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The Legend of Bob Hoover – The Pilot's Pilot · Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, everybody.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: You are listening to or maybe even watching Dirt Knap City, uh, the podcast about interesting dead people.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: And we have got a doozy of an episode today for you.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, I've got my buddy Alex, uh, who I've seen recently in real life.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a lot of fun to catch up.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Alex, how are you doing today?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Doing good.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: I love a doozy, so I can't wait.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: A double doozy.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then we've also got my cousin for uh Jay, who lives in the Houston area as well.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, Jay is a pilot since he was 14 or 15 years old and is currently a captain on a major airline and is here with us today to talk to us about one of his aviation heroes.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is somebody I hadn't heard of until he told me about this person.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: I have to admit, I have not read the book you recommended, but it is on my list, and I did do a little bit of just searching to see what this person's all about.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_05: We have had two aviation subjects in the past.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_05: Do you remember who they were, Kelly?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we had Amelia Earhardt and we had uh Howard Hughes.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, those are two.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, so so any thoughts on those two episodes?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and actually we had uh Count Baron von Zeppelin.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, good call, yeah.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I remember all those.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I I've I've been listening to y'all for a while.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and evil can evil was uh, you know, he flew a little bit, right?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: He also flew.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I also want to say that today's episode is not sponsored by Liquid Death, even though it really should be.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Where are we at?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Liquid Death.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Are you familiar with this, Jay?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, I am not.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: This is just water, it is literally just uh mountain spring water, but we want them to sponsor us, and so we're searching, we're trying really hard every time.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: It looks like you're drinking something really good, like a you know, a beer or something, but it's really just a spring water.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_05: So on the last episode, Kelly threatened uh switch to hint water.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: I actually I think I said F liquid death.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think I threw through I didn't I didn't actually say the F word, but I I did actually throw throw it out.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, well, Jay, welcome to the show.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Jay has been listening really since day one.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: He is someone who has emailed us, not at Dirtnap City, a few times.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: He's also made some suggestions for uh episodes, and he has uh been really one of the the the top 10 listeners after our moms.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Al from Austin, Matt, and then I'd say Jay is right up there in forget about Chris.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Chris.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: So Jay, you're probably number six of all our lists.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're six out of we have 11 listeners, so you're in the top half.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, Jay.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we don't know 11 listeners.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_05: Uh Jay, we have 10.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_05: Have we uh implemented any of your suggestions?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_05: Um no, I don't think so.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_05: And so we don't have been rotated.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: We might be recognized on your show before.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's enough.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: But uh I'm gonna have to live up to being a doozy.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the expectations are already high.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I can reach that.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're a doozy.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: I I've I've known you my whole life, and so I know you're a doozy.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: So uh just tell us a little bit about yourself.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: When did you start flying?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and like what's the what's the kind of path to get to be?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're piloting a big plane now, right?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: A 787.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I started flying in uh high school.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I was uh 16 years old.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh got my private license on my 17th birthday, got my commercial at 18.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I got my first job at 18.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: What were you doing at 18?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: I was flying for Air Hawaii.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I was flying uh uh twin cessnas between the Hawaiian Islands.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: With passengers?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: You mean you get on a plane, uh, you know, and and and at this age, I think I would be pretty alarmed by an 18-year-old pilot.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my my first uh job was as a co-pilot, and uh so I wasn't piloting command just yet.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: But uh yeah, I had people say stuff like that all the time, referring to my age, and they'd say, Are you old enough to drive, much less fly?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: And you would just put the you'd put the plane in a nosedive and tell them to shut up, right?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, say, yeah, be nice to me or or we keep going down.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're probably on vacation, they don't care.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, I had a lot of fun flying out in Hawaii.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: So you're flying back and forth between the islands.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Is it difficult to fly between islands?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's a lot of ocean out there, and as we learned in the Amelia Earhart episode, when you fly towards an island, you may or may not actually see it.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in the Hawaiian Islands, it's easy uh because they're close enough that uh you just point in the general direction and you're gonna find it.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh you're it's gonna be it's really hard to get lost in Hawaii.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and with the exception of uh between Kauai and Honolulu, you can actually see the next island before you you get to the previous one.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: So um, you know, like you can see Molokai from from Oahu, unless it's a bad weather day.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I actually came uh I guess it was 2019.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, I'm sorry, no, 2019.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: 1989.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Let's let's back that up.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: I knew it ended in a nine.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um I came and visited your parents in Hawaii, and they very generously let me borrow a Volkswagen to drive around with.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they took took took me over to see um the volcanoes on the Big Island.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think I was there with some of the Swiss relatives, and we had a really good time.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you grew up there, but you're originally from Texas, right?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yes.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh born in El Paso.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Grew up in the Dallas Fort Worth area.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, uh your parents still live in the well, not the exact house, but like right next door to the house you grew up in, right?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're they're back in my old hometown.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Nice, nice.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um, you know, it's one of these things where I think kind of like a doctor, you know, anytime you have a uh a pilot, especially a an airline pilot for a major uh airline, you always want to ask all these questions.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: What's the what's the question you get most tired of answering from people about being a pilot?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh did you learn in the military?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody knows that.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody has that.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And or if I'm deadheading, if I'm riding in the back, they say, shouldn't you be up front?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, right?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: And and for those that don't know, will you explain what a deadhead is?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, a deadhead is when you're uh riding in uniform in the back of an airplane, uh usually on your way to an assignment.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: So they see the captain, they see the captain's uniform and they think, uh oh, this guy.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um well, so you have somebody in mind today that you've been talking to me a little bit about.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I had heard heard you uh mention.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: And tell us a little bit about who this person is we're gonna talk about.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this person was born uh January 24th, 1922 in uh Nashville, Tennessee.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: He died uh October 25th, uh 2016, uh 94 years old in uh Torrance, California.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Torrance.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Torrance, yeah.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: I noticed that name.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he was the youngest of three children.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: He uh had several different jobs doing the same activity, which obviously he's he was a pilot.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh some of the people that he knew uh Orville Wright, Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Yeager, Yuri Gagarin, Neil Armstrong, Eddie Rickenbacker, which if I may go on a tangent just really quick, that's a good time.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Eddie Rickenbacker.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Eddie Rickenbacker, no.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he was um uh World War I uh ace.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Later became uh uh uh the uh CEO of uh Eastern Airlines.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, at least Kelly didn't say it was the popcorn guy.
