John Mohr was born in Virginia, MN. He grew up in the Crane Lake area and took his first airplane ride in a J-3 Cub on floats with his father as a one-year old. He soloed at age fourteen and received his Private license in 1970 and other licenses followed.
In 1972, Mohr constructed a home-built helicopter using a boat outboard motor. He built four others over the years. He flew for the Einarson brothers at International Falls, hauling fishermen from camp to camp, making ambulance flights and instructing. In 1975, he purchased a Stearman biplane, restored it and soon began to perform aerobatics at local events. He moved to Orr, MN and started his own flying service. He was then hired by North Central Airlines to fly the DC-9. Today he is flying for Delta Airlines. In addition to his airline career, Mohr continues to fly exhibitions all over the world. Mohr has received many showmanship awards and has run his total flight time to 37,000 hours.
John Mohr performs what is believed by many to be the most entertaining 220 hp Stock Stearman (PT-17) routine in the world, known for executing a perfect, low-level square loop; the lowest “Harrier” maneuver in the industry called the “Harried Pass;” and the world’s only biplane-to-helicopter transfer. Mohr is the recipient of both the “Bill Barber” and “Art Scholl” awards for showmanship (2000), and a captain with Delta Airlines, flying the Boeing 757 internationally.
In his hall of fame acceptance speech, Mohr recalled sitting on his father’s lap in the family’s J-3 Cub, which is still owned by Mohr and his brother, Jim. Five generations of the Mohr family have learned to fly in that same Cub.
Mohr recalled some of his earliest attempts at flight, including pulling his brother behind his snowmobile in a Rogollo human kite, which ended up in a pile of sticks and fabric in the snow because the CG was too far aft.
“You’ve all seen a kite with no tail,” said Mohr. “That’s the ride Jim got just before he crashed. Then there is the surplus parachute we bought …that’s another story!”
After Mohr’s father soloed him in the Cub on floats at age 14, John moved to International Falls, Minn., where he worked and lived with Francis Einarson and his family of Einarson Bros. Flying Service. The rest is living history!
Well, thank you so much, Jay. Thank you everybody for, uh, inviting me over to talk.
[Shows movies and slides of model airplanes]
[I] Got into the model building, pretty heavy. My dad and grandfather have done the same thing, and there's so much to be learned from building models. We didn't have any RC back at that time because it was, well there was, but it was so new. New to me, I didn't have anything. It was all learning how to fly a pre-flight build and fly free flight models.
The Cub you see that I'm holding was probably control line because I can see the rudder outside to the right, so that wouldn't hold it against the lines as you go off the circle. This was an auto gyro that my grandfather built from scratch. It had an 049 on the front and four bladed rotor that was just freewheel and auto rotation, of course. And that was a free flight model. He had enough twist in the horizontal stabilizer so that it counteracted. Handline should hold it up in the wind. Get the rotor spinning and then hand launch, and then it would circle up until the engine ran out of fuel, and then it would actually Glide in and land. I still have that model.
As I said, a control line model and skis that I built, I did pre-flight and control line, and it was years later, when I actually got into RC when I knew how to build it, so it would make it work. But the amount of information and the education that you learned from building models is incredible, and I try to encourage all the young people today to do that you learn about angle of incidence, angle of attack. We learned the the stabilizer and rudder have to be built according to offset the torque of the engine, or you offset the engine center, and many different things to be learned. I've learned a ton about aerodynamics by doing this, and then of course. when I got into the RC models, learning to fly them. And doing them is what led into learning how to fly aerobatics in the full-size airplanes, So this one obviously is control line Cox. I built the skis out of. I cut up old tin cans that you get food in, and then I bend the pieces and solder them up, and they look just like the little thing.
My first RC Cub model. Taxing up from the garage hanger area. There's the house I grew up in, Cessna 180 and my dad's J3 Cub that I've been flying, which I still own. By the way, J3 got my son to fly, and he's teaching these kids. So, there'll be five generations flying. My grandfather bought it from the factory 1946.
Another RC model that was kit Carl Goldberg models called the Falcon 56. He's bigger into the RC than I am. That's how we really connected.
