MARCH/APRIL 2014
•Cub Comparison
•Meyers 200B
•Aeronca 7AC Champ
Dave and Jeanne Allen’s
WACO YKC
Straight & Level
Vintage Airplane
STAFF
GEOFF ROBISON
VAA PRESIDENT, EAA 268346, VAA 12606
EAA Publisher . . . . . . . . . Jack J. Pelton,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Chairman of the Board
Vice Pres., EAA Publications. J. Mac McClellan
2014: A year of real excitement
Editor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jim Busha
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . jbusha@eaa.org
VAA Executive Administrator. Max Platts
920-426-6110. . . . . . . . . . mplatts@eaa.org
The new year brought us some of the most brutal weather
we have experienced here in Indiana over the past 35 years. As I write
this column the weatherman is predicting yet another 12 inches of
blowing snow for this evening. Again I say, “Oh how I long for the
warm breezes blowing through the open hangar door.” Oh well, as they
say, “Wish in one hand . . ..” Hopefully that terrorist rodent in Pennsylvania will not see his shadow again this year. Hang in there, folks; it’s
got to get better, right?
2014 is truly shaping up to be a very exciting year. The EAA just recently announced that at least a dozen of the Valdez, Alaska, short
takeoff and landing (STOL) competition aircraft will be at AirVenture
Oshkosh 2014. To me, this display of talent and capable hardware
is equal to or greater in entertainment value than any NFL football
game. I mean, really, if I only needed one reason to attend Oshkosh
2014, this is it! Yes, I am pumped! The only downside to this news is
the fact that I will now need to purchase at least two extra batteries for
my Canon HD video-capable camera. This group of aircraft is made up
of a mixture of Vintage production aircraft and homebuilts, and we are
planning to prominently display these aircraft in the Vintage area during the 2014 event.
EAA continues to monitor and react to the FAA’s overreaching policy
of mandating pilots to undergo very expensive sleep apnea testing if
your measured body mass index exceeds a specific level. It is projected
that as many as 120,000 pilots may be impacted in a very negative way
if this policy is mandated. At this particular time our EAA and AOPA
advocacy initiatives have managed to get this measure delayed, and
the U.S. Congress has introduced bills in the House and Senate (H.R.
3578 and S. 1941) that would require the FAA to follow the standard
rulemaking process and provide the aviation community the opportunity to provide feedback and comment on the proposed sleep apnea
rules. The FAA has yet to provide any relevant data that would support
such a policy. I cannot remember a time when any proposed FAA policy
has ever generated the current level of sheer outrage by our local pilot community. As a result, we all need to continue to reach out to our
representatives in Congress, especially the GA Caucus, and let them
know in no uncertain terms that this proposed policy will have no impact on safety to our GA activities. This initiative is overreaching in nature and is totally unsupported by safety data from the NTSB reports.
continued on page 63
Advertising. . . . . . . . . . . Sue Anderson
920-426-6127. . . . . . . . . . sanderson@eaa.org
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Larry Phillip
920-426-6886. . . . . . . . . lphillip@eaa.org
Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Livy Trabbold
VAA, PO Box 3086, Oshkosh, WI 54903
Website: www.vintageaircraft.org
Email: Vintageaircraft@eaa.org
TM
VINTAGE AIRCRAFT ASSOCIATION
Current EAA members may join the Vintage Aircraft Association and receive VINTAGE
AIRPLANE magazine for an additional $42
per year.
EAA Membership, VINTAGE AIRPLANE
magazine and one year membership in the
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FOREIGN MEMBERSHIPS
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www.vintageaircraft.org
1
Vol. 42, No. 2
2014
CONTENTS
MARCH/APRIL 2014
20
Comparing the Classics
Setting the baseline . . . the Piper Cub
Budd Davisson
26
Dave and Jeanne Allen’s Waco YKC
Stately splendor from the golden age
Sparky Barnes Sargent
36
Meyers 200B
John Lyon’s classic speed demon
Budd Davisson
COLUMNS
1
Straight and Level
2014: A year of real excitement
Geoff Robison
12 The Vintage Instructor
Observations made by a geezer instructor
Steve Krog, CFI
6
Air Mail
15 Ask the AME
Oxygen in general aviation
John Patterson, M.D., AME
10 How to?
Tram a wing
Robert G. Lock
2
MARCH / APRIL 2014
16 Good Old Days
44
The Other Member of Our Family
Part 1, Aeronca 7AC Champ NC1585E
Richard “Dick” Pedersen
52
The National Stearman Fly-In
A big kid’s Christmas!
Harry G. Ballance Jr.
56
Reminiscing With an Old Friend
A classic Stinson 108 stirs up the past
Scott Knowlton
COVERS
FRONT COVER: Dave and Jeanne Allen are all
smiles after winning Grand Champion Antique
honors at AirVenture 2013. Mike Steineke photo.
BACK COVER: John Lyons Meyers 200B was
photographed by Phil High.
ANY COMMENTS?
Send your thoughts to the
Vintage Editor at: jbusha@eaa.org
59
The Vintage Mechanic
Aircraft covering, Part 2
Nonstructural aluminum
Robert G. Lock
For missing or replacement magazines,
or any other membership related questions, please call EAA Member Services
at 800-JOIN-EAA (564-6322).
12 What Our Members are Restoring
Beechcraft Musketeer, Model 23
Keith Green
63
Vintage Trader
www.vintageaircraft.org
3
Join
Friends
of the Red
Barn!
Your support is crucial to the success of
VAA’s AirVenture activities and programs
VAA members like you are passionate about
your affiliation with vintage aviation, and it shows.
You’re the most loyal of all EAA members, renewing your VAA membership each and every year at
a rate higher than any other group within the EAA
family. We appreciate your dedication! Each year
we give you another opportunity to strengthen
your bond with the VAA by inviting you to become
a Friend of the Red Barn.
This special opportunity helps VAA put together all the components that make the Vintage
area of EAA AirVenture a unique and exciting part
of the World’s Greatest Aviation Celebration. This
special fund was established to cover a significant
portion of the VAA’s expenses related to serving
VAA members during EAA AirVenture Oshkosh,
so that no dues money is used to support the convention activities.
This is a great opportunity for Vintage members
to join together as key financial supporters of the
Vintage division. It’s a rewarding experience for
4
MARCH / APRIL 2014
each of us as individuals to be a part of supporting
the finest gathering of Antique, Classic, and Contemporary airplanes in the world.
At whatever level is comfortable for you, won’t
you please join those of us who recognize the tremendously valuable key role the Vintage Aircraft
Association has played in preserving the irreplaceable grassroots and general aviation airplanes of
the last 100 years? Your participation in EAA’s Vintage Aircraft Association Friends of the Red Barn
will help ensure the very finest in EAA AirVenture
Oshkosh Vintage programs.
To participate in this year’s campaign, fill out
the donation form by visiting our website at www.
VintageAircraft.org/programs/redbarn.html to
make an online contribution. And to each and every one of you who has already contributed, or
is about to, a heartfelt “thank you” from the officers, directors, staff, and volunteers of the Vintage Aircraft Association!
Nominat
ions
C A L L F OR V I N TA G E A I R C R A F T A S S O C I AT ION
Nominate your favorite vintage aviator for the EAA Vintage Aircraft Association Hall of Fame. A great honor could be
bestowed upon that man or woman working next to you on
your airplane, sitting next to you in the chapter meeting, or
walking next to you at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh. Think about
the people in your circle of aviation friends: the mechanic,
historian, photographer, or pilot who has shared innumerable
tips with you and with many others. They could be the next
VAA Hall of Fame inductee—but only if they are nominated.
The person you nominate can be a citizen of any country and may be living or deceased; his or her involvement
in vintage aviation must have occurred between 1950 and
the present day. His or her contribution can be in the areas
of flying, design, mechanical or aerodynamic developments,
administration, writing, some other vital and relevant field,
or any combination of fields that support aviation. The person you nominate must be or have been a member of the
Vintage Aircraft Association or the Antique/Classic Division of EAA, and preference is given to those whose actions have contributed to the VAA in some way, perhaps
as a volunteer, a restorer who shares his expertise with
others, a writer, a photographer, or a pilot sharing stories, preserving aviation history, and encouraging new
pilots and enthusiasts.
To nominate someone is easy. It just takes a little time and a little reminiscing on your part.
•Think of a person; think of his or her contributions to vintage aviation.