• 8:02
  unknown: Right?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Red Mocker.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: In my in my research, I found out that he was an ambulance driver in World War One.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Eddie Eddie Rickenbacker was?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Eddie Rickenbacker was actually, but then I read another source that said that was a misconception.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: He was actually uh a staff driver uh before before he was a pilot in World War I.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_05: That's the number one key to success in life, I think.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: I I've during that time so many so many references to World War I ambulance drivers on your show.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought that was that was funny.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: But so he had he had a lot of overlap.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: He he actually met the Wright brothers.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he met Orville.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: He met Orville, okay.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't meet Wilbur.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Wilbur uh died fairly young, but also Jimmy Doolittle, uh Jackie Cochran, the first woman to break the sound barrier, Eric Hartman, who had over 250 kills as a German ace, uh Scott Crossfield, the first person to go in excess of Mach II, Wally Shira, Jim McDibbitt, who are both astronauts, yeah.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Jimmy Stewart, who uh was a B-17 pilot, which I didn't know that.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Effley Bailey, uh the famous lawyer, he was uh uh also a Marine and uh and a pilot, and Paul Harvey, you know, the the rest of the story.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's also a pilot.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, this guy got around.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, his name is uh R.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: A well Robert A.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Hoover, and everybody called him Bob.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh over his uh career he flew over 300 different aircraft.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he was originally supposed to fly the X1, the the Bell X1 to exceed the sound barrier, except that he got in a little bit of trouble.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: He uh was asked by a friend to uh buzz an airport, which he did in his uh normal way of uh flying upside down right above the runway, and uh then came back and did it again.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he was asked uh uh by his CO, he said, Were you flying the other day?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Well, yeah, I was he said uh so for that reason he was uh reprimanded and he was taken off of the uh X1 program.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, even Bob Hoover instead of Chuck Yeager.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: But he still got to be in the program.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: He just flew uh Chase for uh Chuck Yeager.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, Chuck Yeager was kind of known for doing crazy stuff like that too, wasn't he?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, all all those guys did that.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, when when Tom Cruise does it, he nobody says a word.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: They're all like, oh, that's so cool.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: But but when uh when Bob Hoover does it, he gets in trouble.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so um he started uh he he was always interested in aviation, and uh from a very young age, he would read everything he could get his hands on about airplanes, and uh including aerobatics.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: He really, really wanted to do aerobatics.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: He started working sacking groceries at age 15.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he'd work uh 16 hours a day uh on Saturday and Sunday and get two dollars a day.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: And uh flying was eight dollars an hour, and so he'd get uh 15 minutes of flying.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it took him about a year to build eight hours to solo.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, wait, you mean it costs eight dollars an hour to fly?
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: So basically to cover the fuel and the instructor and all that stuff.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Eight bucks.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I know you haven't had to take lessons in many years, but what do you think it costs today if you want to get your pilot's license per hour to to to get in the air?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Probably 200 bucks?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's at least 200 bucks an hour.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you get into complex airplanes, it's uh more than that.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_05: You know, it's so so 15 minutes means you go out seven and a half minutes and back?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, or or stay in the pattern and do uh takeoffs and landings.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_05: So how far away do you get from from your airport?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in 15 minutes in the little in the little cub that he learned to fly in, uh you don't get very far.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, you know, learning to fly is about uh learning to maneuver the aircraft and then takeoffs and landings.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: So he was able to solo at uh eight hours.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: But um he had a rather interesting problem is that he was um he had a tendency to get airsick, and uh, but he was bound and determined to overcome it because all he ever wanted to do was fly.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: So the way that he overcame his airsickness is that he would maneuver himself and uh start doing maneuvers until he'd get ill, then he'd go land.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he kept getting more and more advanced maneuvers, and uh finally he got to the point where he was like, Well, you know, let me see if I can roll it.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: And like like I said, he had learned so much about uh uh airplanes and aerobatics, he knew all the all the technical details of it, uh, but he taught himself how to fly aerobatics.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um so when he when he got out of high school, uh he went into the uh army at the time and he wanted to fly, but he uh couldn't qualify for pilot school uh because he needed two years of college and be uh 20 years old or 21 years old.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh he went to tail gunner school, but he got to fly anyway, and uh people saw that he could fly, so they wanted to they just let him keep flying.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: And one of his instructors went to his commanding officer and said, Hey, I've got a problem with this guy.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the commanding officer said, Well, just wash him out.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he said, No, you don't understand.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: This guy can fly better than me.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: He can fly better than anybody I've ever seen.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it turned out that he ended up doing uh instruction.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: He was supposed to be the student, but he was instructing people, and uh so it was uh it was kind of fun, funny.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually they did open up uh so he could uh fly anyway.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And uh back then you had to have perfect vision in order to be into in uh pilot training, and he did not have perfect vision, so uh the doctor had seen him fly, and the doctor said, I'm gonna leave in about uh twenty for about twenty minutes.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: When I come back, I want you to read that line right there.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: So he uh he read uh the line when the or memorized the line and and read it back to him when the doctor got back.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Then the doctor said, Okay, if they ever want to dilate your eyes uh for a future physical, tell them no that you're allergic.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so that way he didn't have to worry about uh doing the whole eye thing again.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, uh so I want to back up on I have a couple of questions uh before we get too much further along.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: One, um, that whole idea of doing maneuvers and pushing himself to the edge of getting sick and then and then you know kind of overcoming his air sickness, do you feel like that's almost like almost like uh being inoculated?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know how you know how when you get a shot for the flu, basically what you're getting is a little bit of the flu so it so your body fights it off.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think he was just like getting used to doing these maneuvers a little bit at a time so that by the time he was doing really crazy things, the things that were more simple didn't affect him as much.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's just exposure to the the situation.