I think I want a Pitts

[Slick Goodlin]

The more I think about it, the more I think I want a Pitts Special in my life. Nothing extravagant, I’m basically an old man who hopefully has at least a half century left to continue being old so I’m thinking S1C. Far as I know that means two ailerons, flat bottom airfoils, and about a hundred horses. Seems pleasant while at the same time being a good platform to get better at flying.

What do you think? Am I nuts for this?

[Chuck Ellsworth]

You will be nuts if you don't .

Talk to Andy he will be able to give you good advice on which one to buy.

Chuck E.

[Nark]

Seriously, buy one today!

If you don’t already have something to wet your appetite already, jump on it.

Going to the hangar and going flying is second only to sex. Well, slightly exaggerated. I flew roughly 4 hours today, only to run in to some friends at another airport. Drank free coffee for hours and came up with a monetary number required to ingest some of the the most fowl things known to man. You know, typical military types talking about useless things.
I thoroughly enjoy wasting my days this way.

[cgzro]

One of the best decisions I ever made was getting my S-1T. Tremendous challenge even 20 years later and great fun. The only problem is they show every little flaw in your skill which is not everybody's cup of tea.

[Colonel]

http://www.airbum.com/Pitts/ThePittsSpecial.html

The Pitts reminds me a lot of the 289 V-8 Shelby (nee AC) Cobra. Tiny, powerful.



It's a very simple receipe: minimum weight, maximum power. The difference is
the flight control feel. You need to fly a Pitts to understand it. Many aircraft look
like it, but none fly like it.

The original single seat Pitts are tiny. Make sure you physically fit, if you're a big
guy. Figure out what parachute you're going to use. There are long and short fuselage
models.

The exact model of Pitts doesn't much matter: two aileron, four aileron, flat bottom
wing, round wing. Was it built well in the first place? What are the welds like? What's
the damage history? What's the fabric like? Stitts is shit. I like ceconite / randolph.

Which engine does it have? How bad is the internal corrosion?

My suggestion is to buy one that's flown 50 hours in the last year. That means it's not
a project, which many Pitts are. Don't buy a project unless you know what you are doing,
because although it looks like an airplane, it won't fly until you take it apart and change
all the fabric and fix all the wood wings and rebuild the engine. 10 years later, you will
go flying. Don't do that, if you want to fly. Don't buy someone else's problems.

Most people don't like the sparcraft plywood ribs.

Try to get a light one. It doesn't even need a charging system. Drop the alternator, and
get one of those lithium batteries. Get a lightweight starter. Shave the pounds, get
better performance.

You will use a flat four parallel valve lycoming. 320 or 360, doesn't matter. It needs inverted
oil and inverted fuel. Look closely at the cylinder walls and camshaft and lifters for corrosion,
because it will be there, and it will make metal and kill the engine.

Really, it's just a tube and fabric aircraft with a Lycoming. Don't go constant speed prop - save
the weight and money - don't need a governor, just a metal 2-blade fixed pitch prop and wind
it up to 3300 RPM at Vne on the downlines. Won't hurt the engine, your neighbors will hate you.

You will learn to snap roll. Nothing snap rolls like an S1. Cheap.



Oh, and get a liter bike. 5-10 years old, never crashed. Cheap.



And get a .44 Magnum S&W revolver. I like the 6 inch barrel.



Or a Desert Eagle in .44 - really nice pistol if you don't want a revolver.



You will regret none of the above, and it will make your life so much richer.



Live your life with no regrets. You will have an awful lot of fun, and meet some
really interesting people along the way.









Get a Pitts, and put an awful lot of gasoline through the engine. Learn to fly
consistent, flawless acro at the surface. I guarantee, if you do that, you will
have an interesting life. I sure as hell did.





Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Learn to do this:



Women will want you. Bureaucrats will want your scalp, especially when you have
a full, lush head of natural, non-greying hair despite the advancing decades.



Poor kid (on the left) had a really shitty instructor, according to TC:





Good head of hair on the kid, though.

[Slick Goodlin]

Sounds like my wish list isn’t far off the mark, I’m also a big proponent of light weight and user of Randolph. Would a Sasquatch like me at 6’5” squeeze into an S1?

[Colonel]

I dunno. You're even bigger than me. Curtis Pitts was a big man, too but
I don't think he used the canopy in the S1 - he might have just looked over
the top wing? Rob Holland and Jim LeRoy are also very tall Pitts pilots,
around your height.



You need to sit in a single seat Pitts, and figure out your seat and parachute
and canopy arrangement. Long legs are ok, but if you have a long trunk it's
going to be a snug fit.

Frankly that's going to be your biggest challenge. If you keep it light, it will
approach and touch down at a very reasonable speed, compared to the big
heavy two-seaters.

If you understand tube and fabric and Lycomings and taildraggers, you're most
of the way there. You just need to figure out how to land blind, and to unspin.

Hint: the USN initially rejected the Corsair for their (straight deck) carriers in
WWII, but the Brits made them work on a boat. What was the difference?

PS IIRC I think Jim LeRoy (like Skip Stewart) flew the single-seat Pitts S-2S
which was made in small numbers, before they figured out to angle the bottom
of the firewall forward for the front seat footroom, for the Pitts S-2A / S-2B / S-2C.

You won't find many S-2S around. Ray-Ban Golds used a couple, IIRC.



Skip tried some wings from DougS but he told me he wasn't happy how they snapped.
He's gone composite, last I heard?

There's also the single-seat Pitts S-1-11B which was kind of the prototype for
the S-2C - it had the improved ailerons. Curtis did great work on it.

There are many custom wings for the Pitts. Ultimate - hell, Gord made a complete
airplane for a while, that Rob Holland flew on the airshow circuit, decades later -
and Steve Wolf builds a really gnarly set of wings that Tucker and Stewart used,
super-strong (and heavy) with eight ailerons.

Tucker would pull +14G with them. Steve Wolf is that good a pilot and engineer.
Getting a little old these days, but he lost the weight and is one hell of a nice guy.

[Tailwind W10]

Hint: the USN initially rejected the Corsair for their (straight deck) carriers in
WWII, but the Brits made them work on a boat. What was the difference?

They used a turning (curved) approach to landing, rolling out to wings-level right at the fantail. Pilot had a view of the deck all the way to the wires.

Gerry

[jamesel]

I’m 6’7”, pretty much 1/2 leg, 1/2 body. Could cram into my old S-1S, but it wasn’t pretty.
Check each individual S-1 for size and fit. The different instrument panels can interfere with your legs. My S-1 had the long fuselage, but a slightly lower instrument panel. I had to tape over the fuses across the bottom of the left side panel because my knee kept hitting and releasing the fuse caps during outside snaps. Use a thin chute and thin cushions, temperfoam is great. I generally wasn’t flying long enough for buttache. Couldn’t fly with the canopy on, and got “ice cream headaches” when it was colder than -5*C.

The best comment I ever got was from one of my glider students - “ Don’t you think maybe you should fly a plane that’s bigger than you?”.

Run a Christen Eagle now, can close the canopy while sitting on a thin cushion, and I generally don’t hit anything in the cockpit. Though I needed to grind down the sneakers to keep my foot from catching in the rudder tunnels alongside the front seat.

Picture for entertainment. I looked like an acorn balanced on a football.
.

[Colonel]

I wear soccer shoes in the back seat, for armrest clearance.