•Write those contributions in the various categories of the nomination form.
•Write a simple letter highlighting these attributes and contributions. Make copies of newspaper or magazine articles that
may substantiate your view.
•If at all possible, have another individual (or more) complete a form or write a letter about this person, confirming why the
person is a good candidate for induction.
We would like to take this opportunity to mention that if you have nominated someone for the VAA Hall of Fame; nominations
for the honor are kept on file for 3 years, after which the nomination must be resubmitted.
Mail nominating materials to: VAA Hall of Fame, c/o Charles W. Harris, Transportation Leasing Corp.
PO Box 470350
Tulsa, OK 74147
E-mail: cwh@hvsu.com
Remember, your “contemporary” may be a candidate; nominate someone today!
Find the nomination form at www.VintageAircraft.org, or call the VAA office for a copy
(920-426-6110), or on your own sheet of paper, simply include the following information:
•Date submitted.
•Name of person nominated.
•Address and phone number of nominee.
•E-mail address of nominee.
•Date of birth of nominee. If deceased, date of death.
•Name and relationship of nominee’s closest living relative.
•Address and phone of nominee’s closest living relative.
•VAA and EAA number, if known. (Nominee must have been or is a VAA member.)
•Time span (dates) of the nominee’s contributions to vintage aviation.
(Must be between 1950 to present day.)
•Area(s) of contributions to aviation.
•Describe the event(s) or nature of activities the nominee has undertaken in aviation to
be worthy of induction into the VAA Hall of Fame.
•Describe achievements the nominee has made in other related fields in aviation.
•Has the nominee already been honored for his or her involvement in aviation and/or the
contribution you are stating in this petition? If yes, please explain the nature of the
honor and/or award the nominee has received.
•Any additional supporting information.
•Submitter’s address and phone number, plus e-mail address.
•Include any supporting material with your petition.
www.vintageaircraft.org
5
Air Mail
Stearman spins, sleep apnea,
Eignungsfeststellung and more . . .
Steve,
I really enjoyed your article on stalls. I am old school
and was taught these important items right from the
start. My instructor, Dick Burke, made sure I understood
what was going on. We only had a Narco Mark 10 for a
radio and only used it when returning from practicing. It
was after I soloed (1963) that we first flew to PVD where I
had to learn to use the radio for real. After 23,550 hours in
Cubs, Travel Airs, lots of nosewheel stuff, two Stearmans,
actually three. This one belonged to the flight school I was
training at. I feel all students should be taught spins and
how to recover. I towed banners with the Stearman to
help pay for flight lessons, commercial, instrument, multiengine. One day after a banner tow, the chief pilot of the
school told me if I wanted, I could gas up the Stearman
and go play. Okay, if I wanted? Nah. Of course I took advantage of the opportunity. The guy who restored the
Stearman was close by, so I asked him how the Stearman
did in a spin. He said, “Ah, don’t worry; it’s just an airplane.” Now, a few days before this I had sent for the tech
orders on spin strips and spin technique by Deed Levy
who was chief production test pilot for Stearman.
So, I fired up the Stearman and proceeded out to the
designated practice area. I warmed up with some steep
turns, couple stalls, then did my spin entry. I was over the
Scituate Reservoir in Rhode Island. I picked out a small island for a reference point and awaaaay I went. After about
five turns I decided it was time to recover. Okay, opposite
rudder and forward stick. C’mon Stearman, you’re supposed to quit this. Water is getting closer; I started from
7,500 feet. So, I tried left rudder, nothing; okay, forward
stick, not much except the spin appeared to flatten.
Now what? I read somewhere that the old guys would
just let go of everything. I had nothing to lose cuz we
were gonna make a huge splash pretty soon. So, I just let
go of everything; throttle at idle. I’m now at about 1,500
feet and all of a sudden the Stearman quit spinning and
went into a shallow glide from which I quite easily recovered. Whew! Time to check my shorts. That was too
6
MARCH / APRIL 2014
close for me. Well, upon calming down, doing couple
landings, and refueling, I returned home. I found the
tech orders had arrived. Therein was a caution by Deed
Levy. He said with a clean wing (no spin strips) a spin of
more than three turns is not advisable because the spin
may flatten and be UNRECOVERABLE.
Here’s the next item on stalls.
I flew for Eastern Air Lines for 23-1/2 years. After
the strike I wound up helping start a DC-9 freight operation out here in Michigan, USA Jet Airlines at Willow Run (YIP).
While at Eastern, I bid the new A300 Airbus. Eastern
was the first airline to use this great airplane. I lucked
out and had a super instructor who happened to have
gotten his type rating over in France at the Airbus factory in Toulouse. In the airline industry seniority was
your life. The more senior, the better the trips and vacation, etc. A lot of real senior guys bid the A300, which
was entirely new in concept from the B-727 and L-1011.
Some of these guys were afraid of the airplane; however,
my instructor loved to fly and knew how to teach. At the
time there was no flight simulator so all the training was
done in the actual airplane. We used Dade Collier training airport, or TNT as it was termed. This one day at our
preflight briefing we were told today we’re gonna do stalls
and steep turns plus a few approaches and landings. In
the A300 B4, there are about a dozen circuit breakers that
need to be pulled so as to disarm all the protective devices. There was a stick pusher that actually pushed the
yoke forward if the airplane got into an angle of attack
that it didn’t like. There was no angle of attack indicator
in the panel; however, the magic and mirrors could sense
this. Also, the throttles would go forward and hopefully
get the dumb guy who entered this area to wake up and
fly. This regime was termed “alpha floor” wherein the
computers would sense this and start recovering. Okay,
we were over the western coast of Florida, all the appropriate breakers were pulled, and my instructor, Hank,
says go ahead and stall the airplane. Whoa, I say, you
want a full stall; what about all that disturbed air trying
to go through the engines (General Electric CFM56 C4).
Won’t it cause them to also stall and quit? Nope, says
Hank, there are variable inlet guide vanes that smooth
out the airflow. So, I set about half thrust and let the airplane slow way down (about 220,000 pounds); finally
we felt a little burble and a shake or two. Hank says keep
on pulling back until it stalls. Finally, with a lot of shaking, buffeting, and rattling, she let go. Hank says keep it
straight with the rudder and keep holding back pressure.
That nose dropped, and we lost about 500 feet right now.
Then whilst holding full back stick, the nose came up a
bit, more shaking, dropped again; finally after three or
four of these excursions the airplane returned to a mushing attitude straight and a bit nose-down. We applied
some power, gradually reduced the back pressure, and we
were flying again. Wow, amazing.
At USA Jet I became a DC-9 instructor. I always
taught stall recovery, especially approaching to land and
the departure stall. Stalls were a part of my checkride
scenario. Upon reaching age 60, I had to retire, got an
instructor job at Kalitta Charters II, teaching the DC-9
and B-727. Again, all the stall series was taught. Couple
guys complained about doing stalls. I answered with,
Having this tiny bit of knowledge may some day save
your back side as well as your airplane.
Thanks for a great article.
Pete Chestnut, VAA 65
Jim
I just received the January/February Vintage Airplane
and am delighted by the content and coverage of such
great airplanes. Keep up doing the great things that you
do. I find that Sport Aviation has less and less content
that I find captivating these past few years, but Vintage is going the other direction. My older brother and
I lusted after a Spartan in the mid ’60s and nearly were
able to by one of the “back row derelicts” at one point.
In retrospect, it was probably a good thing we weren’t
able to get that or the PT-19 we “discovered” at another
date. I’m sure either would have held my interest, and
finances, far more easily than college!
I have two (tongue in cheek) comments about this
edition’s content that I can’t let pass:
1. In an otherwise interesting and impressive article,
“Let the Good Times Roll!” I believe Charles Harris did
a great injustice to Bellanca, airplane and man, simply
by omission. Giuseppe Bellanca was a famous and brilliant, albeit eccentric, designer that created numerous
benchmark (Pacemaker and Skyrocket to name two) aircraft prior to the Depression and WWII. His company,
Bellanca Aircraft Corp. (BAC) was delving into smaller
aircraft in the late ’30s with the 14-9 series of Cruisairs
and Cruisair Juniors. He jumped right into the market
after the war along with every other company with the
14-13 series of Cruisair Seniors that were another outstanding design. They then soldiered on with the line
of 14-19 aircraft until the late ’50s when the Bellanca
family lost control of the company to their investors.