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you adapt to it.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh because I I've heard about overcoming uh motion sickness before.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_05: So when it comes to being like car sick, usually drivers aren't car sick, it's right, right the passengers, right?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_05: And as soon as you start driving, that you it's it's only the person who's not in control of the well, or sometimes people will say they get car sick from the back seat.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now you know those type of people, Alex.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: We have friends like that who insist on always sitting in the front seat because they get car sick when they say to call a shotgun, right?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_05: Um but is is flying an airplane like that too, where if you're if you're in control, is it is it less common to be airsick or is that different than car sickness?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: That is my understanding.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, Bob Hoover's the only one that I've heard of that got airsick as the one flying the airplane.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Something that I have heard is that people who have a tendency to have motion sickness have very good balance.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so I don't know if that uh contributed to his ability to fly or not.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I've heard that theorized.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: For me, uh and and you know, um Jay, you you know, my father he had a private pilot's license for a little while and flew flew a bit, and he took me out to a couple of airfields in Houston to go up in sailplanes, so like go soaring.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: So we would be behind a tow plane, and you go up, it's an on unpowered glider, and I went up with a um you know a pilot, and I was just sitting, I think I was in the front and he was behind me uh in this little two-person glider.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: And he tried to kind of, I was probably 15 or 16 at the time.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: He tried to actually, I think he was Razz me or you know, harass me a little bit, like in good nature, but he puts it into kind of a dive, and I thought that was great.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: I love doing like dives, and the same thing with roller coasters, up and down, but then we had to climb thermals to get to get some altitude.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: He, you know, once we were up in the tow plane, he wanted and those tight corkscrews.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I thought I was gonna throw up with those.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Is is that something?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Do either of you um ever feel sickness from spinning?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Same thing with carnival rides.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: I can go on roller coasters all day, like up and down, but the minute you put me in something that spins around in circles, I just feel queasy.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_05: I don't like going upside down.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: You do or you don't?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Do not no no no.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so you don't want to do a loop-de-loop?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, I think that would be my least of least of all those that I'm if if if you were a if you were a stunt pilot or a test pilot, you would not be the loop-I'd I'd I'd put my foot down.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'd say well, if you put your foot down, that's on the rudder and it might turn you to one direction.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Good point.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh Jay, is it is it technically a loop-de-loop or a loop?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they just call it a loop.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and there are a whole bunch of different kinds of loops.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Loop-de-loops, silly.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: There's the loop-de-loop and then there's the loop.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: They're two different things.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, well, so French, actually.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: I had one more question about him as a tail gunner.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, did he ever act as a tail gunner?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: No, he never did.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: Are the tail gunners the guys?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: They're not the guy down in the little bulb on on like a flying fortress, right?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're the ones in the back, but they're not in that little canopy.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're in the very tail of the aircraft with guns pointed out the tail.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: But out at the same level in the fuselage as everybody else, they're not below the fuselage.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's because I've heard those tail, those um, the gunners that were down in those little little um what turrets?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Is that called a turret?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that that was like the most dangerous job you could have.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because basically, A, you were sort of exposed to everything, you know, you weren't in the aircraft itself.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: And B, if the landing gear or there was any problem with the landing, basically they could, they could crush you and those things.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: That would not not be a job I would want to have.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: So he ended up he ended up cheating on his eye exam and because they saw that he was a good pilot, and then where did you go from there?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he uh went to the uh Tennessee National Guard.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and uh uh at one point uh he met uh Roscoe Turner.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Roscoe Turner was an air show pilot way back in the day, and he had a suit on, and he looked very, very nice.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: And uh wait, Bob or Roscoe had the suit on?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Roscoe.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so that made an impression on him.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so from then on, uh Bob Hoover made sure that his uh military uniform was absolutely perfect, and when he went to civilian flying, he always flew in a suit.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: He always had a suit and tie uh whenever he flew air shows later in his career.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, he was uh he was tall, and tall pilots went to bomber and transport school, and short people went to fighters.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and he wanted to be in fighters, he desperately wanted to be in fighters.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: So he and another fellow uh who was also uh displeased with his uh assignment, they agreed to switch and they bribed a guy twenty dollars worth of Kentucky bourbon in order to switch their paperwork.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: So he he got to be a fighter pilot.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: But this was this was in the military, yes.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: How did we win so many wars back then with these kind of things going on?
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: 20 bucks worth of military bourbon, and you're just like breaking a pretty major rule for a guy who can't even pass an eye test, right?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Right, but he had somebody saw it, he had the natural ability.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Jay is pretty tall.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Is it a challenge being a tall pilot?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like like getting in and out of the cockpit and and just like do you find, especially when you were you've I mean you've been tall since you were 18 years old.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: Was it a challenge to fly in smaller planes and things like that?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Or or is it kind of you just get used to it?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: The really small ones, yes, but uh you you pretty much adapt to it.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I own an airplane right now that uh I feel like I kind of have to shoehorn myself into, but uh it's um it, you know, I make it work and I get used to it.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, so it's not too big of an obstacle.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: So he ends up going to fighter pilot school.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: And this is in the uh army or I guess did the Air Force even exist back then?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the Air Force didn't exist until after World War Two.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh at this point it was uh it was the army.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um let's see, what was the name?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: I can't think of the name offhand.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Army Air Corps?
