George R Blair Jr (@gblair)
Thanks for sharing the YouTube video. I never knew that Tom Cruise had his own Mustang, much less flew it regularly. I met him once, many years ago when they were filming "Days of Thunder" here in Daytona Beach. He was driving in a brand new turbo powered V-6 Pontiac Fiero, and he was passing everyone...I think he was racing with a Corvette, who turned off going into the Spruce Creek Fly Inn because Tom had won. Then he came right up behind me. He passed me like I was sitting still, and I did something REALLY stupid thinking back on it now... I was in my old 1966 Plymouth Fury III two door hardtop. I had stripped out all of the interior, air conditioning and heater, (reducing all excess weight), so I could race the car at the nearby New Smyrna race track as part of what they used to call spectator races. I had also installed a really nasty big block 440 V-8 in the car, along with a race transmission and race gears. You see where this is going... The engine was one I had built specifically for drag racing, and it made well in excess of 500 horsepower. It was basically a street legal race car, fully insured, tagged with operating lights, horn and so on.
So Tom passed me, looked over and smiled as he had it floored. I had enough of this, so I hit the throttle on the old Fury. It instantly slammed me back in the seat and I caught up with him easily. I drove right along beside him as he had his car floored, and he was still accelerating. I looked over at him, smiled and gave him a salute, then I stepped on the accelerator in the Fury all the way to the floor, and quickly drove off leaving him behind.
Once I showed him who was who, I slowed back down to normal driving speeds, and so did he, but this time he was behind me. Dumb, dumb, dumb... Then I turned off into a small parking lot at the next intersection, and to my surprise he pulled in too. Now here is where I did another dumb thing. You know, young and foolish. I told him "You're not Top Gun !" and I floored the Fury again from a dead stop, smoking the tires like there was no tomorrow.
I left him in a huge cloud of tire smoke. In hind sight, I should have got out and had a conversation with him. Oh well... young and dumb. Doing stupid things like this, now make me wonder how I managed to live as long as I have. I definitely have had a guardian angel (or two) looking after me.
Thanks for sharing the video. I still have not seen the movie, but I did go see "Devotion" about Tom Hudner and Jesse Brown. It was a good movie. I can see myself buying these two (Top Gun and Devotion) on DVD.
This is so cool to have other Imodeler's help with finding additional pictures for your Sea Fury. I had to share the story with you about my Fury... since you are building another type of Fury and you posted the Tom Cruise Mustang video...which was VERY cool.
Hope you get some painting done. Happy New Year.