repechage

Hughes H-4 : now there was a plane that should have had power assistance. Mr. Hughes liked the feedback mechanical controls provided.
My sister has the tools, notes and manuals to service those Pratt & Whitney R-4360 engines. Now, there is a Powerplant.

top506

I'm from New York. We don't talk about 'this thing of ours'.......

Top

qcpmsame 

Ah, aviation mechanic types, as one of my favorite recoding artist on Sonic Records, said in a song, "God Bless the Wrench Benders", a USMC avionics wing wipe, air wing type here.

BTW, one of my early projects, as a Contractor's quality engineer, was a fuel service hangar at Duke Field, aux field for Eglin AFB/Hurlburt Field AFB, 919th Special Operations Squadron, AC130 gun ships, for AFRES. The original AC-130A design and test mule aircraft was still flying, 1983 time frame. Roman nose and all, what a durable, fantastically engineered airframe. Also did another fuel service hangar, and an ECM (Jammers) Pod Shop, for Hurlburt Field, 1st Special Operations Wing, 1st Special Operations Component Repair Squadron.

Bill

qcpmsame 

Not that there's anything wrong with that.........

Bill

cocoabeachcrab 

uh-oh, crew chief stories! worked a c-130a in the guard that was a light ship in back in nam (we sold it to Venezuela i think) .. big generators on each engine to power a pant load of bright underwing lights to make the jungle go from night to day. crewed fb-111's in SAC, F-4E's and G's and T-33's at Clark AB, watched an MC-130 burn up there on take off roll after a magnesium flare lit off in the cargo area and cooked off everything inside, F-111 safety chase for B-52 cruise missile tests and B-1 bomber acceptance flights from Palmdale (saw 6 shuttle landings while i was there out on the lake bed). F-111F model at Lakenheath in the UK where i had a Mercian built for me. my experience with marine plane captains was to watch one guy paint his Harrier brown camouflage with a brush and a bucket of paint at Nellis for redflag, more plane captains running behind engine running F-4's to drape drag chutes over the wings, and the serious PITA of pulling the wings off a harrier to do an engine change.

RobbieTunes

Love the F-111 Thuds and the C-130 might be the G.O.A.T. airframe.

Flew in many 130's, landed in most of them. JATO'd once in one; very, very weird feeling. Kind of like a very large, noisy elevator on steroids.

I have been directly under a flight of F-111's, in single file, using terrain -following radar, around Mach .7, full bomb loads. In pitch darkness, even though I was waiting for them, it still rocked my world.

stardognine

It took long enough for someone to NOT talk about it, huh? 😁😉 I’m from Pennsylvania, not too far from Pittsburgh, and grew up with a lot of Italians. I can still remember in kindergarten, Tony F’s mom bringing a couple sheet pizzas to our class, just because. 👌

I had a few bikes as a kid, hand-me-downs from my older brother, but right around the bicentennial, my stepdad bought me a mid-level Celeste Bianchi. I didn’t have it very long, before it was stolen. 😭

Believe it or not, I’m probably going to buy a Vespa (wasp) next week. Always wanted one when I was younger, but kept ending up with Hondas & Yamahas. 🙄

There’s too much other stuff to mention, so this is the short version. 😉

cocoabeachcrab 

you should test ride a Genuine Buddy 170... OMG, that thing can move! and a lot cheaper than a Vespa...

riva

Bikes were looking pretty much the same shape for 100 years before I got my first stem shifted, reflectorized, dork disc'ed, foam gripped lawee 10 speed to freedom.

Maybe another 100 and they will still be making similar ones..

TXsailor

I don't even remember what bikes I had as a kid but I always wanted a "english racer" while the other kids had stingrays and such. When I got a paper route I got a 3 speed to deliver my papers with. I have no idea what it was other than it had a SA hub. I saved a little money and bought the 10 speed I had always wanted. For some reason the brand wasn't what I cared about it was the 10 speeds & drop bars. I wish I could remember what those two bikes were. We were living in Hawaii at the time because my dad was stationed at Hickam AFB. He retired and we moved to Bowie Texas where my mom was raised. No one rode bikes much and in a couple of years I was old enough to drive. I never considered another bike until I had been married a few years and my wife wanted bikes to haul the kids around on. I bought her a Schwinn Suburban but I only had enough money left to get me a Huffy. Again I wanted a 10 speed. We rode with the kids in kid seats until they got too big and I occasionally rode with one of them when they got bigger but when they got driving age the old Huffy rusted away in the shed.