The aircraft, however, continued to be produced under
various names: Northern Aircraft, Downer, Bellanca
Aircraft Corporation, and even today as Alexandria Aircraft. The models have morphed from the Cruisemasters
of the late ’50s and ’60s to the 260, Viking, and now the
Super Viking. Although no aircraft are currently being
produced on speculation, rumor has it they will build a
brand new Super Viking on order. Quite an impressive
survival story for a series of very impressive aircraft.
2. On page 51 in “Walking the Line,” N7632E is identified as a 14-19-3 correctly, but it is a Cruisemaster, the
direct successor to the Cruisair.
Guess you can figure out I like Bellancas!
Thanks again.
Scott Thomas
EAA 62459, Chapter 1426
VAA 12684, Chapter 3
Response from Charlie Harris
I certainly intended no injustice or disrespect to Bellanca or any other low production number aircraft manufacturer; I simply concentrated on the more major/larger
aircraft companies.
And yes, I would say Scott likes Bellancas . . . to each his
own, and more power to him!
—Charlie
John Patterson M.D. AME,
I just read your answer to CC, January/February
2014 Vintage Aircraft, on sleep apnea, and it struck
a chord.
It was my wife that pointed out to the doctor that I
was exhibiting all the symptoms of sleep apnea.
I have a high BMI.
I snored a lot and loud.
I stopped breathing several times when asleep.
I would jerk awake.
After eight hours in bed I would still be tired and
would need a nap.
After driving for two hours [I] suffered from daytime
drowsiness; I would nod off and jerk awake.
My doctor on hearing this set me up for a sleep test.
This consisted of wearing a mask connected to an atwww.vintageaircraft.org
7
home monitor overnight and returning the monitor
to respiratory therapy in the morning. The respiratory
therapist called that afternoon and informed me that an
appointment had been made for me to be fitted with a
CPAP machine at 8 a.m. the next day.
The technician who fitted me for the CPAP
said I was heading for the Gone West column
in the EAA as my oxygen saturation was dangerously low.
The first night with the CPAP I slept 13
hours; my wife woke me thinking something
was wrong as she had not known me to sleep
so deeply for any length of time.
All this took place in 2002 one month
prior to my third-class medical at which I reported this condition as required by FARs to
the AME: “medical denied.” The FAA sent me
a long list of tests they required and have the
results in Oklahoma City within 30 days in order to obtain a special issuance medical.
Now the good part (thanks to my wife), I had been
proactive and had done the test. The results of which
along with a cover letter from my personal physician
stating I was under treatment for sleep apnea were sent
to Oklahoma City within the required time limit, and I
received a special issuance third-class medical.
As to the cost, as I was proactive in seeking medical
attention I was covered under my insurance not only for
the tests but my CPAP machine, supplies, and maintenance. If I had requested the tests to satisfy an outside
agency such as the FAA, I would not have been covered
and the cost would be out of my pocket.
I am currently on my third machine which has a 4 GB
chip that I have read at the respiratory clinic, and the
printout tells every aspect of my breathing. This printout shows the AME I am under continuing treatment
for sleep apnea per FAA, satisfying the requirements for
him to issue my medical.
This experience taught me several things, not the least
of which is to have a medical advocate authorized to speak
on your behalf. Be proactive in addressing medical issues
as it may save you time, money, and your life. Keep a log
of your health, blood pressure, EKG, blood work along
with a copy of any test that might have been performed.
Thank you for your great articles on pilot medical issues. I hope they will produce a better informed, healthier aviation community.
Frank Mitchell
VAA 29
EAA 883059
mariafrankmitchell@att.net
8
MARCH / APRIL 2014
Jim,
The last issue of Vintage Airplane mentioned tip tanks
on the Spartan Executive. I am attaching a photo of the
Spartan 12W about 1951 with tip tanks installed. This was
taken by my father, Art Brown, who was a Spartan student
with a part-time job working in their shop overhauling
Coast Guard B-17s. The 12W had magnesium wing skins
which were replaced with aluminum. He also mentioned
that Spartan would bring in wrecked Execs for repairs.
Robert Brown
Dear Jim,
Hope the new year finds you well!
The photograph of Roger Brown’s beautifully restored
Howard DGA on the back cover of the January/February
2014 edition of Vintage Airplane captures the fruition of
Roger’s superb craftsmanship. Roger is a longtime friend
and fellow Stearman pilot, so it was especially nice to see
his labor of love prominently depicted in the publication.
Sincerely,
Philip Handleman
Mr. Busha,
In your article on the Super Cub (p. 31 of the September/October 13 Vintage Airplane) you mention a number
of uses that it had, among which were “military liaison.”
There was another military use that may not have come
to your attention. With the U.S. Air Force pretty much in
charge, the PA-18 (called then the L-18, and with USAF
markings) was used by the German air force in Germany
beginning in 1956 as a “screening” device (VorflugAusbildung, in later years called Eignungsfeststellung or
assessment of aptitude) to determine which applicants
were suitable to be sent on to America for entry into the
regular USAF contract pilot-training programs in T-34s
and T-28s, and subsequently USAF schools in T-33s.
continued on page 64
How to?
ROBERT G. LOCK
Tram a wing
Tramming a wing is essentially squaring
wing bays. It is accomplished by alternating the
loosening and tightening of internal brace wires
called drag and anti-drag wires. It should always be
done when constructing new wings and should be
checked when re-covering existing wings. It is not
a difficult job and requires a set of trammel points.
Trammel points are simply a length of spruce stock
that measures about 1/4 inch by 3/4 inch by 38
inches (or whatever length needed to diagonally
bridge the bay). I tram on the bottom side of the
wing and start at the root. Small indentations are
placed in the spar at the junction of a point where
spar centerline intersects with the compression
member. A bay is a complete structural component
of the wing consisting of the front and rear spar and
two compression members. The wires diagonally
brace this bay. Most small aircraft wings will have
four bays—smaller wings could have three bays, and
larger wings could have more than four bays.
Snug the wires but do not tighten to final tension. Set the points to bridge diagonally across the
bay in one direction, and then move the trammel
10
MARCH / APRIL 2014
points to bridge the diagonal in the opposite direction. Loosen and tighten brace wires until both
points are the same length. Proceed to the next bay
and do the same thing, proceeding outboard until
all bays have been trammed. Then return to the root
and check the tram. You will probably have to make
a small adjustment and then proceed outboard to
the tip bay. Return to the root and check bays again.
Chances are good that you will not have to make
adjustments. Now it is time to check and set wire
tensions. If you have a wire tensiometer, set the
wires to between 350-450 pounds for most small
wings. If you don’t have a tensiometer, tighten the
wires until they make a good bass sound. Do not
over-tighten the brace wires. Note: Always tighten
each wire the same amount so as not to distort the
tram that has been set. Tighten each wire the same
amount until proper tension has been reached.
After the wing has been trammed, the ribs may
be glued in place (if it is wood) or nailed in place
(if the ribs are of aluminum). The above wing is
from a Hatz biplane that I had just repaired. New
aluminum leading edge is being installed and
nailed in place.
Right, the Hatz wing completely assembled and
ready to cover with fabric. In this photograph, the
compression members and brace wires are plainly
visible. This wing has three bays.
www.vintageaircraft.org
11
The Vintage Instructor
STEVE KROG, VAA DIRECTOR AND CFI
BRADY LANE
Observations made by a geezer instructor
I am writing this on the afternoon of New
Year’s Eve. The outside temp is 5ºF, with snow in
the forecast for the next four to five days along with
continued single-digit temps. By the time you read
this I hope spring is just days away. The skis are on
one Cub, and there is plenty of snow on the ground
to do some ski flying. However, I draw the limit at
20ºF. Anything colder is hard on a 75-year-old fabric12
MARCH / APRIL 2014
covered airplane with an exposed engine, and it is
especially hard on old flight instructors.
Throughout the past week I’ve had the pleasure of
several informal visits by previous students who have
moved on with their lives. It is always interesting
catching up on what they are now doing, as well as
learning of their continued flying experiences.
One of the previous students, who earned his private pilot certificate more than two years ago, decided
to pursue a career in aviation after college graduation
and enrolled in one of the well-known national flighttraining schools located in the South. He’s making
great progress and will have earned his single- and
multi-engine commercial, instrument, and complex
ratings by late spring of 2014. He hopes to then earn
his single- and multi-engine CFI ticket shortly thereafter and begin instructing to build time. His goal is
to be hired by the airlines in a year or so.
