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what specifically in that letter did you think might have some validity?
It's an opinion without any supporting information. It's obviously not written by a dead guy. It may be Lear's son.
Solely because of the writer?
What makes his words any more valid than Warren Buffet's or Oprah Winfrey's?
He does try to build a case that he is an expert in assessing who would make a good president. But, why would anyone believe that? Even if he has done all that is claimed, that still doesn't make him the go to guy.
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Maybe he feels so strongly about this that he channeled through some still-living Republican friend
or maybe some backwoods moron just started spamming the sheep...
For the past 2 years, you've been paling around with / posting on the same site as Premix...
Does that make you a sociopath?
Where did I diagnose someone a sociopath? Don't put words in my mouth.
To my knowledge I have never posted in response to Premix. I wouldn't know if he was a sociopath or not. I wouldn't know if you were a sociopath or not. That is my origional point about sociopaths.
All I do know is that I am not.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=lear+ufo&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&o…
http://www.airportjournals.com/Display.cfm?varID=0512021
Letters Dec '05
Airport Journals:
The article by Bill Lear Jr. on the static testing of the Learjet windshield was degrading, insulting and factually incorrect. My brother's fairy tale was well written and humorous, and like most stories about Bill Lear and his jet has a grain of truth. But other than the fact a bird hit the windshield during static testing, everything else in his story is pure, unadulterated bullshit.
Would your fish wrap rather print well-written, humorous bullshit by well-known personalities in place of historically accurate, well-researched stories? Are you folks in the habit of printing stories written by other than editorial staff members without the slightest bit of checking or research? Many who watched the test are still alive and coherent. Why you would print a story like that without corroboration from at least one but preferably two witnesses is beyond me.
How Karen Di Piazza could have spent nearly a year interviewing me and not asked my input on the windshield-testing story is inconceivable. The article was an insult to those engineers who told my father, prior to the test, that that particular windshield would not hold up under the test. It's degrading to Swedlow Plastics Company, in particular Dave Swedlow (Plastics Hall of Fame Inductee, 1993), who made the windshield. Furthermore, it's factually incorrect as to the resulting damage.
Without bothering to go over the whole story again with each and every error, let me point out a few things. Remember that I was there in Wichita working part time in public relations and part time bucking rivets on graveyard and later flew for a Learjet dealer in southern California. Bill Jr. was living in Geneva, Switzerland, and about all he knew about what was going on in Wichita was what Dad told him.
The article didn't explain that that particular windshield was from a Lear Jet Model 23, certificated under then FAR Part 23 with Special Regulations (private aircraft). Under pressure from his dealers and customers, Dad decided to re-certificate the Learjet under Part Far 4b (or as it became known, Part 25), the regulation under which airliners were certificated, starting with Learjet serial no. 100 (the 104th airframe, I think). He thought we could use the same windshield as the Model 23 and that was the windshield that was used in the test described in the article. It was a dual pane of thin Lexan. It's true that the chicken went through the windshield, but it did not penetrate the aft pressure bulkhead or blow off the tail cone or hit the hangar door. (First of all it would have taken an Exocet missile to go through the aft pressure bulkhead, and second, the airplane was parked parallel to the hangar doors and about 100 feet west on the ramp just in case the test didn't go as my father planned). But it makes a hell of a good story and sometimes I wonder why I don't just keep my mouth shut because, after all, who cares what the exact truth is anymore, just so long as it's a good story.
The solution to the problem was a much thicker windshield of single pane Lexan from the windshield maker, Swedlow Plastics Company. The chicken splitter described as invented by Lear was a normal, required, previously designed and used item for aircraft certificated under 4b (Part 25), invented about the time of the DC-2, and was not an innovation of Lear's. Lear was famous for hogging credit, which he did frequently and sometimes unfairly. Furthermore, the chicken splitter as described would not help in passing the bird tests because the FAA requirements are that the chicken hit the windshield at a 90 degree angle. Attached is a picture of me flying a Convair 440 in Cambodia in 1972. The Convair 440 was designed and built in the early 1950s and you can plainly see the chicken splitter on the forward center of the windshield.
Our father did a great many things and truly made this world a better place to live for some. I was there and watched the evolution of some of them. I have a habit, which irritates many, of trying to bring truth and perspective into some of his stories.
John Lear
Airplane pilot (ret.)
Pit Row
Post a reply to: From Bill Lear (Lear Jet)