That was one of my grandfathers. They call them wind sleds back then before they had snowmobiles, putting airplane engine on the back. Even had a two-cylinder engine that was hanging up in the shop. And it was on a World War One trainer called the penguin, which never flew and had a single wheel on it. He sat in it, and you could get it moving through a field, and all the control surfaces worked, so probably bounce it into the air and back down again, but it never really flew, and that's one of them that he had on the wind sled that particular wind sled. I think that a Lycoming four-cylinder in the flying car.
Here's me flying the Cub On skis in the winter. My dad soloed me at 14 in that Cub on floats. I didn't even learn to drive a car at that time. I was still flying airplanes, And when I went to get my private license, I did the check ride in the Cub on floats first. Then, I went to the airport for the system 153 here. That was a coaxial helicopter, not really a helicopter. More of an auto gyro that my son and I built. Of course, the rotors that kind of rotate it. It wouldn't roll over that way, so you had equal lift up to both sides. As I said, it worked like a kite, just free wheeled up their produced lift, Take the page string, and let it out and get it up really high.
My son with his kite that he built. So, one of my first helicopters; they have, like a little chain size, and in it didn't have any collective pitch back then. The very early ones had a fixed pitch, main rotor, And a shaft tail drive to the tail rotors. So, the usually the tail rotor speed was matching with the main rotor speed. So, as you gave it power, it would increase the main rotor RPM and the tail rotor RPM lift increased, so It actually worked okay. It wasn't great. It is amazing how far the RC and helicopters have come now. With electrical, the electric motors, and everything else, there's another one That one had a gas engine instead of a chainsaw type engine.
And here's the rotor-way helicopter, the Scorpion that I built when I was 17 years old. I had already been flying piston in the Cubs, so I guess when you get a good stick and rudder skills in a J3 or a Steerman or what have you, then some of it translates over to a helicopter to stick anyway, not to collect collective. I had to coordinate it, didn't have a mixer on it, so I didn't coordinate the throttle and collective position to maintain the rotor. You know, I put 125 horse Evinrude outboard engine in, and they had a water pump running water through a radiator for cooling.
That was another deal we bought. Anyway, back to the helicopter, so it had as you probably knew back then they had belt drive to the tail rotor, three different belts, and drilled the tail rotor. I had one forced landing, whereas I didn't have enough coolant in the radiator if the mixture was wrong, and I used to fly this thing in 10 below weather.
With that canopy on it, I made, and I took heat off. The radiator conducted it through a hose up front and blew it on the windshield, and then it was quite warm in there. It was fine, but the radiator coolant slushed up on me, and it blew the radiator cap and that lines right up with the tail rotor belt, so you know what happened? They got slippery, and they lost the tail rotor authority or effectiveness. I was okay, as long as I stayed flying forward because I did have a pin deck there that people from spinning all the way around it. I couldn't come into a hover with it, so I, I kept it moving, and I landed on the ice on a river. I had several different incidents.
I built three other RotorWay helicopters for people down here in the Twin Cities. I got a lot of experience with them building, I built a tracking device out of an old stroboscope that you get out of High School lab. And then later I fashioned the A mount on top by the rotor shaft, and I had a set two sets of points and condensers up there, and I ran it through a car coil, and then I took a timing light that used to time a car with, And I could paint each blade a different color and stand out there and ahead of time so that each blade would Flash. And it was like an early Chadwick, and I got calls from all over the country to come out and track people's helicopter blades for them.
Of course. We bought an old military, uh parachute, uh, it's not military, but it was just a regular chute. And then we tried pulling it behind a snowmobile on the lake. We had other things that we built, pulled behind snow machines, but the parachute was so much drag. It kept lifting the back end of Snowmobile off the ground. So then we hooked it up to an International Scout, and that kept it down and gave a whole bunch of people rides, brought them up, let him back down in the bed. Anything to get in the air, right?
There's my son, Ryan, who's now a captain for Alaska Airlines flies 737, of course, that I learned to fly in. I solo him on his 16th birthday, of course. It was a legitimate starter, and I didn't want to get in trouble, but we were always anyway. The rest of the family has three boys myself and my son Ryan. Standing on the top wing of the Piaggio goal that we own today. The guy that photographed all this. You've probably seen his work before his name is Leo Corolluna. And just some amazing photography.