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Army Air Corps.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, his first assignment was in North Africa.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the manufacturers would ship uh airplanes over in crates, and they would be put together in North Africa before they're dispatched elsewhere.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And because of his flying abilities, they wanted him to uh test fly all these airplanes.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't want him in combat, which drove him nuts because he wanted to fly in combat.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so he spent several years at at doing this, but uh he would always uh every flight he tried to do something a little bit better, a little bit better, and and um you know he would do loops right above the airport and then had a target on the ground, and he would try to shoot the target in four consecutive loops.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um and there's so many variables, you know, the the air mass is always moving, and your speed is changing.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: As you're going uphill, your speed is dissipating.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: As you're coming downhill, your speed is uh picking up.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really, really hard to maintain the exact same track and maintain a perfect circle.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, but he was able to do that, and uh he used that uh uh to uh improve his flying skills.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: He was always working on improving his flying skills.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: What what years were these that he was in uh North Africa?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this was uh mid-40s, I believe 1942 to 44.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: So this is during World War II.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: During World War II, yes.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but but he wanted to fly combat, and uh so he was doing his best to get moved to combat, and they weren't willing to transport him.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or excuse me, uh transport.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: He was almost too valuable for that, right?
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, hey, this guy can train others, he can test pilot.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I would imagine being a uh test pilot is one of the most strenuous and challenging pilot jobs you can have.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, well, after the war, he that's uh he did a whole lot of test pilot flying.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: He flew all sorts of different aircraft.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: But um there was one airplane that was uh uh known to be a killer, uh the B-26.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh pilots were afraid of it.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so they asked him to demonstrate uh with uh in front of the other pilots to show uh that you could do anything and everything with this airplane.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: So he wouldn't just ask for the best airplane they had, he would ask for the hangar queen.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's typically an airplane that uh spends a lot of time under maintenance.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: So he would specifically ask for the the airplane the pilots hated the most.
• 24:42
  unknown: Okay.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then he took off and he he did a full car back.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: The hangar the hangar queen?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Hanger queen, yeah.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: The the the airplane that stays in the hangar all the time.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, with maintenance.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: But uh he went out and flew a full aerobatic routine uh with his twin-engine uh bomber, you know, which they're not made for aerobatics, but he did it anyway.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he was uh because you you can do aerobatics in just about any airplane as long as you don't overstress it.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he had the natural feel that he wouldn't overstress it.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: But um then he shut down an engine and continued to do the whole aerobatic routine on a single engine.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so it it was uh this was a B-26?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they had the A26 and B-26, which are both twin-engine.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and the B's a bomber, I assume that's what B stands for.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: So so I think B-24, you hear about that a lot, and of course a B-52.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: A B-52 is larger, right?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, B-52 is Vietnam era.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, eight-engine jet.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: But uh anyway, so he uh inspired a lot of confidence with uh other pilots by demonstrating uh this airplane.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so he finally talked his way into getting transferred and he was stationed in Italy.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: But again, they tried to keep him under wraps and uh not let him get into too much combat.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: So he went in, he went on patrols.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so he uh really didn't get too many opportunities to fight German airplanes until one day he was flying along in a British Spitfire.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're flying on patrol, uh typically you carry uh an extra fuel tank that sits underneath uh the airplane.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's kind of a long cylindrical thing, looks like a torpedo, sort of.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: Looks like a big teardrop.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so but if you encounter an enemy, the first thing you do is drop the tank because it's heavy and it's a lot of drag.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so now you're a lot more nimble and able to fight.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so unfortunately, he could not get his tip, his uh drop tank dropped uh when he met uh a couple of German airplanes, and uh so he was able to outmaneuver him for a while.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, believe it or not, it's not all about who can go fastest when you're in a dog fight.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you want to be able to go slower, and then the other guy will uh will uh exceed your radius of turn.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Overshoot you basically.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh but they eventually caught up to him and he was shot down and he went into uh German POW camp.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: But uh he tried to escape at every opportunity and was never successful.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: He usually didn't have a plan.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: He usually he would usually just see an opportunity and try to go for it.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: So he ended up being in captivity for about 14 months, and then in uh uh it was April 1945.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it was kind of the beginning of the end of the war for the Germans, and there were a lot of uh the guards were deserting.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: So he and two friends got a chance to uh escape.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so they they ran out under the cover of darkness, and uh uh they ran into uh they they'd get shelter wherever they could.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: They ran into this woman who was sympathetic to their cause, and she actually gave them a gun.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: And uh then he uh found an airport and found uh Fock Wolf 190, a German fighter plane, and uh he uh was a he uh used the gun to get uh the guard to help him get started, and then he took off and he just flew north and uh he uh flew until he saw windmills, and then he knew he was in Holland, and then he was afraid that you know somebody was gonna shoot him down seriously.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Here's this German plane.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's flying uh a German aircraft with German markings, so he uh deliberately crash landed in a in a field, and uh that was how he got his freedom.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: I have a question about that.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, and this this relates to I guess the planes, military planes of that era, and you may or may not know the answer, but a plane for today.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: Are there keys?
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like, do you do you have a set of keys that you come in and you put it in the ignition and you turn it on?
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Or or how like can you just walk up to any aircraft that's ready to go without any sort of um key or a fob or anything like that and just start it up?
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: The the little airplanes, yes, you have keys.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but uh the bigger airplanes, no, there are no keys.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: So this this uh Fokker, um, what did he say, Fock Wolf?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: Excuse me.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: It was uh Falkwolf 190.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: So did would this have had some kind of some kind of keys or something you had to do, or do you think you just probably not?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: Probably not.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, and then what about an airliner?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like what about the 787 Dreamliner?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: Do you do you have do you have your keys on your car?
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, with your with your a Tesla, you don't even have a Tesla, you don't even have keys for your car.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: Your vacation gets canceled because the pilot forgot his keys.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think Seinfeld did a bit on that one time.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: But no keys in the 787.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: No keys.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: So so does that mean anybody could who knew what they were doing could go in and start up the 787?