In 2013 my Doctor wanted me to get more exercise and I knew a bike was the only activity I might stick with. I got the old Huffy out and rode it a little but it was too rusty to even be safe. I bought a Giant hybrid and soon after a carbon road bike. I was happy with those until I was given a Centurion Le Mans and rediscovered how much I like the ride of a steel bike. While researching info on the Le Mans I kept finding posts from this RobbieTunes guy about the Ironman. I found one of those on the bay and now I have 3 and have bought 2 more for family. I stumbled across a 1961 Schwinn Racer with a 3 speed SA hub and remembered how I loved my old paper route bike. Its now in my stable too. Long story but that's how I ended up into C&V bikes.

dweenk

With me it was lugging two bikes (Fuji S-10-S and Nishiki Competition) around the country for several years. I had always maintained them myself and when I got interested in upgrading our rides, I was unimpressed and unwilling to pay the price for the latest aluminum models.

I didn't ride much for several years, but when I did begin to ride again it was on the old steel. I began to pick up a bike every now and then for cheap and that's how it started.

noglider 

I didn't notice I was into old bikes. I had a couple of bikes for a long time, and it didn't occur to me to replace them. In around 2007, my daughter had a nice mountain bike, and someone in the neighborhood stole it. I reported it to the police, and the officer said I should see if it's at the upcoming police auction. It wasn't there, but I ended up coming home with four bikes, super cheap. (I gave one to my daughter.) That started my hobby of fixing up and giving away bikes. I was even featured in the NY Times for this. Eventually, my neighbors pleaded with me to sell them my bikes, so I started accepting money for them. My spouse saw that I was getting a lot of pleasure from this, so for my birthday, she cleared out a room in the basement so I could have an official workshop.

In 2009, I joined bikeforums, and initially, I stayed away from the C&V section. I thought, why be sentimental about old bikes? Eventually, I realized that this is where I can learn lots of stuff and meet nice folks. I came in as a somewhat expert, but my knowledge has multiplied many times as a result of all the information sharing. And there has been a lot of enabling. For a while, I was collecting bikes faster than I could get them road-ready. I nearly qualified for the Hoarders TV show with about 40 or 50 bikes strewn around the yard, in the garage, and in the basement. And sometimes, people would anonymously drop bikes off.

When I moved from that house in NJ in 2013, I decided I'm not going to flip bikes anymore, and I also stopped the compulsive buying. I donated my surplus to a coop. Eight bikes are plenty for me. My youngest bike is a 2002 Burley tandem, and my oldest bike is a 1962 Rudge Sports. The bike I have owned longest is my 1982 McLean, purchased in 1983. I recently found the original owner on Facebook and told him I still have it.

evwxxx

Seems I have “always” been into c&v bikes, starting when they weren’t c&v. 1962 found me yearning for a 10 speed bike like the very few I saw in the small calif town I grew up in, so I pestered my folks and hung around the Western Auto store in town, the only place to buy a bike in that town. They had 2 ten speeders, a gold colored one for 59 bucks and a very cool one that said Falcon, with “Black Diamond” on the cross bar. It was 85 bucks. I knew we could not afford the falcon, so I lobbied for the cheap one, whose name is now lost to me. In any case Christmas Eve that Falcon was under the tree, I felt like the king of the world on that thing, and it was the classiest bike in the rack at 6th grade! I rode the heck out of it all through high school and college, even after I acquired the Honda 350 and the 64 volvo. Became pals with a guy opening up a bike shop in out town and hung around there after school and lusted after cool bikes and parts. After 10 years I had the falcon repainted by a auto shop, and created my own decals (paper cut outs that I sprayed white paint over). The 80’s and married life pretty much ended my cycling until I caught sight of a Crescent “Pepita” being trashed around 1996. I recognized the Reynolds sticker from the old days and brought it home, fixed it up, and started riding it in Boise, Idaho. After that I was hooked, started doing the yard sales circuit, second hand stores, etc. Best scores over the years included a colnago super for 65 bucks, Raleigh international for 100, Raleigh supercourse for 10, etc. But it all started with the Falcon, which I had “restored “ by CyclArt in 1997, to the tune of 400 bucks, and worth every penny!

Dean51 

My journey into C&V started about four years ago when the owner of my LBS gave me a set of early 80's Campy Record hubs in need of an overhaul and polishing. One of the rear bearing cups was badly pitted. That got me going on building a bearing cup puller and searching for a replacement cup.....it was kinda' like the Dutch boy pulling his thumb out of the dike.

Dean

The Golden Boy 

I *recognized* the phrase... but I did have to look it up.

Drillium Dude 

Thanks for that "industry" analysis. In addition to personal stories, I was hoping someone would put forth a theory on the organizational aspect, and this one makes a lot of sense. I had a 5-year head start, but that began while I was out of the States, so things were a little different. In fact, my understanding at the time was that MTBs were gaining huge popularity in the UK, so many people sold off their old bike to fund a new knobby-tired behemoth.

