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Ok, who can ID this plane


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Well, without Googling the N-number anyone know what this is?

 

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Good Luck!

 

Dan: If my sources are right, it's a Hammer-Hunt HH-1 "Zipper" owned by Altitude Unlimited, Inc. in western Washington. It was built by Bob Hammer and Dick Hunt and powered by a GE J85-17 turbojet. It first flew on 2 July 1979. On 15 September 1979, with Dick Hunt as the pilot, the plane stalled over Puget Sound, and spun in, killing Hunt. Apparently the tail number N2200Z was later issued to a Firefly Galaxy-9 hot air balloon owned by Aerosports Inc. in Lewisberg, WV. According to the accident report the balloon landed in a field near Lewisberg on 25 September 2004 and the pilot and five passengers got out. While the balloon was on the ground, an airplane flew over fairly low and the balloon started to rise. One account said the pilot wrapped a rope that was attached to the basket around his leg and was lifted off the ground as the balloon rose. Another source said that the pilot was trying to reboard the balloon as it rose. In any event, when the balloon was about eighty feet off the ground, the pilot fell from the rope and was killed. I hope your Christmas day is as relaxed as mine. Dwight (drmessimer)

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Dwight,

 

Right on the money. It is the Hammer-Hunt-1 Zipper. My Dad built it in our home garage in Kirkland WA from 1970 - 1979. We lost it in a stall/spin in August of '79. And, yes LtCol Hunt USAF (Ret) did not bail out. Pretty cool to come home from school and go out in the garage with my Pop and "work" on a jet. actually I was just the right size to crawl in the tail and buck about a gajillion rivets....... :rolleyes:

 

I was not aware the N number was reassigned, that is news to me.

 

I don't think she is ugly.....and yes, it flew like a dream. It had a power to weight ratio of better then 1:1. It was powered by a J-85-17 engine with over 2350 lbs of thrust, and the airplane only weighed full of fuel 2100 lbs. We never got her past .98 mach, but she climbed out at over 7000 fpm!

 

In a world dominated by carbon composites and Dick & Burt Rutan launching spaceships with Virgin Atlantic, I always remember my Dad was first in the "homebuilt" "all-metal" jet category of an aircraft this size. Jim Bede's BD-5J, was not and still not capable of the records and agility of the HH-1. Jim was a member of our Seattle EAA Chapter 26, got to see a lot of his neat little planes.

 

I have a bunch of great pictures, and a lot of fond memories of Dick and Dad building their dream and flying her. First time we fired up the J-85, we burned up the neighbors favorite tree in her front yard........never did find her cat......

 

Good Research Dwight! Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year to you.

 

r/Gunny Dan

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Well very close. the best way to get the power of this design was to high mount the engine and use a V tail.

 

It was designed for high altitude aerial photo-mapping and remote sensing for the commercial market in the 70's and 80's.

 

Unfortunately for us we lost her in the spin before we will ever know what a truly great design she was......but "Global Hawk" sure looks like a younger cousin :thumbsup:

 

r/Gy

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Great thread!! I always admired folks to could build their own aircraft. The amount of time and money invested in this project must of been mind boggling. I'd love to see photos..... Thanks for sharing. It is a sad ending, though.

 

-Ski

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Well, I'm sorry that it has such a tragic ending, but I still don't think it's a very well designed aircraft. The V-tail as a design consideration has never been my favorite (bonanzas and magisters notwithstanding) and the high mounted Jet engine intake would be of a great concern to me if I needed to bail out.

I guess that the flight profile that they were going for was similar to the U-2 type aircraft and that dictated the wing planform and that is understandable, but to me it still just looks like a collection of parts instead of a unified design. I think it would be interesting to wind tunnel test this design and see how good it really was, and espcially to establish a minimum controllable airspeed to see if the design contributed to the unfortunate loss of the aircraft and its pilot. It was certainly ahead of its time as far as homebuilt aircraft.

Tom Bowers

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Tom,

 

Wow, you are a hard sell. Hmmm , where do I start. well you could google my Dad Robert H Hammer (Bob) and that would for sure put to rest the design issue. This aircraft was WAY ahead of its time. It was run through wind tunnel testing, and it was designed by the top 1% Aeronautical Engineer in the world. Oh, you think because he's my Dad I am biased.

 

Here is part of the designers Bio from Me-262 website :

 

CFII's President, Steve Snyder, approached Bob Hammer -- then the Vice President of DCAC/MRN at Boeing's Commercial Airplane Group -- about completing the aircraft and supervising the flight test program. Hammer ultimately accepted, and retired from Boeing shortly thereafter, enabling him to devote his full attention to the Me 262 Project.