We enjoyed a lengthy discussion about the different types of flight instructors and the type of training
he was receiving. I asked him to compare his advanced training to the type of training he experienced
when learning to fly with me. He just chuckled and
offered the following comments:
“When learning to fly at Hartford, you always
made every flight fun. You used to preface each flight
with the statement, ‘Today’s flight will be safe, challenging, and fun.’ The flight training I’m now receiving is safe and challenging, but it isn’t any fun!
“You always took time to point out the awe, pleasure, and appreciation of flying an airplane. That is
never done in the program in which I’m enrolled.
Everything is strictly checklists and numbers. I know
that aspect is important in the advancement of my
ratings, but it would be nice, as well as beneficial, if
the instructors also showed appreciation for the fun
and privilege of flight.”
Another ex-student who stopped by also related a similar story. In her case she was working on her own to earn
advanced ratings. The majority of instruction she had
received to date was not positive in her opinion. Rather,
she felt as if the instructors were going through the motions, continually on the controls, but never ever expressing any true interest, let alone the pleasure of flight.
I truly enjoy hearing from past students. But I
found their shared comments somewhat disheartening. Flying is not a right but rather a privilege!
As such it should always be enjoyable, even if it is a
tough and challenging training flight. The sheer pleasure of flight should never be overlooked.
There is nothing more pleasing to the soul in my
mind than arriving at the airport just before sunrise on
a warm spring morning, opening the hangar door, and
pushing my favorite airplane out for a fun flight before
the day’s work begins. The meadowlarks are just beginning to sing, and the dew is still on the grass. Cool, fresh
damp air abounds, and the winds are nearly calm.
After a good preflight inspection, my faithful J-3 is
raring to go. It seems that the Cub has a smile on its
face, anxious to get going, much like a good hunting
dog. For those of you who have done some pheasant
hunting with a well-trained dog, you know what I
mean. They can’t wait to get going and perform for
their owner. The Cub is no different. It wants to get
moving, get in the air, and do what it does best—FLY.
After pulling the prop through four blades, the mag
JIM KOEPNICK
BRADY LANE
switch is moved to the ON position, and the throttle is
cracked just a fraction of an inch. One more pull on the
prop and the small Continental engine barks to life,
first sputtering a few seconds before all four cylinders
settle into a smooth putt, putt, putt.
After climbing into the seat and securing the
seat belt, the Cub starts to creep forward ever slow
slightly. The hunting dog instinct has taken over its
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13
JIM KOEPNICK
soul. A bit of power is added, and we’re headed for
the nearest turf runway.
Still covered in the morning dew, the trusty Cub is
leaving three small tracks in the wet grass. The Cub
door is open and droplets of moisture are kicked up
by the right main tire now forming water droplets on
the lower portion of the wing struts.
Upon reaching the end of the runway and turning
the Cub into the light breeze, I look back and chuckle
at the S-turn tracks the Cub has made in the dewcovered grass. If an unknowing police officer were
present and looked at the tracks, they may suggest I
take a quick breathalyzer test.
The simple pretakeoff checklist is completed, and
all systems are normal. After a quick 360-degree turn
to check for area traffic, the Cub practically taxis into
the takeoff position with little input from me. Just
as the sun peeks over the eastern horizon, power is
smoothly applied. . . one one-thousand, two onethousand, three one-thousand, and power is set to
the max. The Cub, anxious to fly, is already beginning
to roll down the runway before reaching full power.
In a matter of seconds the Cub breaks ground,
becoming airborne. It seems to literally jump into
the air, ready to demonstrate its capabilities. A quick
glance over my shoulder and I can see where the prop
blast blew the dew off the grass, followed by three,
then two tracks in the wet turf, and then nothing.
The remainder of the runway is left undisturbed,
awaiting the sun’s rays to evaporate the dew.
The wind entering the cabin via the open door has
a bit of a chill but not enough to require even a light
jacket. After leveling off, reducing the power setting,
and a quick one or two turns on the trim crank, the
Cub is ready to do what it does best—fly smoothly
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MARCH / APRIL 2014
low and slow. A slight turn to the northeast and the
Cub and I are ready for a short undisturbed pleasure
flight away from nearby farms and country homes.
Deer in the area are openly grazing, and flocks of
wild turkeys are busy picking at food. None seem
to be the least bit disturbed by the big yellow bird
overhead. The sweet smell of a freshly cut alfalfa field
permeates the Cub’s open cabin area. Nearby, undistracted, and almost flying in formation with the Cub,
a hawk is in a glide, searching for breakfast.
After a 30-minute flight in glass-smooth air, it is
time to point the Cub toward the airport. Entering
the traffic pattern, nary a soul is to be found. The Cub
and I still have the place entirely to ourselves. The
little yellow airplane makes a smooth three-point
landing and again makes tracks in the dewy grass.
Arriving in front of the hangar, I turn the mag
switch OFF, and the small Continental is again silent.
An easy push and the Cub is back in the hangar, but
the cylinder eyebrows and cowl opening seem to be
giving me a sly smile and I smile back. A quick rubdown is in order, removing bugs as well as oil droplets
from the breather relief tube. The Cub just keeps
smiling, appreciating the extra attention.
The Cub seems relaxed after a good workout, as am
I. What fun and what a privilege it was to share a sunrise flight in my favorite airplane, the little yellow Cub.
I’d like to challenge all flight instructors to pause
for a moment or two before every flight and reflect on
the pleasure to be experienced of the upcoming flight.
Learning comes more quickly and easily if the task to
be learned is FUN, as well as safe and challenging!
This is what flying is about, whether business
or pleasure. And this is what is most often missed
by so many.
Ask the AME
JOHN PATTERSON, M.D., AME
Oxygen in general aviation
W. C. asks, “Flying to the West Coast is on
my bucket list and will be flying at higher
than usual altitudes. What about supplemental oxygen?”
FAR 91.211 specifies that supplemental oxygen is
required between 12,500 feet MSL and 14,000 feet
MSL after 30 minutes of flying time for the pilot
and crew. At cabin pressures above 14,000 feet MSL,
the pilot and crew must use oxygen continuously,
and over 15,000 feet MSL each passenger must have
available supplemental oxygen. Part 135, or commercial flights, requires oxygen use after 30 minutes between 10,000 and 12,000 feet MSL and continuously
above 12,000 feet.
The air we breathe consists of approximately 78
percent nitrogen and 20 percent oxygen. Most airlines maintain cabin pressures equivalent to 8,000
feet or less. At 18,000 feet MSL there is only half of
the available oxygen at sea level.
The FAA has extensively studied the effects of hypoxia on pilots and pilot performance. The first sign
of hypoxia varies from person to person, and there
often is no warning. The primary response, however,
is impaired judgment. There may also be an increase
in respiratory rate, headache, lightheadedness or dizziness, tunnel vision, and in some cases euphoria. An
FAA-issued pamphlet on hypoxia states, “You may
feel great until it is too late.” Vision is very sensitive to lack of oxygen, especially at night; therefore,
supplemental oxygen is recommended (though not
required) above 6,000 feet MSL at night and 10,000
feet during the day.
Smoking is also an issue as carbon monoxide in
the cigarette smoke can displace oxygen from hemoglobin in the blood, forming carboxyhemoglobin. A
smoker may have as much as 7 percent carboxyhemoglobin, displacing oxygen to a saturation level of 93
percent. This is the same saturation level expected in
a nonsmoker at 8,000 feet. When using supplemental
oxygen it is a good idea to use a portable pulse oximeter that is worn on the finger and measures the
oxygen saturation in the blood. The goal is to try to
keep the saturation greater than 93 percent. These
are now relatively affordable and available. Emphysema, which can result from long-term smoking, also
impairs the lung from absorbing available oxygen in
the air. So those individuals who live well at sea level
may not fare so well at higher altitudes.
There are several ways to deliver supplemental oxygen: nasal cannula and oral nasal re-breather masks.
Oxygen for nonpressurized situations is generally delivered through an oxygen tank. The oxygen used for
aviation is called gaseous aviation-breathing oxygen.
Neither medical nor industrial grade oxygen is approved, as it does not meet FAA standards. This is controversial as most feel the only difference other than a
significant price differential is differing water content.
