From the Cockpit Part 42: T-34 Mentor

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Pictured: Ryan Rankin flies the T-34 Mentor. Photo courtesy of Ryan Rankin.

Editor’s Note: This is part 42 of an ongoing series documenting the flights of active-duty US Navy Pilot Ryan Rankin on his journey to fly 52 planes in 52 weeks through the year 2017.

Rankin takes another flight down Memory Lane, taking to the air in a T-34 Mentor—the first plane he ever flew with the US Navy when he began training back in 2009. Frustrating back then (the students not-so-affectionately dubbed the craft the “turbo-weenie”), Rankin was eager to step back into the cockpit and give it another shot.

Introduced in the late 1940s, the Mentor eventually replaced the original T-6 Texan as one of the US military’s flight training aircraft of choice, and it wasn’t until fairly recently that the Mentor was retired in favor of the new T-6B Texan II. Rankin regularly flies the T-6B, and it’s “on a different planet,” he says, with its pressurized cockpit, ejection seats and “fighter-jet feel.”

But the turbo-weenie is a pretty cool plane too. In retrospect, Rankin admits it wasn’t the aircraft itself that was so frustrating, as much as it was the rigor of the flight training regimen. “It’s not designed to be fun,” he says. “It’s designed to stress you.” He distinctly remembers one of his first aerobatic flights, early in his training. Airsick, Rankin threw up in the back seat, but the lesson wasn’t over and the instructor kept going. Rankin had no choice but to power through. The plane just became a talisman for all that frustration. And Rankin wasn’t going to give up. “People paint because they love painting, not because they’re great at it,” he says. “Flying is that for me.”

Taking off out of Destin with friend Tony Diaz, the Mentor does not disappoint. A sturdy, reliable craft with open-canopy capabilities and aerobatic ability, the Mentor lends itself readily to the kind of flying Rankin enjoys most—hanging out at 15,000 feet. Though a Navy pilot by trade, the civilian side of flying has always appealed more to him, and trying out the Mentor under more relaxed circumstances made all the difference. “Not being graded is nice too,” he says.

At the time, flying the Mentor in training, Rankin itched to try out the new T-6, and felt a pang of envy at the idea that the next class would be training on a much newer aircraft. But time and experience offer a different view. “Last time I flew [the Mentor], I was a know-nothing student,” Rankin says. “I took it for granted when I flew it back then, but I wouldn’t trade it now.”

For more about the flight in Rankin's own words and a video of the flight, follow the link below.

Pictured: Ryan Rankin flies the T-34 Mentor. Photo courtesy of Ryan Rankin.

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