If you ever fly a Hornet Moth, please operate it as intended: from a large
grass field,
always taking off and landing
into wind.
It was never designed for
ANY crosswind. Only an incredible stick like Larry Loretto
could operate it with a crosswind from a dry paved runway.
It has a
non-locking tailwheel. Modern (sorta) airplanes such as the Beech 18 and
Pitts S-1S have a full-swivel tailwheel that you lock for takeoff and landing. To not lock
them is insane. Very bad things will happen.
That's what the Hornet Moth has - a full-swivel, non-locking tailwheel. I pestered
Larry pretty annoyingly to replace the tailwheel with a locking one. He said there
was one available, and I think he was in the process of installing it.
I have a terrible fear that the next owner will wreck it. Freddy in Key West had that
problem - every time he sold an airplane that he had flown thousands of hours, the
new owner would wreck it.
Like Larry, Freddy had no virtue, but was an awesome stick. Bob Hoover had no virtue,
either, but he was an
awesome fucking stick. As a North American test pilot, he
would
routinely dead-stick experimental single-engine fighters to a short runway
and greatly admired Freddy's P-51 aerobatics at OSH.
Note the pattern of an inversely proportional relationship between virtue and stick skills.
(cough cough) Dick Piche (cough cough) ... the @ssCan retards hate him, but gosh, that
boy could fly.