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know what's scary is uh I've seen videos on YouTube that go through the entire step on how to start a 787.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you could uh get all the doors closed and have it clear of uh ground obstacles, you know, you could actually start it up and and um taxi and take off, you know.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, you know, that's uh trying to trying to get out there to steal an airplane would be pretty tough.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, there was some news story just recently um and who about a guy who stole an airplane, stole an airliner, like uh maybe it was a FedEx plane or something like that.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you're thinking about Seattle and uh Horizon Air uh dash.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: Did you tell me maybe you told me about this?
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: But uh we may have discussed it.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: But the guy did some did some aerobatics and then crashed.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: It was kind of like a suicide, but he did this all in a plane and crashed it.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: He was a disgruntled employee, maybe, but he wasn't a pilot.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was a suicide.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: He was not a pilot, but he had learned on uh Microsoft flight simulator.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, there's resources out there that can help you to learn how to get these things started, you know.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: How how close to reality is is Microsoft flight like the current flight simulators?
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Are they pretty spot on with what it's really like?
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: They're very, very accurate.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, with with the increase in computer power, it's uh it's gotten really, really incredibly accurate.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_05: You probably don't do that in your free time, though, right?
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's like work.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: No, I haven't uh I haven't messed with a Microsoft flight simulator in in quite some time.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: It used to be a hobby of the colour.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_05: I would think that'd be the last thing a pilot would want to do in his free time is is do that.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you'd be surprised.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there are actually some pilots that build a whole simulator in their in their house.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so so he escaped from the POW camp.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: He crash lands in Holland, um, which Holland is the same thing as the Netherlands, I believe.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: Holland is the province of the Netherlands or the state in the Netherlands or something.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: But uh he crash lands there, and then what happens next?
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, and then that was basically the end of the war for him.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he was very malnourished from the uh prison camp, and and this was really the beginning of the end of the war anyway.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: So his next step, you know, so his first job was as a fighter pilot and uh an instructor pilot.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: Then he became a test pilot.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: He went to a test pilot school at uh Patuxent River in Maryland, and that's where he really knew that learned the ins and outs of test flying.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: And his he was stationed at uh Wright Field in Ohio, which is now called Wright Patterson.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh when he arrived, there was uh another aircraft and uh he he jumped them and they ended up having a a dog fight, uh you know, just friendly dog fight.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's something that pilots do.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he couldn't get the better of this guy, uh, but the other guy couldn't get the better of him.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, wait, wait.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, what is a friendly dog fight?
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't sound like it's well, uh two uh two pilots trying to get on each other's tail.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if you can get on his uh six o'clock uh so basically if you can get on his six, then you've got him and you you get the kill.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: So so they they just do that for like drinks or I mean yeah for drinks or for pride or or whatever.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: But uh after airline pilots do that, have you ever done that with another airline pilot?
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we we they they frown upon doing dog fights in a in an airliner.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: So thank god.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we got a little we're gonna have a little turbulence here, folks.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: So uh put on your seat belts and tighten them up.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: I see Bob over there, and I'm gonna get on his six.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so uh after you know, neither one of them being uh the ultimate victor, uh uh uh the other guy said, We better knock it off before somebody gets hurt.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so they landed and they met each other then, and that was when he met uh Chuck Yeager.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so uh it was right.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: Bob Hoover and Chuck Yeager were were very good friends uh from then on.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so on their off days from Wright Patterson, they would fly air shows together as well.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: But they're they're into uh test flying, which uh you know test flying back then was very, very different than it is now.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh first of all, the jet engines were very crude and uh you know they didn't have fuel control units, so you were metering in the fuel uh to get it to run.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: So it was really, really easy to over-temp the engine, or it was easy to flame the engine out.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so uh it took a very, very delicate touch.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, which is which is is overtemping putting too much in or is flaming out overtemping in.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if you put too much fuel in, you'll overtemp the engine.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you take the fuel off too quickly, it'll flame out.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have to either restart it.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, oh, like the ignite you have to reignite it.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: The the basically the flame from the oh okay, well, yeah.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: So so so let me ask you this.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: When you start up the the Dreamliner, what what kind of engine are those like Pratt and Whitney or or what what kind of engines are on the Dreamliner?
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: These are uh they're general electric uh Gen X engines.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: And uh is there a flame going in that?
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: But it's a very, very different uh nowadays because uh they have full authority digital engine control, so a computer monitors absolutely everything.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: So we just basically turn a start switch and then uh put the fuel lever up and and it just starts.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like your it's like your uh grill in the backyard.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: You turn on the you turn on the gas and you push the little igniter and then well it's even simpler than that because you have to turn the engine to a certain speed before you can introduce fuel and ignition.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: And uh uh so with uh the older airplanes that I flew, uh, even though it had a fuel control unit, you could still over-temp an engine uh if you uh mistreated it.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: But nowadays the full authority digital engine controls are are just make it uh brainless.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have a hot start or something, it automatically uh shuts it down for you and um and uh starts even doing some uh corrective action or uh troubleshooting.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's really quite amazing.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so test flying, they would fly the entire envelope and try to uh extend the envelope of these airplanes.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: So how fast, how slow, how high, and uh you know, do all kinds of maneuvers to you know, try to stall it, getting it in uncomfortable positions.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was um really, really something else.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and one of the main things that they had problems with was uh compressibility, which meant as they approached the speed of sound, uh they would have a shockwave because the air molecules air molecules just couldn't get out of the way fast enough.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the shock waves would form over the wings first because uh the air on the top of the wings uh goes faster.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: Faster, yeah.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so when the shockwave would touch the control surfaces and they would they would lose control.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh same thing with the elevator, when the elevator would get in the shockwave, they'd lose control.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a really significant uh uh barrier.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: And there were some people that theorized that you could not uh fly beyond the speed of sound.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so the uh Bell X-1 was was of course the first airplane to do this, and uh the first they were a civilian company, and their civilian pilot wanted$150,000 to uh exceed the speed of sound, and the U.S.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: government was like, no, we're not gonna do that.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's when they chose the military.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so the military did it on the cheap.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: And uh they uh moved there some uh Kentucky bourbon, right?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, really.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: But uh they um so they moved uh everything to uh Edwards Air Force, what's now Edwards Air Force Bay, Edwards Air Force Bay in California.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh back then it was known as uh uh Murock Lake.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so we talked a little bit about this in or I remember um listening to the biography of Neil Armstrong and and because he spent some time out there uh with Chuck Yeager and some of those guys.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like it was kind of a yeah that was Edwards, right?