In summary, there are several situations where
supplemental oxygen may be beneficial for the vintage pilot, especially for the pilot going from sea level
to mountain or high-altitude situations, and while
flying at night.
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15
Good Old Days
P
A
R
SC K
O
O
B
From pages of what was . . .
Take a quick look through history by enjoying
images pulled from publications past.
AeroDigest, January 1938
16
MARCH / APRIL 2014
AeroDigest, December 1940
www.vintageaircraft.org
17
What would you have found . . .
Sportsman Pilot, April 1937
18
MARCH / APRIL 2014
Sportsman Pilot, November 1938
C
s
d
A
d
e
fi
i
s
s
a
l
C
ATTENTION AUTHORS: VAA will be hosting an Author’s Corner (book signings by the author) at the Vintage Red Barn during AirVenture 2014. Signings will be held on Monday, July 28
through Saturday, August 2. There are two slots available each
day on these dates. The morning slots will run from 10:0011:30 and the afternoon slots will run from 1:30-3:00.
Authors interested in participating in this event should contact committee chairman Susan Dusenbury at sr6sue@aol.com
before April 1, 2014.
www.vintageaircraft.org
19
Comparing
the
BRADY LANE
Classics
Setting the baseline . . . the Piper Cub
Budd Davisson
What
we have here is
t h e p re s e n t i n g
of a series of articles yours truly
penned for Sport Aviation a lifetime
ago. However the years haven’t
changed the facts: classics are still
classics, and they are still the entry
level for those wanting to get into
20
MARCH / APRIL 2014
vintage aircraft. You might call the
series “Comparing the Classics.”
Or “Classics Explained.” Actually,
you can call it anything you want.
We call it an educational reference
for those thinking about diving
into the wide variety of postwar
classics. Since more than 35,000
airplanes were produced in 1946
alone, we certainly have plenty to
choose from.
Not so many years ago, evaluating postwar classics would have
been unnecessary since every pilot
had flown most of them. That’s no
longer the case. How many of to-
day’s pilots do you suppose learned
in a Cub? Or had a Cessna 120
available to rent for $8.50 an hour?
The goal of this series, which will
eventually touch on each and every
airplane of the period, is to explain
those airplanes in commonsense
terms. We aren’t going to get into
“stick force per “g” or “spiral divergence” or any of the other 3-D
tech-talk we’ve come to associate
with well-done pilot evaluations.
We want people to understand
how these airplanes compare to
airplanes they either have already
flown or which are readily available
for comparison.
Citabria and C-152 Are the
Datum Points
Since so many classic aircraft
have the little wheel at the back,
we selected the Citabria as the
base-line airplane for those handling and performance factors having to do with ground handling.
The Citabria is the only tailwheel
airplane that is readily available at
flight schools, and even it is some-
JIM KOEPNICK
Door open is standard Cub
fun mode.
The Continental A-65 made a
good plane outstanding.
times hard to find.
We selected the Cessna 152 as
the datum for in-the-air comparisons, unless otherwise noted. The
comparisons will be in the vein of
“. . . during roll-out the airplane
tends to wander a little more than a
Citabria. . . ” or “. . . the ailerons are
a fair amount heavier than a C-152,
but the airplane responds to aileron input much more quickly. . . .”
We’ll put these comparisons
into a chart, which rates a number of performance and handling
factors against the datum aircraft. They will represent zero,
and the evaluation aircraft will
be rated plus (better, easier, or
quicker) or negative (worse,
slower, or harder) on a scale of 1
to 5, plus and negative.
The J-3 Cub
To kick this thing off, we thought
we’d evaluate what used to be the
airplane to which all others were
compared, the J-3 Cub.
There are bound to be a lot of
folks out there who are saying,
BRADY LANE
“What? Another Piper Cub pirep?
That’s so basic it’s like explaining
dirt. Everyone has flown a Cub!”
Only a few years ago that would
have been a valid statement but is
definitely not the case today. Between the total takeover of the
tricycle gear trainer and the exploding prices of Cubs, with very
few exceptions if you want to fly
a Cub, these days you have to buy
one. They have become so popular
because of three basic facts: They
are very nostalgic, they are lots of
fun, they are cute as a bug.
Mechanical Description
We’re going to ignore the history
of the airplane, because everyone
knows it, and get right down to the
nuts and bolts.
The fuselage of the Cub is welded
steel tubing with the landing gear
being a welded “V” with external
bungee springing. The wings are
attached right in the middle of
the cabin where the fuselage truss
comes together in an inverted “V.”
This means the entire top of the
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21
cabin and the windshield framing
is made of light-gauge, bent steel
“U” channels, which are often bent
and filled with extra screw holes.
As with all aircraft of its type,
the fuselage is prone to longeron
rust at the tail post from water
running to the low point. Remember, these airplanes weren’t always
hangar queens, so most have had,
or need, repairs in that area.
Another area of corrosion concern is the struts. The original
struts were unsealed and could
rust internally at the bottom end
where moisture collects. That problem, combined with the integrity
of the strut forks themselves, is
why there’s an inspection AD on
them. That’s also why so many people simply buy new, sealed struts
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MARCH / APRIL 2014
from Univair and be done with it.
The wings used what was to become the standard Piper rib construction in that they never went
to stamp metal ribs as did Taylorcraft or Luscombe. Piper ribs
are fragile trusses of “T” sections
formed by folding extremely thin
aluminum into the required “T”
cross section. They are strong, but
there are a lot of pieces involved
and, once broken, require patience
to patch in a clean manner.
Wing spars come in two varieties: wood and aluminum. Wood
spars are seen in every variation
from a single plank, to laminated,
to laminated with the individual
laminates made up of different
length pieces scarfed together.
Properly varnished and cared for,
all variations are fine but need inspection before buying. Beware
gray, flaking varnish or dark wood.
This is an indication moisture may
have found its way in.
The postwar aluminum spars are
modified “H” sections and need
only be inspected for corrosion
on the top side of the lower caps,
which can trap moisture. Also inspect for extraneous screw holes.
The original leading edges were
0.016 soft aluminum and won’t
take much abuse before assuming
the visual character of a plowed
field. When restoring them, most
opt for slightly heavier, harder
material, which makes a tremendous difference.
Tires and brakes are both strong
and weak points for the Cub. The
original expander-tube brakes use
an inflatable doughnut to force a
multitude of small blocks against
the drums. As brakes go, they
stink. That’s also their strongest
point because the airplane needs
almost no brake for normal operations, and the original brakes
can’t overpower it. The brakes’ biggest problem is that they are very
expensive to rebuild. The price of
expander tubes and blocks have
skyrocketed. So have the original 8.00 by 4 smooth tires. This is
one reason so many have gone to
Cleveland Wheels and Brakes and
6.00 by 6 tires. That amount of
brake, however, is far more than
the airplane actually needs. With
expander tube brakes, it’s hard to
brake it hard enough to pick up the
tail. With Clevelands it will go over
on its back in a heartbeat.
The usual engine is the Continental A-65, which is probably the
most important thing ever to happen to light aviation. This engine
made little airplanes practical. If
even remotely maintained, it will
start and run beautifully. Magneto
The Cub is more than just a pretty face
and has probably created more pilots
than any other single civilian airplane.
BRADY LANE
coils are just about the only reason
the engines won’t start easily. TBO
is a little vague, assumed at about
1,200-1,400 hours, but think how
long it takes to put 1,000 hours on
an airplane like a Cub.
The engines are still relatively
inexpensive to overhaul mainly because we haven’t yet reached the
bottom of the barrel, which was
originally filled to overflowing by
the military. The bottom of the
barrel, however, is beginning to
peek through.
The most common conversion
to the airplanes is the simple replacement of the A-65 by a C-85.
The additional horsepower makes
the airplane into an entirely different animal. It still has its basic
pasture goodness but with very
spir ited per for mance. Unfortunately, the 85s and C-90s are
getting increasingly harder to
overhaul. In fact, there is an STC
to put the more common O-200
crank into the C-90 case.
From a performance point of
view, a metal propeller is preferable because it lets the engine reach
peak rpm, but the wooden prop is
much prettier. Neither is cheap.
If it’s your first time in a Cub,
you’ll think you’re sitting at
an impossibly steep tail-down
angle. And you are.
