Phil McLanahan picked up his Fuji LM-1 while he was still on active duty with the U.S. Navy. It belonged to an older pilot in Maryland where he was living at the time, and McLanahan helped the man to restore it to flyable condition. But by that time, he told AVWeb here on the Sun ‘n Fun flightline, the owner was too old to fly the airplane, so he offered to sell it to him. McLanahan took him up on the offer, and has since earned the nickname, “Fuji Phil.”
I’m not exactly sure why but I love the look/design of it. Going from 2 tandem to 2x2 on original airframe design though it must be rather intimate in the cabin?
I would be interested to know if the “Air Self-Defense Forces” inscription on the side is also original. The characters are correct, but they are also much cruder and inconsistent than I would expect a Japanese vendor to accept. Maybe standards were different in Japan just 10 years after the Pacific War. Or maybe those characters were repainted by someone not used to writing in Japanese. If “Fuji Phil” is able to include the story of this inscription in a future video, and show us the corresponding inscription on the starboard side of the aircraft, I would be eager to watch that.