stay as current as you’d have to on (hurricane)
The entire warbird community has this problem, IMHO - at least for anything
more advanced than the trainers (Harvard, etc) which are pretty easy to fly.
Rick Volker wrote an article about this a while back. He recommended buying
a single seat Pitts and flying the @ss off it. He's a Sukhoi guy, so I believe him.
Rick says the Pitts is cheap to fly and will develop - and maintain - all the skill
you need to fly any of the piston warbirds. Worked for me.
You may recall that Rick flew the Me109 for that weird guy that sued Disney,
with lots of crosswind on pavement - I remember at an airshow we flew together.
So the bad news is that you need more than one airplane. The good news is
that you will have more than one airplane!
If you spend 10 years and put 1000 hours on a Pitts, after that you will not find
anything else very challenging to fly, IMHO. 200 acro flights a year, each 0.5
on the tach.
You really need more than one airplane. I might suggest a list that looks like:
1) Piper Cub. No electric. Low and slow after the wind dies down in the evening. Makes you smile.
2) Pitts. Stick & rudder, tailwheel, aerobatics. Makes you sweat, but good.
3) WWII fighter. Personally I would prefer radial to V-12, but to each their own.
4) Twin. Serious IFR airplane, for going places. Cabin class. I like the 421.
5) Jet. I would go iron curtain - L29 (with engine upgrade), L39, MiG if you want.
6) 182 (maybe 172). After a while, with all the crazy stuff, you will realize that you
need something to just fly to another airport 30 miles away, or to teach newbies on.
7) Party airplane. You may realize that a 421 is a little on the small side, so a DC-3
might be recommended when you want to load up all the friends and family and
baggage for a weekend somewhere, like OSH. If you're a float guy, maybe an Albatross?
Trust me when I say if you have a Piper Cub, a Pitts, a radial WWII fighter, a cabin twin,
a russian jet, a 182 and a DC-3, you will have an awful lot of fun. You will also become
a superb mechanic, which might not be very important to you, but it sure is to me. I
have spent a lifetime slicing up my hands and forearms, learning to diagnose, learning
to repair. I treasure that knowledge and skill, even if the four bars, with their white shirts
and no grease under their fingernails, laugh at me for it.
EDIT
It's important to realize that Rome wasn't built in a day. First, you need to spend
10 years and 1000 hours in a Pitts, for example. You probably need to pick up your
ATP and your class 1 instructor and class 1 aerobatic instructor, and oh yeah an AME.
You need a hangar full of tools and parts, collected over many decades, and the
knowledge and skill to use them. You should be able to jump into any airplane, and
without any dual, fly it smoothly and precisely to the limits of it's aerodynamic envelope.
Surface acro on your first solo flight, during your self checkout, is an incredible gift that
no one else can give to you.
As I said to the Chief Test Pilot of the NRC, when he asked me how I could fly anything:
"Rob, every airplane has a wing that pushes air down, and an engine that pushes air
back." Learn the fundamental physics of the systems associated with the production
of lift and thrust, and you can fly ANYTHING.
This is a generational journey, somewhat at odds with the 21st century insistence on
instant gratification. You can't learn all this stuff in one year. My family has been flying
for 104 years. My grandfather and his brother flew in War One, and then my father and
his brother flew, and now my son and I fly. Four generations of history and knowledge
and skill passed on.
