Doing some filming

[Steve Y]

Having fun with the Carbon Cub while doing some filming for a French film crew doing a movie in the Calif desert near Salton Sea..

[Cubdriver2]

Back around 2000 one of the production companies that did documentaries for the Discovery Channel was at Rhinebeck shooting for the story of " Who shot down the Red Baron " We launched the 160 Gnome rotary powered Sopwith Camel and I followed with their cameraman in the front seat of my Pa11. The cameraman sat sideways in the front seat with his legs out the door and his feet resting on my lift struts giving him a steady camera lap mount looking back under my right wing. I would fly a skidding slip type level flight with the right wing up at about 30* giving the cameraman a clear shot looking back at a 45* angle. They wanted shots of the Camel attacking us from the right rear. No radio so we were doing this with hand signals. We did this many times with me flying an almost WOT level slip and the Camel attacking my poor C90 Cubs right wing. Then they wanted some close up so I would wave the Camel in and the camera guy would say " closer " Soon the Camel was about 10 feet behind my right wing with 10' of whirling Maple surging between 20 and maybe 5' of my wing with the camera guy yelling " closer " Now if you know anything about Rotary engines you know that they don't have a throttle, they have a blip switch on the stick that kills the ignition and a selector switch to run on 3,6 or all 9 cylinders. No exhaust so VERY loud also. So the pilot would get back about 200' and make a run on us and as he got close depress the blip switch killing the engine and then try to hold the close formation for a few seconds going from the engine spinning but coasting and a few seconds later WOT, on and off,on and off................... we tried it with the selector switch but it would fall back quickly only running on 3 or 6 cylinders. We got way to close a few times that the camera guy would jump when he looked above the camera. Scary as hell but was a really cool experience. Fun stuff

Glenn