I did get to give my grandfather a ride in the Stearman before he passed, which is pretty amazing. This was up at Orr, Minnesota, where I went to high school They had a nice, uh, flying feed up there at Orr, which you'll see a picture of a few minutes. I still had the the inertial starter on at this point. A couple guys are going to show me how they used to start them during the war, and they put two guys on there on the crank, and they stripped all the gears up and started for me.
And I, as I got into the air, show flying, I wanted to keep the airplane light. So I took it out of there. I flew quite a bit of different airplanes, test fields with stuff for Greg Herrick over at Anoka County. He had a museum over there called Golden Wings and food and stuff for years, and oversaw some of the rebuild stuff and then flew up when it was done.
This was a little bit underpowered and kind of flying around at Full Throttle most of the time, I think the engine is a little sick as well, but still, it was kind of a thrill to fly it. It had all the controls of the car and all the controls in there. So, where you put your feet depending on what you're doing and the transition from takeoff or from running down the runway to lifting off, and it gets more like an Ercoupe in a crosswind, because if you turn the wheel like that, you're also turning the front wheels So you can see how bad it is in the crossland for takeoff.
This Tri-motor was originally used down in Mexico, flying a nautical mining company strip up in the mountains. All they had to rebuild, it was just an airframe. In fact, the all-new tubing, everything. But it was pretty much built. It was a certified airplane. Greg took pride in only getting airplanes that were certified aircraft and not experimental or one-of-a-kind. This had three Kenner engines on it with drops, and they had a Hayward air starter. It's called on each of the engines, so they had a big air tank in the airplane, and most of the time it didn't work. The Hayward air starters are very finicky, so we just end up propping and started, but it was amazing. They're fixed pitch props. They didn't feather, and this airplane would fly on the center engine only with the outward just windmilling. So, I was pulled all the way back, because as you can see, it looks like one big covering on. I think the wingspan 40 feet or so, and it was pretty big, but flew well. It was a nice flying airplane for a Tri- motor.
Yeah, that's, that's the Bushmaster. This was designed for hauling fish in Alaska. It had 450 Pratt Whitney's on it. It was right at 12 5 on the gross, so the FAA decided that we all needed type ratings to fly it. So, I have a Bushmaster type rating When the guy bought it from Greg, who flew it down to his Museum in Texas. His FAA guy said no, it's right at 12, 5. You don't need A type rating in it, so he didn't have to get a typer. It's a controversy, right? But this thing was an awful flyer compared to the Ford. It just was so heavy and extremely heavy on the controls. And If you look at the rudder, there's no overhang. And there's no aerodynamic balance or overhang on the rudder. They wanted to make the rudder and the elevator is the same surface so they could be readily replaceable that way, so they didn't have to have it separately. It felt like the rudder was in a bucket of cement. I mean, you could, if you lose an engine on the outboard side, and you just for all your worth. Sometimes, you even have to take two feet over there, and your leg is shaking and trying to hold everything straight. It just, and there's only two of them built.
This one was called the Cunningham Hall, And I think all these old airplanes are made for people that are this tall because I could barely fit in the thing. The stick was so close to me, and it was so out of rig. I thought it was rigged when I rigged right. When I first flew it, but I needed so much radiator on that, I could hardly get enough in there. It's a single seat in the front cockpit, and you don't have much legroom to move this stick, and so I got it all the way over as far as I can get just to maintain level attitudes and then roll over on you. Not only that, but the the mags on the engine were almost back in your lap. There's a firewall, and then there's a big bulge in the firewall where the mags were, and it was just really tight. It had a big hatch on top, And this thing was landed in a field to rescue a horse. I don't know what the whole story is, but they had a crane, or a tripod of some nature. Lift a horse up and actually set it through the The big trap door. On top of it, put it in there and then they flew the horse out of it. That's strange. Anyway, not one of my favorite airplanes.
That's a Stinson model B, And that's the model A, which actually came before the B. This was way ahead of its time. It had retractable gear flaps, cantilevered wing, fully cantilevered outside the engine of cells, And you can see that the thickness of the wing. At that point, it's just probably three feet thick at that point almost . It came back from Alaska. It was in a museum up there. Really needed restoration. Bad, I guess I was lucky to get back and return thing.