 

If anything, Hammer was clearly overqualified for the task. His career with the Boeing had been marked by countless milestones, including service as Chief Engineer, Director of Quality Control and Director of Engineering for the B 757. Hammer had designed the composite tail sections of the B 757 and B 767, and was also the Chief Engineer of Structures in the B-2 bomber program. He holds the current U.S. Patent for the B-2 bomber's wing.

 

Of equal importance in this project is the fact that Hammer is an experienced builder of numerous experimental aircraft of his own design. Hammer's HH-1 Zipper (completed in 1980) proved itself a world-record breaking milestone as the first home built jet aircraft. He has continued to develop innovative new machines, with the latest being the amphibious Sea Fire, recognized as the Oshkosh '98 Grand Champion. His expertise is unparalleled, and the project could not be in better hands.

 

The design was not flawed by the high mounted engine, or the flying V tail. the V-tail gave us the stability we needed because of the long wingspan. So much so that the V tail on Global Hawk and countless other very successful designs in UAS/UAV aircraft is the norm today. Again ahead of its time.

 

At high altitude, we needed as much "clear" air into the intake as possible. Thus the high mounted engine. Gee, another Global Hawk attribute, they have their inlet mounted high to ensure proper air flow at higher altitudes.....

 

As far as a slew of parts thrown together to make an aircraft....well you have not been around Experimental aviation much. But, you have a valid point, the wings were from a Tele-Dyne/Ryan drone, the landing gear was from a Mooney, and the J-85 was from a F-5E. so we started with those parts, and everything else was fabricated by hand in our garage. Sears band-saw, Sears radial arm saw, bending brake, and all the rest hand tools. the aircraft was done completely in what is called "matched hole" tooling, one of the most difficult way to produce aircraft, let alone a homebuilt one.

 

In 1977, when dad was consulting for Dupont and still working at Boeing he was using polymer carbon composites in his design. Graphite composites, Kevlar composites. As far as I know he was the only builder at the time working these into his designs. Hence his patents on the B-2 wing fabrication. Dick and Burt Rutan were still working on their Vari-Eze, Mojave, Veri-Viggen, and they were all foam and fiberglass not polymer composites/Kevlar.

 

what contributed the to the accident is dick began to refine a aerobatic routine that he was going to debut at the Reno airshow in the fall of 1980. He had been the star attraction at Reno for years with the "Super Pinto" routine he did. I will post a picture of that aircraft as well. during the routine he went into the vertical for a hammerhead stall, instead of kicking the ruddervator over he would fall onto his back and fall flat and then rotate out of the maneuver. he did this maneuver in the Pinto and the F-104. Well this time he entered into an inverted flat spin, we had pulled the "drag chute" off and fitted a tail cone on for some high-speed runs Dick was going to do. this proved fatal as Dick di not recover out of the spin in time before impacting the water. the drag chute would have saved him and the airplane.

 

My Dad knew he was practicing aerobatics, he as the design engineer was not ready for the airplane to move into this stage yet, but dick being the ever-go-getter Fighter Jock he knew he could do it. We had over 150 hours on the aircraft when we lost her. Every flight Dick came back more and more pleased with the airplanes performance, hence why we think he was so comfortable putting the airplane in to the aerobatic routine.

 

It was truly a phenomenal achievement to build a high performance jet aircraft in ones garage. This was before home computers, before computerized water-jetting manufacturing like you see on Discovery Channel making very nice motorcycles, before any of that "reality" building toys shows. A slide rule, pencil, paper, drawing board, and determination of 2 men to fulfill their dream. Not to mention a whole lot of rivets. :rolleyes:

 

Here is "Tango-Tango" the Messerschmidt foundation's flying Me-262:

 

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Here is a shot of the "Seafire" Amphib he built from 1981 to 1998 and won Grand Champion at Oshkosh:

 

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Dads first love and first built airplane, Thorp T-18, 1965:

 

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Super Pinto:

 

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More shots of the HH-1

 

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My Dad bob Hammer and LtCol Dick Hunt

 

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Photo by Jim Larson of HH-1 in engine test:

 

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fabrication in our garage:

 

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Hope you all find this interesting. thanks for the jog down memory lane Tom :thumbsup:

 

r/Gy Dan

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Gunny Dan,

What a great rememberance of that time. I never did spend much time in experimental circles (its much more prevelent on the west coast where the talent gravitates that it is on the East coast where I'm from) but preferred Warbirds. The few experimental gatherings I went to was back when I was a member of the local Air museum, and we'd take the B-25 or the P2v Neptune or Martin 404 or AT-6. This was in the late 80s to the early 2000s and after the General Aviation industry had collapsed and many of the guys building in my area were building existing designs or kits just to have something fun and affordable to fly and not trained professional designers/builders working on new designs. I just wasn't interested in that line so I never got involved in EAA.

