Where's Waldo? And yet, ANOTHER encounter...sort of...

I get it in context but still gotta ask--- who the hell is Waldo Pepper?

I guess I did live too many years overseas as a kid

most every western you all grew up with is now new to me if an when they replay them on some D-Tv channel

I have still never seen an episode of Sky King


Living under MY rock

now have to find the yet another oldie I missed

Here ya go, Fred.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Waldo_Pepper

Don't worry, I've been keeping it a secret I've never watched Sky King either. Or it faded into my distant young childhood memories.

"The Great Waldo Pepper" was my Star Wars.  I first watched it in the Fairborn Theater in Fairborn, Ohio in 1975.  The first four minutes locked me in, and the rest of the world disappeared.  I've rented it a few dozen times when it was in the video store, but got my own copy ordered.

It knocked "The Battle of Britain" to second place, with "The Blue Max", and "Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines" falling in behind.  "Top Gun" sorta drifts around in the order of things, but never touched Waldo.

Ten years later, I bought my own little yellow plane and while I didn't land uninvited in open pastures, I did manage plenty of pre-arraigned off-airport visits, and hauled more riders than I can remember.  I also often roamed the country without a plan of where I was going, 'till that was ended with the Muslim attacks on the World Trade Center towers.

Anyway, I closely identified with the main character's inability to accept change...and the fantastic aerial footage locked it all in for me.

No kidding, that's awesome.
Sure enough, I had to look it up: N3844 Registrant Name STRICKER KIM
If I'da knowd I coulda rode, I woulda goed

Great find Kim and a great engine. Thanks for sharing the pics.

A glimpse of some instruction book pages. I got 2 of them, a 1917 and a 1918 edition:









I'm not happy with that name plate though: "Hisso" is not an engine manufacturer. That name can be used when among friends in a bar but in a museum??? The name should read "Hispano-Suiza" or -because this paricular engine was built in the US- "Wright Hispano-Suiza" or "Wright-Hispano".

[quote="Kim"]"The Great Waldo Pepper" was my Star Wars.  I first watched it in the Fairborn Theater in Fairborn, Ohio in 1975.  The first four minutes locked me in, and the rest of the world disappeared.  I've rented it a few dozen times when it was in the video store, but got my own copy ordered.

It knocked "The Battle of Britain" to second place, with "The Blue Max", and "Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines" falling in behind.  "Top Gun" sorta drifts around in the order of things, but never touched Waldo.

Ten years later, I bought my own little yellow plane and while I didn't land uninvited in open pastures, I did manage plenty of pre-arraigned off-airport visits, and hauled more riders than I can remember.  I also often roamed the country without a plan of where I was going, 'till that was ended with the Muslim attacks on the World Trade Center towers.

Anyway, I closely identified with the main character's inability to accept change...and the fantastic aerial footage locked it all in for me.

/quote]

Yes, Pepper and Max are right up there for me too, but I would also throw "The Spirit of St. Louis" into the mix. I never miss it when it shows on TCM.

Bob

My favourite show was "Baa Baa Black Sheep", that show really got me hooked on Corsairs It was on TV on late Saturday evenings when I was 11-13 years old in the early '80s. Another favourite was "The Tales of the Golden Monkey", where this guy Jake flew a Grumman Goose around the Philippines.

Most of my friends back then were Knightrider and/or Battlestar Galactica fans

Kim wrote:
It knocked "The Battle of Britain" to second place, with "The Blue Max", and "Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines" falling in behind.

That's all the same movies I loved as a kid.  I didn't include your listing of Top Gun 'cos I never warmed to that.  Tom Cruise gives me the creeps

I would add "The Dambusters" to the list. Watched it again just the other day.  Love the throb of four Merlins in multiples doin' their job.

I remember as a kid being horrified at the accident of the STILES SKYSTREAK, which was actually a modified DH Chipmunk.  I was so angry at the folks who were smoking at the accident and caused a fuel fire with the pilot (Waldo's friend) trapped inside.  I was more shocked at Waldo's response.  (You'll have to watch the movie, but it ain't pretty).

Ah, those were the days for real flying movies, where they used actual flying aircraft and not CGI like today.

The Wright Martin company partnership did not last very long before becoming Wright Aeronautical.

It is common practice for manufacturers to rename engines made under license. In England, the Rover V8 (a very popular engine in its day) was originally produced by General Motors and known as the Buick 215.