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_05: That's another pilot, I'm saying that's another one we talked about.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I guess he is a pilot first and uh astronaut second.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: So he's out he's out now in Edwards with all these guys during the 50s, I suppose.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this was 1947 when they broke the sound barrier.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: But uh he was out there a bit longer than that.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: But uh before I well, he was the chase plane when Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, and he even took uh pictures.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and the those pictures arrived on uh Harry Truman's desk uh the very next day that Bob Hoover had taken of the uh X-1.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, this was all very, very secret at the time.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh but while um in um well during the uh program Hoover flew other airplanes as well, and he was doing uh, I believe it was an F-84, he was doing a spin test, and uh the airplane just wouldn't come out of the spin.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: They have rockets which try to force the nose down so you can recover, and that didn't work.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then they had drogue shoots that come out of the tail to try to point the nose down, and that didn't work.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: So then he went to an eject, and then his ejection seat didn't work.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: So he had to do just a regular bailout.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, the ejection seat uses rockets to take you away from the aircraft.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: And since he didn't have the benefit of that, he ended up hitting both legs on uh the horizontal tail and uh broke both of his legs, and so that ended up uh ending his program uh with the uh X1.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: So he never did get to fly that.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: But he did heal up and eventually come back and and fly other uh other aircraft.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: And when you say uh the the so the ejection seat didn't work, but you said he had to do a regular exit from the plane.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like you pull the canopy manually and unbuckle and jump down.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, in this case the canopy, the canopy did come loose, but uh the seat did not fire.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so he had to disconnect himself from the seat and not from the parachute, of course.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, and uh had to bail out, you know, like a traditional skydiver, you know, just jumping out at high speed while falling towards Earth.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: God.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's I I I feel like$150,000 that that pri the the pilot that asked for that, that wasn't unreasonable.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't feel like that's an unreasonable question.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, maybe not.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: But uh back then it might have been worth a million, but still I feel like if you're gonna if you're gonna do something like that, uh and I'm kind of surprised that they didn't go for that, but anyway, he's he got to fly the F-86 Sabre, and uh just like uh he had done with the B-26 earlier, they had asked him to go to Korea to demonstrate it.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so he uh uh demonstrated it for uh the pilots that were flying in the Korean War.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh there he overheard some guys talking about uh the old man thinks he can fly.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so he was in he was in the bar and he ordered three shots of tequila and he downed them one right after the other.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then he went to the bathroom and upchucked them all, and then came back and did it again.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: And meanwhile, you know, the other guys didn't realize what he was doing in the bathroom, and so uh they were trying to keep up with him, so he got them all totally roaring drunk.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: And uh then the next day he went out and demonstrated the F-86.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: And and he didn't have a hangover because he had thrown it all.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: No, he didn't.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: And they did.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was I was hoping you didn't say that he went out right then and just hopped in the plane and took off because isn't it eight hours uh bottled uh throttle or something is what they say.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, eight hours bottled throttle.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the airline has uh a little more restrictive uh than that, even.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: But after his military career, he went to work for uh Allison Aviation, and then later on North American.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: And North American is where he really enjoyed himself.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: He flew a whole bunch of different airplanes for them, and he would do air shows uh as a civilian pilot all across the country.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: He had a yellow P-51 that he flew uh very frequently.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then his most famous airplane that he flew was is called a Shrike Commander, and it's a twin-engine uh propeller business airplane.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he would go out and he would fly aerobatics in this aircraft.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's not meant for aerobatics, but you know, if you don't overstress it, it's it's fine.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so he would do air shows all over the place with this airplane, and then he would shut down an engine, and then he would continue to do aerobatics.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, an engine failure is an emergency.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, there are all these guys that say you don't want to turn into the dead engine because it'll tip you over, you know.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh but if you have speed, you know, it's not a big deal.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: But but it's much easier to lose control on a single engine.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: You start getting pulled one direction, right?
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's pushing the engine is pushing from one side and you have to yaw to compensate.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and there gets to a point uh as you slow down, if you've got full power on one engine and no power on the other.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's a point where you absolutely cannot maintain control.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so the only way to recover is either pull off power from the good engine or point the nose down and build up some airspeed again.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: But he was a master at this.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so he would do uh an entire air show on a single engine, and then he would shut down the second engine and he would glide, and he would do aerobatics during the glide.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well it's uh and and again, you know, I mentioned you've got airflow moving, and every airport is different, and the temperature makes things different.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the hotter it is, the thinner the air is.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the air speeds are are different, and uh you know, altitudes uh you know, higher airports have uh thinner air at than the lower airports, and of course, if you have crosswind or tailwind or or whatever, that that affects the way that you have to uh fly the air show in order to stay in front of the spectators.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_05: So is he considered like the greatest pilot of all time?
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, in fact, Jen Jimmy Doodle and Chuck Yeager both said he was the best best stick and rudder pilot to ever live.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I assume he knew that.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: He was actually very humble and he did not consider himself a great pilot.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: He just considered himself uh to always be working to be the best at what he does.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: And uh every flight try to improve a little bit.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: But during air shows, he would also he would take off and immediately do a roll, and uh, you know, right above the runway.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um he would uh land on one wheel and then do a roll and land on the other wheel, you know, right in front of front of everybody.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: Just took uh amazing thing.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: He was doing this from the 60s all the way up into the 90s.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: Oh and uh yeah, so he did this for a long time.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh one of his um he he went on a couple of different uh TV programs.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's uh Thrill Seekers with Chuck Connors, and um uh That's Incredible.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: You probably remember that.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I remember that show.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's oh gosh, I haven't thought about that show in years.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's a good dead end.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's incredible.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: I remember, yeah.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: He did a demonstration where uh he poured iced tea into a glass on that was sitting on top of the glare shield, and while he was doing a roll, and because he's maintaining positive G's, he poured an entire glass of tea as and you see the uh horizon going round outside it.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the and the centrifugal, is it centrifugal force that holds it in place, basically?