If pretty is what pretty does, and the HH-1 was meeting and exceeding its preformance goals, then who am I to argue :thumbsup: Hearing about the circumstances of the crash I realize that the design cannot be faulted for an agressive maneuver that goes beyond the safe limits of the aircraft's preformance and results in loss of control. And again my heart goes out for a good man lost.

The best part is that you did it with your Dad. My father passed away when I was still young and he never did anything as swell as building experimental aircraft. He did support my flying and always wanted to hear about my first solo and my cross countrys and other flying tales. All that said, I'd give anything I have just to have another 5 minutes with him now.

I think we could have a blast hanger flying (I think I'd run outta stories first). But, since this isn't strictly a military thread, we should probably end it. Thanks for telling us about a unique aricraft, its designer, its builder and its lost pilot.

Tom Bowers

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Tom,

 

thanks for reading that long thread! I would love to hangar fly with you and hear your stories of flying those great airplanes. I will always remember my first T-6 flight !!! Wow what fun, from a Aeronca Champ to a T-6, talk about a blast!!

 

If you couldn't tell, my Dad is my hero. :rolleyes: I began flying with him at age 4 and have never got out of the cockpit since. I am very blessed and lucky he and I can still share in aviation.

 

I am sure you are a fine Pilot and your Dad is very proud of you.

 

Take care my friend. I am glad we could share some aviation memories, even if they were not "entirely" Military related!

 

Merry Christmas and Happy 2010!

 

r/Gunny Dan

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geez Gunny Dan, while most of us were sniffing glue and painting plastic aircraft kits in the basement, there you were building the real deal with your dad! Very cool stuff and thanks for posting the pix and the stories. :thumbsup:

Terry

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Cobrahistorian

Dan, ya had me completely stumped on this one. Great bit of aviation history though, and the personal connection makes it even better!

 

Here's a new quiz. Riddle me this one!

 

USMFquizagain.jpg

 

AND NO GOOGLING THE NACA PHOTO NUMBER!

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Cobrahistorian

Yep, the BTD-1 Destroyer. This airplane still exists and last I heard it was still at the National Warplane Museum in Horseheads, NY. It was originally at the Florence Air Museum in Florence SC, but after the museum closed, I was sent down there to see if there was anything NWM wanted to acquire. Due to its rarity, I made sure that the Destroyer was on the acquisition list. Unfortunately, they downsized the staff and I never saw it arrive in NY, but was told it was acquired and did see pics of it there.

 

Jon

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One of my favorite planes that never got produced is this one. It would of been made if the war hadn't ended when it did. What ticks me off is the fact that one was set aside for preservation, but was accidentally scrapped. Oh, I wish it was still around. What a beast! I'm sure some of you know this one.

 

-Ski

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craig_pickrall

I received a complaint about non-military aircraft so please keep this to US military aircraft only. I won't delete the civilian stuff since it isn't every kid that get to help his dad build a jet in the garage and it did have a retired USAF pilot so there is a small military connection.

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All,

 

I am sorry for posting a "Non-military" aircraft. The birth of the HH-1 had come from the design competition of the 70's PAVE-COIN program.

 

Sorry if I offended any one.

 

r/Gunny Dan

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Cobrahistorian

Man, how could I miss the XA-38?! I didn't see that pic at all!

 

Gotta love the Grizzly!

 

As for the one above, I will admit I cheated, but change the filename so when someone right clicks to save it the real name doesn't come up!

 

That is the XF8B-1.

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Man, how could I miss the XA-38?! I didn't see that pic at all!

 

Gotta love the Grizzly!

 

As for the one above, I will admit I cheated, but change the filename so when someone right clicks to save it the real name doesn't come up!

 

That is the XF8B-1.

 

 

Without checking, I believe it is Boeing's last single engine aircraft..... Let's see if I'm right..... :lol:

 

-Ski

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Gy Dan,

As an aviator, I have to ask, why you didn't end up flying with the Marines or some other branch as a pilot? I see you have time riding around in the back of a 53, but not on the stick. Great tribute to your father's work by the way. Cant believe this received a complaint. Very impressive.

S/F,

Mike

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