Page 10 - February 2016

engines and bulging cockpit. Masessa was quite taken with the plane, and began looking for one of his own. It wasn’t an easy search; most Mohawks were retired to the boneyard years ago.His prospecting finally hit paydirt in Ogden, Utah, where an OV-1D had been parked outside for perhaps five years. He was too busy to go out west, but eventually the price and his desire met and he became a derelict Mohawk’s owner. Now to get it flying. He got in touch with Doug Jeans at the Cavanaugh Flight Museum in Addison, Texas, and Jeans and a mechanic made the airplane ferryable so it could be taken to Lantana, Florida for refurbishing.His OV-1D turned out to be the lowest-time Mohawk flying, with only about 2,500 hours in the very complete logs. It was overhauled and converted from OV-1C to –1D status in 1982 and had only flown 100 hours afterward. It was equipped with dual controls and used primarily for training. Masessa acquired his type-rating for the airplane in 2008 and, after flying it to shows for static exhibition, he decided to obtain aerobatic certification so its capabilities could be appreciated by the crowd.“It burns about 150 gph of Jet-A, flying at 19,000 to 22,000 feet. With 600 gallons of fuel, we’re good for around 600 nautical miles, landing every 2.5 hours on long trips to take a break. It’s a very rugged, dependable airplane, although I once broke a hydraulic hose and lost that system on a long flight. There are no power-boosted8 • TWIN & TURBINEFEBRUARY 2016