your brain will not let go of revisiting that experience. I was 26 years old, then, and now, through different eyes, I recognize that my identity was locked up in flying, and perhaps especially the adrenaline rush of test flying new birds. Today, things are a bit more mundane; I am a co-founder of a non-profit seeking to tame global conversations about wicked problems. Back then, test flying had its own wicked moments.

Somezheimer's won't let me recall your father's name, but I have an image of a couple of men, and two young women - one of whom was introduced as his daughter - on that day. I flew there, as I recall, in a friend's T-18 because mine was already in a hanger being disassembled for parts after hauling it out of Shasta Lake.

I now live in Temecula, deep in the heart of the Riverside, Ramona, San Diego region. I'd be happy to meet with others, and especially that family.

Ok. Roaming about this site, searching on N2056, I discovered the sad news that John Kerr had passed away due to a cancer. A sad closure on this particular memory lane. Sigh.

I am sorry for the delay in responding. That ended up being a trip down memory lane for me as well. Dad actually was involved with 3 builds. The one you flew, one built by an aerospace studies program at a local high school that he was involved with, and the polished one you saw here. Those pictures I posted were captured from the movie that was made of your flight. I was able to convert it off of my DVD and put it on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/QZq9qqRCSxQ

Your father was an amazing fellow. It's even hard for me to imagine a high school building an airplane, must less a T-18.
If you or anyone else wants to talk in depth, use jackpark at gmail and put [T18] or something like that in the subject line.

Thank you very much for this stroll down memory lane.

The video cleared up what was a faulty memory of this event. Earlier, I said I recalled meeting a daughter, and there was a motorglider. It's clear now that I conflated this T-18 test flight with a completely different event, though possibly at the same airport.

Speaking of test flying T-18s, I recall flying with John Thorp in his Skyscooter out to Lancaster and putting flight hours on his own T-18 after it was built. Flights in the Mojave desert would otherwise be boring except that you have so many gorgeous mountains and other scenes to fly over and observe; you can fly through the Tehachapis and drop down and shoot landings at Mojave airport.

I was scanning some slides today and came across a couple neat photos. One is Rockford(pre Oshkosh) pretty sure the slide said 1969. The other is my dad’s first T-18- serial number 347. Later rebuilt and N number changed to N45881

I have a memory of Rockford. I’m wondering if it was ‘69. I know it was 1960s. We stopped by DuPage on the way. There was a deep maroon Thorp there gassing up. I wonder who that was.
Cool pix Terry,
Cubes

Those pix really do bring back memories. I first flew serial# 67 in 1966, then flew to Rockford twice, once in a T-18 built by Ralph Tenhause (spelling might be off), then in mine, That would be 67 and 68, as best I can recall.