I was by Watson Lake and between Watson Lake and Fort Nelson. There's a stretch that's always fogged in. So, you headed down the river, started through there Lower and lower. That's uh, and here we've got a handheld GPS 396. The instruments were working. Okay, I thought, let's climb up and get on top of it because I knew the weather was better at Fort Nelson Got up to 7, 000, and it's all the higher I could get it with it. It had 300 Lycoming on it, which aren't really powerhouses anyway. Got up there, and we're still solid, and I said "this is stupid," you know, so spiraled back down when I broke out the bottom. Here comes the lake amphib, and a Seabee coming from the way I was trying to go, and they're right down along the river, and they happened to be on the frequency. I says, "hey, how'd you guys get all the way from Fort Nelson to here?" He says, "We landed in the water and taxi on step for a long ways 'til we had enough air, enough ceiling to get back up and fly again. So, Oh, it was crazy. So, anyway, they rebuilt at home a few slides, all new tubing. All these Ribs or rib stitched. It's all fabric, And They did not stitch.
So, then another time, the gear collapsed on me when I was taxiing. It wasn't quite rigged, right. And there was some questionable bolts in the thing, anyway. Long story, but the FAA came out and the gear works like a DC-3 gear. The front is a Jack screw that pulls it up. So the feds came out on Friday before. I'm heading to an air show, and I didn't have time for that guys. Where's your map? That's all he was worried about, and I was just doing a local flight around Anoka, and he wanted to know what my map was. At least nowadays we got an iPad to fit that bill. So, anyway, Great airplane, though. Actually, I love that airplane. It just flies. It's like a Beech 18, it flies. So nice.
This one is a fleetwink shebird. There were six of them built. This was actually the prototype. The prototype did not have an engine driven hydraulic pump to operate. The gears only had a hand pump inside, so that's how we knew it was a prototype. This is all built out of stainless steel. The stainless is so thin on it. It's almost like pop can thick, was like ten thousands or so, and it's all spot welded along every longeron on and then the lines. Arounds are only about this far apart all the seams. They've got a spot weld about every quarter, inch or less, And we had acquired the original spot weld machine that did that. And for some reason, I thought it was going to fly like a lake amphib, you know where you got the engine mounted so high that the power changes really got to be on top of the on the pitch, otherwise you can nose over on you, and so on. This did not handle that way, and maybe it's because the stab is up high enough. Maybe it's because the angle of incidence of the engine on top, I don't know, but it flew very, very well, And it was great on the water, Except it leaped really bad. The first time I put it on the water out at Surfside, And I had my wife on the dock to film it, And we had all the floorboards out because I wanted to see where the leaks were to deal with. And I look back and you could see the water coming in and I came off a step and came up to the dock and I hollered at her, I said, "I gotta take off. I'm leaking water, so bad," you know, but then it was, then it was so much water, and it was hard to get it back in the air, even when I got back.
I flew the air shows 75, 76, So right up until about 2015. We tried the rope ladder thing because we're going to do a transfer from one airplane to another. It's easier when you got a car underneath you, but trying to do it into the front seat of the Stearman with the rope ladder swinging and the guys swinging all over kind of abandoned the idea. I think it was way too dangerous.
John Mohr was born in Virginia, MN. He grew up in the Crane Lake area and took his first airplane ride in a J-3 Cub on floats with his father as a one-year old. He soloed at age fourteen and received his Private license in 1970 and other licenses followed.
In 1972, Mohr constructed a home-built helicopter using a boat outboard motor. He built four others over the years. He flew for the Einarson brothers at International Falls, hauling fishermen from camp to camp, making ambulance flights and instructing. In 1975, he purchased a Stearman biplane, restored it and soon began to perform aerobatics at local events. He moved to Orr, MN and started his own flying service. He was then hired by North Central Airlines to fly the DC-9. Today he is flying for Delta Airlines. In addition to his airline career, Mohr continues to fly exhibitions all over the world. Mohr has received many showmanship awards and has run his total flight time to 37,000 hours.
