Kendal,
I trust you were being ironic.
I've been hanging out with the all the kids at Chino off and on since 1985 and have flown a fair cross section of their airplanes. They don't seem to give a flying fig about how your airplane is painted. (I was also thrown out of the Chino VFW - it no longer exists - on the 50th anniversary of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo - long story.) That being the case, I haven't noticed any difference between the pilots who have airplanes with civilian versus military paint jobs. They all love to fly and do it as often as they can afford. Some of my friends have had both civilian and military paint schemes on the same airplane over the years. Yes, there was a military version of the Cessna 195 and Navion. And the Cessna O-2 weighs a fair amount more than the Cessna 337 and I prefer the 337 when dealing with a short runway.
Then again, there are the insecure "warbird" folks who feel the need for wearing one-piece outfits with lots of patches and great big wings, but the guys like Steve Hinton who have actually been around the block don't seem to care how the airplane they are flying is painted.
And yes, I've got my warbird time; I've flown a Stearman and a Bird Dog in the last month and have given a fair bit of dual in Boeing Stearman Kaydets over the years. I've flown some warbirds that were utterly, nearly indescribably, incredible and some that had crappy performance and handling and were no where near as nice as civilian birds of the same vintage. (How do you like the stall warning and accelerated stall behavior of the AT-6/SNJ?) By the same token, my experience with the Piper and Aeronca warbirds is that it's impossible to tell which is military and which is civilian when you're inside and flying - they handle the same.
Funny, I haven't seen Rare Bear in a military paint scheme.
Cheers,
Rick
