John Mohr puts on a great show - It's a shame all the people at the show I saw him at were more enthralled with the F-22 than the paces he puts that STOCK Stearman through.

Chris

I thought his routine was one of the best I have ever seen.Really a pleasure to watch.

Bill

John Mohr is THE MAN.

Here's a high-quality video of the routine that he flew at the gathering of Mustangs and Legends last year.

http://www.airshowbuzz.com/videos/view.php?v=24a4d8e5

sticknrudder wrote:John Mohr puts on a great show - It's a shame all the people at the show I saw him at were more enthralled with the F-22 than the paces he puts that STOCK Stearman through.

Chris

I fly a stock 220 hp Stearman at least once a week during the summer and I can tell you that what he does with his Stearman is simply amazing. It is truly a shame that the non-pilot population does not get it, but it is even more impressive when a pilot has had the chance to try it in a stock 220 and finds out for themselves just how good he really is.

On the flip side to that same coin...if his engine ever so much as coughs on the upline of one of his maneuvers he is done for. That is not something even the best pilots can overcome and these old round engines have been known to cough or stop on occasion. There is not enough power to compensate with a stock 220 at his altitude and as was said, 75% of the airshow crowd would not be any less impressed if he did it 100 feet higher.

Maybe he does it for the 25% that knows. I was at a military airshow years ago in Dax France. Most of the Nato and old soviet block countries were there with their helicopters, The German in his BO-105 was particularly spectacular with foward and backwards flips from a hover etc., But the Spainish guy flew an old UH-1, he never got 25 ft. off of the ground and at times his blades were so close to the ground they kicked up dust in the turns. For those that knew better, he far outshone the German. Most knew, Dax is the home of the French helicopter school.

That reminds me of a brown bear capture project once on Kodiak. We used a helicopter outfit out of Kenai, and the owner and his sons were absolutely superb capture pilots.

At one point, we had a bear try to double back and run under the helicopter. The pilot (one of the sons, and probably the best of the three) flew the helicopter (a Jet Ranger) backwards, putting the full rotor blast in the bear's face, while threading is tail rotor between clumps of brush, cottonwood trees, etc.

We got the bear.

When we were gathering up to go, I asked the pilot "Do you know how close your tail rotor was to that brush when you were backing up?"

His response: "I know EXACTLY how close my tail rotor was".

And I have no doubt he did. It's a lot of fun watching someone who is REALLY good with a helicopter work animal capture.

MTV