Anybody know when Bike Forums started (I don't have the requisite Google-Fu to figure it out for myself)?

DD

Drillium Dude 

Another good post regarding how/when the "community" of C&V gathered steam. In addition to the one early site I noted in my OP, I too learned a great deal from the Classic Rendezvous and Velobase sites. IMHO it's because of sites such as this that we have all these organized events (rides, shows, swaps and the like) dedicated to vintage lightweights today.

DD

iab

The late 90s, 98 or 99, is when I believe Joe started the site.

Again, the internet is the enabler to your op. Without it, none of this happens.

Darth Lefty 

People got carried away at first. Beanie Babies and foil cover comics...

qcpmsame 

According to the thread when Joe announced the sale to Internet Brands, in 2007, it was 1998 when he started the site. His join date shows Oct 1999 in the initial post for the thread. Thread date is 31 May 2007, in the announcement he indicated it had been 7-1/2 years since he began this place.

Sale of Bikeforums.net to Internet Brands.

Bill

DMC707

My love for C&V started in 1996 with a brand new bike.

i had a Tig welded Marin road racer and a very nice aluminum GT as race bikes before, but became intrigued by the steel Colnagos i would see running around periodically

Being a racer first, i normally wasnt too nostalgic about what the bike was made of, just what was the lightest and fastest but those Colnagos and the creations of a small local custom maker in town stirred up feelings of interest,

so when I had saved up enough money to order up a new race bike for 1996 I looked into alternatives and my shop owner, who is a huge Cannondale dealer at the time, pulled out a Zar International catalog and we ordered up a DeBernardi in my size and in pearl white. (I was a full time student then- couldnt afford a Colnago)

It was beautiful when it came in. We bolted up a budget friendly Campagnolo group that was taken off of a carbon allez I believe and it became my first lugged steel Campy equipped bike

In pretty short order I hated the shifting action of the budget grade Mirage shifters but loved the oversize hoods so I dismantled them , removed the shifting mechanism and went back to DT shifters even though we were five years into the integrated shifter era at that point - effectively making me a young retro grouch

Since everybody but me rode a Cannondale in my outfit I became the token "steel is real " guy in my mid 20's

cadillacmike68

Interesting. One of the in-between bikes from the Raleigh Super Course MK II and the Professional MK V was a Le Champion in silver, a nice looking bike. It had a 21" frame and was a little small. I bought it in 1977 but it was a 74 or 75 model. It didn't sell because of the small 21" frame, so I got it at a big discount. I just raised the seatpost and stem to fit and it was great. I got hit by a car while riding it. Back then (78) you didn't sue everybody, however the bike shop help me with a good damage estimate on my "racing" bike and the ins payment went towards the 1978 Pro MK V that I still have.

Drillium Dude 

Thanks for everybody's contributions thus far. I love stories, and even better when they're bicycle-centric, and from those similarly-afflicted with this disorder. I realized the other day that when I finally kick off, the thing I will miss the most is riding a bike. There really is nothing else quite like it.

DD

gmvelo

Seeing this reference at the top of the thread brings back memories, and coincides with my initiation into the C & V world. At the time, in the late 90's, I was just out of college, living in the Twin Cities, and wrenching in the summers at a small local neighborhood shop called Como Bikes. A couple of bike tours had turned me into a retro-grouch, and the enthusiasm for classic lugged steel road bikes soon followed. At the time, there were some listserves where it was still possible to make some great scores for classic bikes, and for me, Renaissance Cycles also fit into this category. Unfortunately I didn't have much liquid capital at the time, but I did my best to take advantage of the NOS Campy stuff they were selling. It was an astronomical bargain. I've sold most of it off by now, but still marvel at prices they were asking for delta brakes, pista pedals, record brake levers, all NOS. I was part of Classic Rendezvous then as well, and that was and is such an incredible wealth of knowledge.

I took a hiatus in the 2000's, but now that I'm settled with family and a basement and garage, the hobby of finding, fixing, and keeping or selling nice old bikes has renewed. These days I tend more toward vintage steel mountain bikes, in part because there are some great bargains to be found and they are so versatile. The trend, including my own, towards wider tires and mixed terrain, has me much less likely to acquire a conventional vintage road bike. The market for a bike with max tire size of 28mm and a normal non-compact double up front has nearly evaporated here in mountainous Vermont.

bikemig 

I like vintage MTBs a lot for the same reasons. I also like 70s era racing bikes. They generally have clearance for a 32c tire and were designed for rough roads. Some French cranks (stronglight 99 and a TA) are fine compact cranks. The Japanese made good compact cranks as well (Sugino mighty tour and SR Apex 86 bcd).