Flight Characteristics
To fly the airplane, you have to
get in it, which in a Cub, isn’t as
easy as it sounds. You have to master the entry dance. Right foot in
the step, lean far forward over the
front seat, left foot past the stick,
bring right foot in, lower yourself
backward. There, that wasn’t so
hard, was it? The canvas sling-back
seat is much more comfortable
than the front seat. Over-averageheight folks will be folded like a
cheap pocketknife in the front seat.
If it’s your first time in a Cub,
you’ll think you’re sitting at an impossibly steep tail-down angle. And
you are. Few Classics have such a
tail-down stance, but the feeling
of blindness is largely one of perception. Because the airplane is so
narrow, only a small wedge is taken
out of the visual field. Unfortunately, it’s directly in front of you.
Contact! Brakes! Mags hot! A
good engine will catch on the first
blade. If it’s your first flight, close
the door, as it causes some perceptual difficulties because, with it
open, you can see so much better
out of the right than the left.
The first thing you’ll notice in maneuvering on the ramp is how hard
the stupid heel brakes are to get
at because they’re snuggled under
the seat. That’s good. That way you
won’t be tempted to use them on
landing where they aren’t needed.
S-turns are absolutely necessary
to see ahead, but they also give you
rudder practice. For some reason,
maybe it’s the light tail, the Cub is
quicker to respond to the rudder
than most light taildraggers, includwww.vintageaircraft.org
23
JIM KOEPNICK
There is no such thing as too much fun, but a Cub on floats is more fun with a C-85.
ing the Citabria. It’s only a minor
difference but noticeable. On takeoff and landing it makes it a little
easier than some to over-control.
By all means, do a full 360-degree
turn to clear the pattern before taxiing onto the runway. The pilot sits
so far back in the airplane that his
vision is sharply limited by the narrow tunnel of the fuselage and the
wings so a full turn is mandatory.
Lined up, suck the stick back
and move the throttle smoothly
forward. The noise turns into kind
of a rattling roar, and the airplane
will begin accelerating at about the
same rate as a heavily loaded Cessna
152. As soon as the power is full on,
ease the stick smoothly forward and
bring the tail up. If you’re of average
height, you won’t quite be able to
see over the nose, but the visibility
improves drastically anyway. The
good news is that there is so much
airplane between you and the outside world, that there is no doubt
when the nose tries to move.
The rudder becomes effective as
soon as the power is on, and you’ll
notice the tail moves each time your
foot does. The airplane is very stable
directionally. In fact, if there is no
crosswind, the tail won’t move sideways on its own. If it is, stop moving your feet for a second to see if
it isn’t you causing the movement.
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MARCH / APRIL 2014
Even on a calm day, the Cub will
fly off the ground long before you
can get in serious trouble. If there is
just a few knots of wind on the nose,
it’ll leave the ground almost as soon
as the tail is up. Solo it leaps off.
Dual it takes much longer. The airplane really reacts to extra weight.
A Cub telegraphs everything it
does, especially when it is getting
too slow to climb. Play with the
speed a few knots at a time, while
climbing, and you’ll find a point
where you can actually feel the drag
building, control effectiveness falling off, and the climb slowing as the
nose is brought up. Every Cub likes
a slightly different climb speed, usually because the airspeed indicators
are so far off, so just feel it out.
With one on board, a 65-hp Cub
in 75°F air may give as much as
400-500 fpm. Eighty-five hp adds
at least another 200 rpm, and a
C-90 makes you feel like you have
a flyweight tiger by the tail. The increased power is also very noticeable on takeoff acceleration.
As you level off and the speed
rockets ahead (read that with a lot
of sarcasm), be suspicious of any
speed above 80 mph indicated.
Seventy-five mph is a pretty standard Cub cross-country speed.
The controls in a Cub set the standard for most of the long-wing Pip-
ers to follow. There’s a fair amount of
system friction because everything
is cable- and pulley-operated. These
days, unless the airplane has been restored, the friction is almost always
aggravated by at least one pulley that
isn’t turning. The friction helps build
the perception that the aileron forces
are heavy, but they really aren’t.
The airplane responds very much in
proportion to the amount of stick
put into it and will actually roll into
a bank much faster than people expect, if they put their shoulder into
it. The pressures are much lighter
and the response faster than a Citabria, for instance. Compared to a
C-152, they are about even, although
it’s hard to compare pressures between a stick and a yoke.
Elevator pressures and rates are
matched to the ailerons, and you
won’t even notice the rudder because it mixes in so naturally. And
you will need rudder. The airplane
has noticeable adverse yaw, and
the pilot who doesn’t coordinate
will polish the bottom of his jeans
smooth. That’s one of the things
that make it such a great trainer
Stalls in a Cub can be what you
make them. Normally, they are
soft and floppy with very little
edge to them. Feeling goes out of
the controls in such a noticeable
fashion, as the stall approaches,
that your hand will tell you something is happening, if nothing else
does. If you have the door open,
the bottom half will begin to float
up as the stall is approached. If you
crowd the stick back hard or persist
in an exaggerated nose-high attitude, it will pay off, drop the nose,
and make you light in the seat.
Coming in to land, power back
opposite the end of the runway, you
risk a stretched muscle as you lean
forward trying to get the carburetor heat on the right side wall by
your foot. Crank, crank the elevator
trim and the airplane will hold an
approach speed of 60 mph by itself.
It can fly the approach much slower,
but there’s no reason to.
The Cub is dirtier than most of its
contemporaries so its glide slope is
a little steeper. It comes down even
faster than a Citabria or 152, but
at such a slow speed, the pattern is
still not super tight or rushed. Also,
there is no such thing as “too high”
in a Cub, as it is one of the best slipping airplanes ever invented.
A secret for getting consistent,
good landings: break the glide just
a little higher than you think you
need to. If you fly it into ground
effect expecting to burn off speed
and three-point it, you’ll almost
certainly touch the mains before
getting the tail down. For some
reason, Cubs appear to have less
ground effect than many airplanes.
The nice thing about a Cub landing is that it happens at a near walk.
Actual touchdown is around 35 mph,
so even if your technique is sloppy,
everything is happening so slowly
you have all day to set it straight. If
you don’t have much tailwheel time,
try not to think about it. Get the airplane on more or less straight, and it
will roll more or less straight. Start
fighting the rudders simply because
it’s a taildragger and you think you
should be doing something, and it
will do a slow motion dance. Best
advice in landing a Cub is to make
sure it is straight and not drifting
and leave it alone after touchdown.
There’s a reason for the saying “. . .
lands easy as a Cub. . . .”
A word about crosswinds and
gusts: The airplane is really lightly
wing loaded and rides thermals
and gusts like a cork. It will, however, handle much more crosswind
than most think it will, providing the pilot has a firm hand and
a good head. It can, however be
overwhelmed. Winds, which are
an annoyance in a 152, are a challenge in a Cub. In a pinch, diagonal the runway or turn into the
wind at the end of roll-out. Then
you have to worry about taxiing.
It’s entirely possible to land in a
wind, which is too high to taxi in.
In that case, keep the nose into
the wind and wait for help to walk
you in. More than one pilot has
had to coast past the hangars at
50 feet with the door open and
the throttle back while yelling for
help before landing.
One common J-3 variation seen,
by the way, is the Reed clipped-wing
conversion, which removes 40-1/2
inches from each wing root. To many,
this makes a good airplane even better. Besides making it capable of
loop, roll, spin, type of aerobatics,
with 85 hp, it will cruise at nearly 90
mph, and its entire handling package tightens up, becoming quicker
and crisper. It will also handle much
more wind with the short wings.
Market forces almost always
place a price premium on products
that have proven themselves both
in aesthetics and use. Nowhere is
this more obvious than in the J-3
Cub, as it is easily the most expensive airplane in its category. This
is a distinction many believe to be
well deserved.
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25
Dave and Jeanne Allen’s
Waco YKC
Stately splendor from the golden age
PHIL HIGH
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MARCH / APRIL 2014
Sparky Barnes Sargent
PHIL HIGH
S
tepping carefully onto
the wing and entering the
cabin, the plush ambiance of the golden age of
aviation enveloped me. Soft gray
wool upholstery felt heavenly beneath my fingertips, and nickelplated handles and knobs sparkled
like sterling silver as the sunlight
streamed into the spacious cabin.