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no, it's just it if if you do the uh barrel roll right, you're feeling like uh you're feeling in sh in the seat of your pants, pointing straight down.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean you could be sitting there drinking coffee or whatever while while you're upside down, but uh you're still feeling like you're sitting your weight is in the seat.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: Right, because of because of the the G's that you're pulling.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: The G's are pulling you into the seat even though you're upside down.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: But he was so smooth, you know, he wouldn't do excessive G's.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: He may do a couple of G's only.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so it was uh but he he didn't quite compete uh in aerobatics, but he did uh he was the honorary captain for the U.S.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: aerobatic team.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so they were competing against the Soviets in the uh early 60s.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the Soviets, if if you remember how they were with the Olympics and the East Germans too, they basically had professional athletes.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: They were paid to do just that.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: So the Soviets paid pilots just to fly.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: And they also built an airplane just for aerobatics, and uh so they had this really, really powerful airplane uh called the YAC, YAK.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: And um so they were they had this contest in uh Moscow, and uh mean meanwhile the American pilots they're doing this on their own nickel with their own airplanes, but you know, and they've it they wasn't they didn't have sponsors like they have today.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: So the Americans were were getting smoked, and Bob is watching this and he's just getting royally pissed off.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: And um he at some point he had made he had gotten an agreement to let them fly their yak.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: So after everything was all over and done with, they let him take the yak out in front of the crowd.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: So he takes off and immediately does a roll.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh then he goes upside down and flies down the length of the runway upside down, and then goes over the top of a dike and then down out of the side of the crowd and flies along the Moscow River and flies all the way along the river to the other side of the airport and comes back again upside down, uh, screaming by all these people.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: Then he did the whole aerobatic routine, but instead of the thousand-foot floor that the other pilots had to do, he brought his all the way down to the ground.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: So he he showed them right then and there that uh he was as good or better than any of the Russian pilots in an airplane that he had never flown before.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so when he landed, the the crowd absolutely mobbed him.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: An airplane called the Yak, even.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah, that there's something about that.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: Did you ever see him?
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: Did you ever get to see him?
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I saw him perform several times.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_01: Nice.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: But uh anyway, the uh security people took him away and uh he was in trouble.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he was afraid he was gonna get sent to a gulag for for basically burning.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: You mean the Russian security people because he had what overstepped his boundaries with flying?
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: He was just about to fly it like a nice like a nice kid and not do not show off.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, exactly.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, here he went and and outflew everybody.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: So um they did have an awards uh ceremony that night, and he was expected to be part of the the awards.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the astronaut Yuri Gaguerin saw him.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: And and Yuri Gaguerin and Bob Hoover actually water skied together.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh kind of funny.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't hear no any more details beyond that, but but they knew each other quite well.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: And Yuri saw what was going on.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, Hey, what are you doing over here?
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: No, let him come over to you know so Yuri Gaguerin may have saved him from got him out of trouble from being in uh in prison.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: I I've also heard that Yuri Gaguerin would be a great person to talk about, like first man in space, right?
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh like like just crazy, you know, with bubblegum and and baline wire and you know some scotch tape, he was up there.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they really, really uh took safety for granted.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they they uh they're yeah, the Al Paolo program too, they they took a lot of shortcuts in in uh trying to win the space race.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so so Bob Hoover, he's doing these uh shows.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: He's he's traveling, it sounds globally around the world.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um did he did he eventually retire or did he die of old age?
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: Did he crash a plane?
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: What what was his uh Well, he crashed a number of planes over the years.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was part of that was part no, that's not how he died.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: But he was performing at an air show in Oklahoma City one time, and uh there were two FAA inspectors on the ground watching his show, and they decided he didn't uh they didn't think he was performing up to his usual stuff.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so they started an investigation, and then during the investigation he had a mechanical problem on another flight and crash landed.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh they ended up uh taking his uh medical certificate and uh he had to fight to get it back.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a very big deal among pilots because they're like, man, if the FAA can do this to Bob Hoover, you know, what what do you think our chances are as ordinary pilots?
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so it took a couple of uh uh years to get his uh license back, and that's how he ended up knowing F.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: Lee Bailey.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh because he was uh a very famous attorney and a pilot.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: But um anyway, so he he finally knew when to hang it up, and uh um one of his um very notable photographs is he's got a photograph of himself and uh Chuck Lindbergh and uh Neil Armstrong all together at the same table and everyone.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then of course he knew uh Orville Wright as well and uh introduced Orville Wright to the Jet.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: Gave Orville Wright his very first ride in the jet.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he met his wife on a blind date and they were married 55 years and uh until she died.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: And uh you know how they say sometimes uh uh somebody dies of a broken heart.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it may have been uh his story because he uh he died just a few months after she did.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: At at n but into his 90s, right?
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he was 94.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so all the chances that he that he took, uh it was kind of ironic that uh it uh took uh that he died of old age.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, uh it look at look at your father, right?
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's still he's still going strong and he flew for years and years and years.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know that he'd ever did aerobatics or anything like that, but yeah, my dad did aerobiotics in the military and had a had a blast doing that.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: So uh Alex, I'll I'll ask you um, because I think I think I know the answer for Jay, but have you ever been to an air show, Alex?