It is also not unusual for the manufacturers name to be dropped. We refer to our WWII warbird engines as "Merlin" and "Griffon"  and skip the "Rolls-Royce".

Similarly the Supermarine Spitfire and the Hawker Hurricane quickly lose the manufacturers name and are more commonly identified by version, e.g. Spitfire IX.

Wright Aeronautical became Curtiss-Wright  Corporation and produced the Curtiss P-36 Warhawk and subsequent variants. We would not recognise a Curtiss P-40B Warhawk as ever flying with the RAF because we renamed them.

Tomahawk for models equivalent to the P-40B and P-40C, and the name Kittyhawk for models equivalent to the P-40D and all later variants.

Dropping the manufacture or design source is common and licensing to increase production of an engine is common. The Packard Motor Company built Rolls-Royce Merlin engines under license for Curtiss P-40 Warhawks. It is still a Merlin engine and the majority produced went into Mustangs (P-51).

I have read many reports of engines being manufactured under license not being of the same quality as the original manufacturer. There is documented evidence that the Hispano-Suiza engines suffered this trait.

I always wondered how an American manufacturer would cope with building a British engine that would have been built to extremely high tolerances but in a round about way. The Merlins would have been hand built - each part fine tuned during assembly whereas the Packard Motor Company would have been mass production. Not ignoring the fact that we would have had a wide range of bold and screw threads for different purposes.

This article brought it home

http://www.tested.com/art/makers/492418-packard-merlin-how-detroit-mass-produced-britains-hand-built-powerhouse/

Once manufactured under license the originator disappears. General Motors Buick 215 becomes Rover V8.

Rolls-Royce Merlin or Packard Motor Company Merlin. It is still a Merlin and identified as a Merlin! The name of the engine remained - pilots would have much more confidence knowing there was a Merlin under the bonnet and not cared who made it!

The Hispano-Suiza engines were often affectionately referred to as Hisso. For Wright to retain the affectionate name and not rename it is a sign of confidence.

The Wright Engines became known as

Wright-Hisso A 130 kW (180 hp).
Wright-Hisso E 110 kW (150 hp). The American Wright-Martin aviation firm licence-produced the original 150 hp HS-8Aa engine as the Wright-Hispano E, for use in World War I combat aircraft to be built in the United States – it found its way into the JN-4H version of the Curtiss Jenny, replacing the Curtiss OX-5 liquid-cooled V8 engine of only 67 kW (90 hp). output.
Wright-Hisso E-2 110 kW (150 hp) at 1,800 rpm.
Wright-Hisso E-3
Wright-Hisso E-4 160 kW (215 hp) at 2,000 rpm..
Wright-Hisso H 220 kW (300 hp)
Wright-Hisso H-3 220 kW (300 hp)
Wright-Hisso I 110 kW (150 hp)

There is even a Wright-Hisso V-720.

In Britain - any reference to Hispano-Suiza disappeared altogether.

They were manufactured by Wolseley Motors Ltd.

Wolseley W.4A Python I
110 kW (150 hp), compression ratio of 4.7:1. License production of the 8Aa at Wolseley Motors Ltd.
Wolseley W.4A Python II
130 kW (180 hp), compression ratio of 5.3 :1.
Wolseley W.4A Viper
150 kW (200 hp), compression ratio of 5.3 :1. Wolseley's engineers removed problems with the crankshaft and increased the compression ratio to give more power, with some early engines having a compression ratio of 5.6:1.
Wolseley W.4A Viper II
160 kW (210 hp) at 2,000 rpm.
Wolseley W.4B Adder I
150 kW (200 hp), compression ratio of 4.7 :1, reduction spur gear to 0.593:1.
Wolseley W.4B Adder II
150 kW (200 hp), compression ratio of 4.7 :1, reduction spur gear to 0.593:1. With stronger crankshaft webs.
Wolseley W.4B Adder III
150 kW (200 hp), compression ratio of 4.7 :1, reduction spur gear to 0.593:1. With balanced crankshafts.

The plaque in the museum is perfectly accurate. The engine in the Waldo Pepper plane is a

Wright-Hisso E-4 160 kW (215 hp) at 2,000 rpm. as named by the manufacturer.

Sorry for this out-of-timing post...got to watching the Rocketeer....

