zapb42

Hey thanks for the info! It's pretty cool to see it used in this way. It's good to know it was flying with the new owner. Further info - the Eagle is of course a homebuilt/kit aircraft, and this one was built by (I believe) Hale Wallace. I got to see into the wings when some fabric work was being done, and it looked like fine furniture in there, a very well-built airplane. If I recall correctly, it was also upgraded with higher compression helicopter pistons, a revised intake, a four-into-one exhaust (nice and loud) and possibly other things that brought it up to a supposed 250 horsepower (though that might have been a bit generous) and that thing could really climb.

I don't know if this is the right place for this, but I wasn't able to see anywhere to contact the developer of the Eagle directly. I was looking into DCS and noticed one of the aircraft available was the Christen Eagle, which is cool because my father owned one that I got to fly in quite a bit from around 1996-2010, when he sold it (I believe to someone in Russia actually). One of the quirks of this particular airplane was its less common white-on-red color scheme rather than the usual rainbow-feathered one, and some upgrades to the engine for more power. It was built by Hale Wallace as far as I know. On top of that though, on the aircraft page at https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/products/planes/christen_eagle/ , in the video there is a white-on-red Eagle identical to my dad's. It has the N8EC tail number, and even the Tomcat insignia decal on the tail along with some other decals behind the canopy my dad had put on there, so I have no doubt this was modeled on the same airplane my dad owned and I spent so many hours in. Was this airplane more well known than I thought or did the developer have some connection to it? I'm just very curious because I was so close to it while my dad had it. He has since passed away so its just very intriguing to me to find a random connection on the internet. Side note too, he was an officer in the US Navy flying the F-14 back between around 1978-1994, and my plan is to get the F-14 for DCS and learn it as well as possible so I can get a bit of an idea of what that was like. Anyways, any info anyone might have on the connection to N8EC and would share it with me, I'd be very grateful! I've attached a few photos I have.