Ensconced in the comfortable seat
beside pilot/owner Dave Allen,
I quietly absorbed my surroundings and noted the exquisite attention to detail that he and his wife,
Jeanne, had invested in this Waco
YKC. As Dave engaged the starter
and the Jacobs rumbled to life, I
was transported to the world of
1934 and the elegant style of executive travel that state officials enjoyed in this very airplane.
Owners
Originally powered by a 225hp, seven-cylinder Jacobs L-4, this
Cabin Waco was (and still is) splendidly singular in appearance. Finished in an eye-catching teal color
highlighted with cream trim and
gold pinstriping, the fuselage displays the hand-painted lettering
“Ohio National Guard” and Ohio’s
colorful Great Seal. The YKC’s first
logbook entry was Paul Thorn-
Jeanne and Dave Allen
bury’s 1.5-hour test flight on November 23, 1934—the day before
the Waco Aircraft Company of Troy,
Ohio, sold NS14137 (s/n 4223) to
the state of Ohio’s Bureau of Aeronautics. Note that the Roman letter
“S” is no longer used in registration
numbers, but historically speaking,
the “S” denoted a state or federal
government-owned aircraft “used
solely for governmental purposes
and belonging to States, Territories, possessions, or political subdivisions thereof,” according to The
Amateur Air Pilots Register 1934. The
application for identification mark
was signed by Capt. Fred L. Smith.
He, along with C.D. Barnhill, both
logged time flying the ship for the
National Guard during the next five
years; their flights were primarily
to locations within Ohio and neighboring states.
In October 1939, an application
for commercial registration (changing the letter “S” to “C”) was made
by Adjutant Gen. Gilson D. Light,
the state director of Selective Service, and the ship was then sold to
Aero-Ways Incorporated. This grand
biplane last flew in the late 1940s
and was eventually purchased in
1971 by Frank J. Obermiyer of
Brookfield Aviation in Trumbull,
Ohio. Apparently his intentions to
restore it never came to fruition; instead, the Waco ended up in his estate sale some 30 years later.
New Stewards
In 2003, Dave and Jeanne Allen of Elbert, Colorado, heard that
there was a virtually complete
Cabin Waco YKC project near Cincinnati—with its original upholstery, headliner, side panels, rear
seat, and trim. Enticed by opportunity (and a previous flight in Alan
Buckner’s 1931 Waco QDC), Dave
and Jeanne became willing and capable stewards of the YKC that December. They were no strangers to
biplane projects, having completed
an open-cockpit antique Straightwing Waco and an experimental
Taperwing replica—and the allure of a comfortable enclosed
cabin had long attracted Jeanne.
But Dave had previously resisted
taking on a Cabin Waco due to the
myriad parts involved and the tedious efforts it would require.
Nonetheless, they became committed to restoring the YKC to its
original splendor—and they did
so with untiring, persistent devotion and utmost attention to detail. Their wonderful Waco made its
formal debut at AirVenture 2013,
where it received the Antique
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27
COURTESY DAVE AND JEANNE ALLEN
The original Waco YKC project in 2003, as it was when
Dave and Jeanne became its new stewards.
Dave applies Poly—Brush while Milli the feline
supervises.
Jeanne examines the fit of the wing root fairings.
Waco Hand Hole Assemblies—first step.
Trial assembly of fuselage, empennage, cowling, and
gear.
Note the myriad identification tags for routing and
installation purposes.
Grand Champion—Gold Lindy
award. It was also voted as the Antique Airplane Association and the
Airpower Museum’s 2013 Antique
Grand Champion.
Dave, an ex-military pilot who
holds an ATP with flight instructor ratings, smiles as he declares,
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MARCH / APRIL 2014
“Aviation is my passion; it’s all I’ve
ever wanted to do. My mom has
a picture of me when I was 3; I’m
holding a couple of boards nailed
together, and she said I called it
an A-plane. I became the little boy
waving at crop dusters, and was
flagging for them by age 11. I am
living my dream.”
Jeanne, whose interest in aviation began before she met Dave,
holds a glider pilot certificate, and
crewed for Dave when he was soaring. He logged more than 2,000 soaring hours and established several
records that still stand. Jeanne and
PHIL HIGH
Dave continue to share their mutual
enthusiasm for aviation—and that’s
part of the secret to this husbandand-wife team’s restoration success.
Teamwork
They worked on their Waco YKC
project virtually every day for a decade—sometimes together, and
sometimes taking on separate
tasks. They also carefully documented each aspect of the project
by taking notes, making sketches,
and shooting video and still photos—all of which came in handy as
their work progressed.
Sharing her insight about working as a team, Jeanne says, “There’s
going to be one person who’s the
‘boss’ and the other one is the ‘employee.’ You just have to say, ‘If
we’re going to accomplish this project, then somebody is calling the
shots.’ So I did things like running
errands, researching the airplane’s
history, and keeping track of all the
book work. That allowed him to
think through the process of what
needed to come next, so we could
keep moving on the project.”
Jeanne also tackled the “dirty
work.” She donned protective garb
and stripped and cleaned metal
components, then chemically
prepped them for Dave to shoot
primer on them. She was also able
to salvage many of the wood stringers by patiently using sandpaper,
steel wool, and Formby’s Conditioning Furniture Refinisher.
Wings, Fuselage, and Gear
Early on, Dave contracted with
John and Scott Shue (Aircraft by
Shue) in Pennsylvania to build the
wing frames; having built Waco
wings previously, Dave figured that
he’d save nearly two years’ time
that way. While the Shue fatherand-son team worked on the wings,
Dave worked on fuselage repairs
and making new wood formers. He
also refurbished and installed the
flare tube cover and panel in the fuselage. In the meantime, a new set
of ailerons were built by (the late)
Tom Flock, who was a well-known
Waco restorer.
After the wing frames were completed by the Shues, Dave and
Jeanne made the cross-country trek
to haul the wings home to Colorado.
Dave made and installed the leading edges and the wingtips that he
made from laminated 0.8-mm Finnish plywood. He also installed the
overhauled original landing lights
and two new 35-gallon fuel tanks
that were fabricated by John Murray. (This gives the YKC 65 gallons
of usable fuel; originally the tanks
were 25 gallons each.) Dave says
he decided to make and install aluminum skins over the wing tanks,
after heeding Forrest Lovley’s admonition that the fuel tanks would
leak in half the time if they were installed with fabric.
Dave also shortened the aft portion of the side stringers in order to
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29
Here you can see the louvers on the belly panel.
SPARKY BARNES SARGENT PHOTOS
Dave and Jeanne’s attention to detail is easily visible
inside the luxurious cabin.
Close-up view of the original 8” tail wheel.
allow good access to the tailwheel assembly, and extended the baggage
compartment and made a triangular
external baggage door for it. Prior to
fabric installation, Jeanne brushed
two coats of varnish on the wood
wings, and Dave followed up with
spray coats of epoxy varnish.
With a mind toward safety and
reliability, new gear struts were
machined by Jon Nace, who also
completed the Cleveland wheel
and brake conversion. The original Johnson bar was retained but
converted to operate only the parking brake. Dave opted to keep the
small, original 8-inch tail wheel,
which has one solid wheel cover
and one split cover to accommodate the valve stem.
Throughout the restoration,
Dave and Jeanne worked with a
friend who was also restoring the
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MARCH / APRIL 2014
Dave made these original-style baffles for the Jacobs.
same make and model. “Roger
James is a partner in a car restoration business, D&D Classic in
Ohio, and we collaborated quite a
bit,” says Dave, adding, “He and his
wife, Jetta, were most accommodating. We even took the fuselage
back to Ohio, so he could reference
the original woodwork.”
Using original components as
patterns, D&D Classic replicated
the wheelpants, dishpan, and
cowl. “The fin fairing was original
and still in good enough shape to
use after I had weeks of training
in D&D’s body shop,” shares Dave,
“and there were many other original parts, including the wing root
fairings, strut cuffs, and the belly
doors with the big louvers. I did
all the flat sheet metalwork, and
Roger figured out from old photographs that the fairings for the
original-style wheelpants were a
flat wrap, so I made those as well.”
Fabric and Finish
When it came time for fabric,
Jeanne and Dave worked together,
from installing the Poly-Fiber fabric and tautening it, to rib stitching
and applying finishing tapes. For
the inspection access holes, they
used the nifty old-style Waco Hand
Hole Assemblies and cover plates.