This may be an American slang (though I'm sure in an affectionate way) as I have a copy of Cole Palen's Old Rhinebeck video 'Flying Circus' where a mechanic refers to their 'Hisso-Jenny'.

Captured a few frames of the Standard from "The Rocketeer":

Taking off with a well-intentioned, but ill-prepared curmudgeon at the controls:



Flying upstream through an air race:



Rocketeer to the rescue











The Standard's stand-in plummets toward an unfortunately miss-parked gas truck:

A short video...



https://youtu.be/4_TBFNdEeMk

It's all part of the show, folks. It's all part of the show...
Chris...

I also remember those vids. of yesterday , they were great and can never be replaced with the crap they have filling time slots on too many channels . getback

getback wrote:I also remember those vids. of yesterday , they were great and can never be replaced with the crap they have filling time slots on too many channels . getback

Agreed...but WE got to see them....so better for us!

Just TRY to watch this and NOT laugh !!!



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5Y9UCGYpl0

To paraphrase Waldo, It should have been me...

And so, the Ghost of Waldo continues to haunt me...at least in MY mind...

One of the beautiful Ford-Powered Pietenpols at the reunion in Brodhead, Wisconsin sported the logo of "The Dillhoefer Flying Circus", Waldo Pepper's employer for a brief and turbulent period in the flyer's career.


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Thus concludes our latest episode of "Things Some Airplane Nerds Care About"

All good stuff Kim, love the pics.

Knowing that the political conventions were coming up I ordered about a dozen movies from TCM (Turner Classic Movies) to fill the time. I'm a cable news junkie in the evenings but I knew there was no way that I could get through viewing those conventions without losing my lunch. Hence the time fillers.

"On the Beach" was a surprise, pretty well done and filmed in and around Frankston Australia, plus some very well done vintage auto racing. Premise was a post WW2 nuclear war that polluted the planet but the toxic cloud hadn't yet reached Aus. Detailed how the populous would meet their maker. Most of the rest I had seen at least once. A friend that lives there said that Ava Gardner was rather critical of the area. Looked great to me.

"Best Years of our lives" is a classic and has some great footage of airplane filled "bone yards". Spirit of St. Louis speaks for itself as do the others. "No Highway in the Sky is a hoot". Some of the worst aircraft in flight animation that I have ever seen but with Jimmy Stewart, Marlene Dietrich, and Glynis Johns how can you go wrong. Seems an eccentric scientist predicts a new airliners tail will fall off after 1440 hours.



Also the classics.



Watched “The Battle of Britain” last night.

All great for sure! Sort of reverse was "Test Pilot" with John Wayne (hope I"m thinking of the right movie) where BIG BUCKS were spent using the real stuff, but with a plot that'd insult a dull-witted mule. But I'll wade through a lot of crap to watch real airplanes.
Another movie I intend to track down is 'The Crowded Sky", which has a T-33 impacting a DC-6 or something similar. Haven't seen it since I was 14 or so, but remember the model scene collision resembling a log bumping into a canoe.

It's out there somewhere in the video universe:
http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/290086%7C0/The-Crowded-Sky.html

Like it was the godfather of the "airplane" movie genre.

Marleysky wrote:It's out there somewhere in the video universe:    
http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/290086%7C0/The-Crowded-Sky.html

Like it was the godfather of the "airplane" movie genre.

http://shop.tcm.com/the-crowded-sky/883316126530

With Rhonda Fleming...Can't be all bad.

I've got to say, I've never heard of the movie "The Great Waldo Pepper" before this thread. For all I know, I've been overlooking it all these years when searching through VHS tapes at the thrift stores.

Anyway, I stopped by a thrift store today and look what I found!



I watched it while working on a little radio tonight. I thought it was a pretty good movie.

Admin wrote:I've got to say, I've never heard of the movie "The Great Waldo Pepper" before this thread. For all I know, I've been overlooking it all these years when searching through VHS tapes at the thrift stores.

Anyway, I stopped by a thrift store today and look what I found!



I watched it while working on a little radio tonight. I thought it was a pretty good movie.

After I watched in a theater in 1975, it pretty much disappeared, and I only caught parts of it for the next ten years as it was run on cable TV channels. It's really hard to pick a 'definitive' aviation movie because of the different preferences in what 'aviation' is, but as I said, this one struck a chord with me that lasted to this day.