The business partners, owners of Kestrel Warbird Experience, an airplane ride company, provide 15-, 30- and 60-minute flights that range from $275 to $825.
A parachute is provided for customers in case they want to experience aerobatics complete with loops and rolls.
“Ride of your life,” Hartman promised.
Hartman delivered the plane, named Checkers, to two pilots in Arizona years ago, and when they decided to sell it, they called Hartman to gauge his interest.
“We need to make this happen” he told Davis.
They bought the plane in December for close to $200,000, but less than its appraised value. Still, it was enough money that they have eaten a lot of macaroni and cheese ever since, they said.
“It was missing from the area so we brought one in,” said Hartman, chief pilot.
Middletown was the “ideal” location for the plane because the airport’s hangars are large enough for the 42-foot wingspan, the grass runways have “the best grass around” and there is open space in case of an emergency landing.
During paid flights, Hartman or Davis fly the plane from the back seat, as the instructor did years ago, while the customer sits in the pilot’s seat. The plane has a nine-cylinder radial engine with 600 horsepower and carries 110 gallons of fuel and 10 gallons of oil.
Hartman called the engine “the heart of the beast.”
During its military days, the plane was equipped with two .30 caliber machine guns located in the nose and wing. The opposite wing carried a camera to review the pilot’s target footage. Though disabled, Checkers retains the barrel of one machine gun, visible in the nose.
Hartman said he gets “sensory overload” flying the plane.
“A lot of power with the noise in coming in and you’re rolling down the runway,” he said. “It’s an adrenalin rush. It’s a magical experience. It’s just so different. The T-6 rewards you for good technique, smacks you for bad technique. We respect the airplane a lot.”
Other times his mind turns the clock back.
“I can’t help but think what it was like for these guys flying over Korea,” he said.
Davis said the aircraft trained thousands of pilots from all military branches during the war effort and saw service into the Korean War. “Mosquito Squadrons” flew the aircraft into combat marking targets for the much faster jets of the era, he said. Mostly retired after World War II, these aircrafts were used by militaries across the world for decades, with South Africa retiring the T-6 in 1995.
He said there were 17,000 built, 600 are still registered and 300 are flying.
“This is a piece of flying history,” Hartman said. “We got it to share.”
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