![]() “All the worn and faded parts can be replaced,” Grove explained, “but you can never buy down the total time. The instrument panel was slightly updated with a King KX 125 Nav/Com and transponder. The seats were cracked from age, and all the rubber was dried out. However, the interior plastic was yellowed and cracked. It was a real find: only used occasionally by two other owners, never smoked in, low mileage, with new paint and just waiting to go home with the right owner.” “I called on it immediately when the ad appeared. “It was so low-time, I thought it was a misprint,” Grove explained. At 879 hours TTAF, it had 3,000 to 5,000 hours less than most other Tomahawks. “It was a typical example of an older Tomahawk-except that it was very low-time,” Grove recalled. That Tomahawk, paint job complete, was placed in a corner of the Ryder museum and only pushed out and started occasionally until it was released by the courts in 2000. Ryder was having his Tomahawk painted with the same paint scheme as his Malibu when the crash occurred. Ryder had planned to teach his son-who was coming home with parents after a long fight with cancer-to fly in the Tomahawk. Sadly, Ryder, his wife and son were killed in Ryder’s Piper Malibu shortly after takeoff on a flight from Rochester, Minn. By 1994 he had more than 20 flying warbird aircraft (real, replica or otherwise built). ![]() It was owned by Ryder’s World War I Replica Fighter Museum in Guntersville, Ala., and was Frank Ryder’s personal aircraft.įrank Ryder had started his truck leasing company many years earlier and also had great interest in World War I fighter aircraft. Tom Grove found this Tomahawk, N2324D, through Trade-A-Plane. “In a comparable side-by-side experimental, you’ll be bumping shoulders the whole time the Tomahawk gives you a little more width-perhaps three to four inches-as well as better head room,” he explained. Plus, the PA-38 has a generous amount of cockpit space. “I wanted a cheap operating aircraft, rented a Tomahawk-and loved it,” he said.īesides having great ventilation and excellent visibility, a Tomahawk has “one of the best engines ever built, almost bulletproof,” according to Grove. Once he did, he knew that all the Tomahawk naysayers were wrong. Retired airline captain Tom Grove had never flown a Tomahawk until 1999. Tom Grove's decade-long project resulted in a plane that's just the way he likes it.
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