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_05: I have not, no, no.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because I there's a big one in Houston.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's like called Punch of Remember.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_05: Ellington Field has them has a lot of them.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I just never had the opportunity to go over there.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_05: I guess I've had the opportunity, I've just never been to one.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: You've been to a lot of uh football games, and you know, one of the coolest things in the football games is when you get the whoever it is, whether it's uh whatever the aircraft is, a helicopter or a jet or prop planes or you know, bombers flying over the stadium.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um I saw a few years ago, Jay, and and I maybe you've seen this, it was a behind the scenes of the Blue Angels doing the flyover at probably the 2018 or 2019 Super Bowl.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: And uh whatever year Lady Gaga was in it, I think.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_01: And they were supposed to fly over right as she finished the national anthem.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: So Lady Gaga, I think we're singing the national anthem, or or I may be getting this wrong, maybe it was Katy Perry, but one of those, one of those uh great female singers that does these songs, including the national anthem.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_01: She hits the note and then they fly over.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so they have to time it within three or four seconds.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's got to be so precise.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess just weeks and weeks of preparation so that they can be going the right speed, so that they've been going at the right trajectory.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think everybody in those stadiums just takes it for granted.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's so cool, you know.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_01: But but the the logistics to make that work.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, is that any have you ever seen that video, Jay, or or any explaining?
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: I saw one about uh Whitney Houston and uh because when she did the Super Bowl.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe maybe that was it.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_05: That's the famous one, 19 1990.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, the Lady Gaga nailed hers too.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_00: She was really good.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: But uh and the and the plane, the planes were right there at that moment.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_00: I understand that there's actually software uh in in the airplanes to uh adjust your turn and stuff to uh really because you want to adjust to a specific time.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh of course it's up to the singer too to maintain their proper cadence, you know.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, Jay, a couple couple of questions uh for you before we before we wrap up.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: As far as um your experience, what is the coolest aircraft you've ever flown?
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: What's your favorite?
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, by far the 787.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_01: And what do you like about it?
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's a technological marvel.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it it just does so much for you.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's got all advanced systems.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh most of the architecture is electric.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, so many, well, the vast majority of jet airplanes uh tap bleed air, uh, which is compressed air from the engines.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of burning it, they siphon it off in a big plumbing type deal to to run air conditioning and run uh uh uh all sorts of stuff.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_05: So the fact that it does so much for you, does that take the fun away from it though?
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_05: Is that like what is there left for me to do?
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_05: I'm just sitting here pushing buttons?
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can hand fly all you can hand fly all you want.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but of course, in in cruise, that's when you really get spoiled.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's you know, because it does so much for you.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: But the capabilities, uh you know, flying approaches, uh curved approaches, uh uh down to uh just a few hundred feet of visibility is uh really a rush.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_05: Well, let me ask it this way what's the most fun part about flying commercial airlines?
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, definitely, definitely the takeoff and landing.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh when you're roaring down the runway and you're not leaving the runway until over 200 miles an hour, it's a pretty big, pretty big rush.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh landing in um in the fog is really quite exciting because uh for one thing you you get to the user training, and for another you got your fingers crossed.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, it's it's really cool to to be at minimums and you just barely see the approach lights go under your nose and uh um and and and you can land with almost no visibility.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the spookiest takeoff I ever had was a very low visibility takeoff in uh Delhi, India.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're really, really heavy and it's hot, and there's about a quarter mile in fog, and we're uh just hauling down the runway, just going so fast because we're heavy, you know, 200 miles an hour before we lift the nose, and I can't see.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I can only see a few runway lights in front of me.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, you're absolutely trusting everybody to be clear of the runway.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was very spooky.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, of course we're doing the simulator all the time, but uh you know, it's not a big deal there.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I was quite happy to get off of the ground at that point.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: What's the what's the hardest U.S.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_01: airport to land in?
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: Is it San Diego?
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, San Diego's got a steep approach.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Washington National, you fly the river uh to uh landing oftentimes.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um probably the most exciting airport that I used to fly to was Tagusigalpa, Honduras, where the um uh airport basically sat in a bowl.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so you had train on all sides of you.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that kept your uh kept your attention.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_00: You you couldn't uh you couldn't uh let your mind wander with that one.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_00: But it was fun.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_00: It was actually a lot of fun.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've been to San Diego a few times and just gone down to you know where the airport is up above it and just watched the planes come in because some of those buildings, also San Jose.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_01: San Jose is really close to the buildings as well.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um San Jose, California.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you're just like you're you're almost at eye level with these planes as they're going over the over the buildings to land.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um well thank you for telling us about Bob Hoover.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: Very, very didn't know that much about him, Alex.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_01: Had you ever heard of him before?
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_05: No, no, but if he's you know known.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's cool that there's somebody that kind of all the pilots agree that was the best, and they talk about it.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_05: It's kind of cool that he shared his world with us.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks, Jay.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_01: He's a pilot's pilot.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there are all sorts of uh YouTube videos about Bob Hoover.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you Google Bob Hoover iced tea, you'll see the uh iced tea thing.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like from the cockpit's perspective, like in the cockpit.
• 59:48
  unknown: Wow.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you you can see him pouring ice tea with a horizon going around outside him.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, you can see him uh shutting feathering his engines and uh in fact, he would be going really fast and feather him right over the runway, just a few feet above the runway, and then pull up and uh you know it's energy management turn his airspeed and altitude.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and uh sounds like he got over his uh airsickness.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he he sure did.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_05: I challenge Kelly not to name this episode Bob Hoover didn't suck.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, on that, thanks, folks.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh hit us up, not at DirtNep City.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Jay.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_01: Really appreciate you taking the time today.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: It was very interesting to learn about Bob Hoover, and uh thanks for being uh thanks for being our number six fan.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_00: All right, appreciate you having me.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_02: In the hangar light, dawn was blue, grease on his hands, sky in his view, a test pilot grin, a steady flame, American wings, and hoover blinding me to that blue and they just in common as him when they rushes in all the boys all the stings for the home front line, through the line, and it flew in the line, that free steel and it's on the field to the front fight.