Period advertising described the
assemblies as being “used on all
Waco air planes manufactured
since 1934 . . . this provides the
aircraft owner with an inspection
opening that is flush with the original cover, and which does not offer
drag of any kind.” The assemblies
consist of two contoured rings that
are crimped together, neatly sandwiching the fabric.
Note the turnbuckles which are used to fasten the
cowling together.
Dave and Jeanne carefully replicated the original top coat and
trim colors—and even the dimensions and placement of the trim
design, by studying an old photo
1934 Waco YKC–Specifications
Length
25 feet 4 inches
Height
8 feet 6 inches
Upper wingspan
33 feet 3 inches
Lower wingspan
28 feet 3 inches
Chord
57 inches
Airfoil
Clark Y
Weight empty
1,800 pounds
Useful load
1,050 pounds
Payload with 50 gallons fuel 550 pounds
Gross weight
2,850 pounds
Max speed
149 mph
Cruise
130 mph
Landing
50 mph
Climb at sea level
850 fpm
Ceiling
15,500 feet
Gas capacity
50 gallons
Oil capacity
4 gallons
480 miles (at 14 gph)
Cruising range
Price
$6,450
Derived from Juptner’s U.S. Civil Aircraft, Vol. 6
of the YKC and the original fuselage sheet metal and covering.
Dave did all the painting with an
HVLP system, and used Ranthane
for the top coat, which provided
the durability of urethane with
the satin luster of dope. Then they
tested their personal tenacity by
sanding and hand-rubbing the entire airplane. “If there were any or-
SPARKY BARNES SARGENT PHOTOS
This was the original seatbelt with
the “Phoenix bird” design.
The handsome window trim and
wool upholstery.
The nickel plated handles and
fixtures, and the neatly-stitched
headliner.
The newly woven seatbelts were
patterned after the original ones
that came with the project.
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31
PHIL HIGH
MIKE STEINEKE
ange peel or dry areas, we had to
sand with 1000 wet or dry grit, and
sometimes even 800 grit,” recalls
Dave, adding, “then we’d work our
way to 2500 grit before we used
the rubbing compound.”
Upon examining an original
rudder, they could see that the
registration number had simply
been masked and brushed. While
looking for trim paint that could
easily be brushed on, they discovered Sign Painters’ 1 Shot enamel.
“We were out at Riverside, California, and met Poly-Fiber specialist
Hualdo Mendoza and his brother,
and they were a huge help with the
finish. We used 1 Shot to brush on
all the cream trim, and then we
found a wonderful guy, Rick Losh,
to do the gold pinstriping and also
the Great Seal and hand-lettering.
I provided him with our rendition
of the seal, as best we could tell
from our research.” (The seal is a
rather intricate design, and Dave
and Jeanne invoked a bit of artistic
license with it—in nearly micro34
MARCH / APRIL 2014
scopic detail. But only those with
an eye to the sky and fields may
discern their creativity.)
Throughout the project, another
member of their family was constantly in the shop, supervising
Dave and Jeanne’s progress. One
day, feline Milli just couldn’t resist
lending her helping (or hindering)
paws with the trim. “I had the fuselage on its side with a ladder beside
it, and when I went to help a neighbor do something, Milli jumped up
on the ladder and then onto the fuselage,” recalls Dave with a wry grin,
“and we had cream paw prints down
the entire length of the fuselage!”
Interior
Though worn and faded, the original interior provided many clues
and patterns. The side wall panels
revealed a “feathered wings” stitched
pattern, and the seat belts were intact with their original latches and
“Phoenix bird” design woven into
the strap. But the precise weave and
color of the original wool fabric just
wasn’t available. “So we went absolutely crazy,” says Dave with a smile,
“and through automotive restoration channels, we located a mill in
Philadelphia to weave the fabric.”
The new interior was installed by
Joe Smith of D&D Classic of Ohio.
“He’s the best upholstery man in
the business,” shares Dave, “and he
was able to replicate the piping and
wind lace exactly.”
The YKC offers pilot and passengers excellent in-flight visibility, via
its five-panel windscreen and side
and aft windows. A contoured original panel showcases instruments
that were overhauled by Keystone
and sports a lustrous faux wood
finish. “We used a Grain-IT Technologies kit; they supply the base
coat and a gel-type roller, which you
roll on an ‘ink pad’ and then onto a
wood grain plate,” describes Dave,
adding, “after you transfer the wood
grain onto the metal panel and let it
cure, you clear coat it. It’s not quite
as easy as it sounds, but we enjoyed
learning a new skill.”
Perhaps the smallest detail
of which Dave is proudest is the
tiny colorful decal on the ashtray, which resembles perhaps
an art deco-style flower or even
a stylized propeller. “That is the
correct decal,” he smiles, elaborating, “we were searching for a
way to replicate it for a long time,
and then fellow Waco enthusiast
and model builder Tim Sherwood
made the decal, and we put it on
just before AirVenture.”
Fuel-Injected Jacobs
The heart of this splendid biplane is its powerplant. Instead
of installing the original manually greased Jacobs L-4, Dave and
Jeanne decided to have Steve Curry
of Radial Engines Ltd. in Oklahoma build a 275-hp fuel-injected
Jacobs R-755B2M engine, which
is the modern updated version of
the L-4. Steve, who has been in the
business for years, says, “This is the
first Cabin Waco that has ever had
a fuel-injected Jacobs. Externally,
the engine looks very original; it
was the first time that I had ever
seen those [greaser style] baffles
installed on an engine. They were
very unusual, and they cool very
well. Dave did not need to install
an oil cooler, which is a little bit
unusual, as tightly as it’s cowled.”
While the fuel-injected Jacobs is
STC’d by Radial Engines, there isn’t
an airframe STC for the Waco YKC.
“So we got DER approval to install
the airframe side, just by similarity
to other Waco models that did have
the STC. We test run the engine
here, starting at idle and getting up
to full power in 5.5 hours—but you
really can’t run the GAMI lean test
properly unless you’re flying,” Steve
explains, “so during each flight,
Dave and Jeanne would do GAMI
lean testing. They’ve got a JPI Engine Data Monitor 700-7C, so they’d
just plug a flash drive into it, and it
downloaded all the data from the
flights. They e-mailed that to us,
and we’d analyze the data, which
included CHT, EGT, time, rpm,
manifold pressure, oil pressure, oil
temperature, and outside temperature. Then we would send them
some nozzles—it usually takes
three or four attempts to get those
dialed in just perfectly. A typical Jacobs engine will burn about 14 or 15
gph. On cool days, Dave can lean his
back without loss of power to about
9.5 gph, which provides fuel savings
and range increase as well.”
Dave spent a year fabricating
the original style baffling, and he
also devoted quite a bit of time to
replicating an original small air
box (as opposed to using the commonly available but larger Cessna
T-50 air box). To keep the cabin at a
comfortable temperature, he made
large air vents for ventilation, and
successfully blocked excessive heat
from the engine room by installing
an original-style aluminum firewall
on the cabin side, and a stainless
steel firewall on the engine side.
This provided ample room for insulation between the two, and a
stainless steel plenum at the bottom of the firewall directs heated
air down and out through the aftfacing louvers in the belly panel.
Dave says he is “absolutely
happy” with the cabin’s comfort
and the engine’s performance. “We
think we’re going to do an honest
120 mph cruise,” he adds. “We’re
at a high density altitude in Colorado—it’s routinely 10,000 feet,
and the first flight demonstrated
that we needed to switch props
and install the Curtis-Reed, which
made a tremendous difference.”
If We Can Do This. . .
T ho u g h t he re we re my r i ad
hurdles and obstacles that arose
throughout the decade-long restoration, Dave reflects that “the most
challenging aspect was the puzzle
of assembling the biplane. It’s not a
complex airplane, but even though
we had the basic airframe, we still
had to learn how everything was
supposed to come together. For example, both the elevator and the
rudder cables cross, and I had to
figure out how to route them.”
But overall, he declares adamantly, “If we can do this, anyone can. Simply put: If you want
a Waco, you can build a Waco. It
takes no special skill or talent or
equipment. It really doesn’t; that’s
the beautiful thing about Wacos—
they have very few castings or forgings. But it does take tenacity and
the ability to establish priorities.
You have to have desire and persistence—but don’t try to get your
arms around the whole thing at
once. Just enjoy and learn whatever process you’re doing at the
time. Then move on to the next
one. Speaking of the next one—we
may be crazy, but we’ve got a Waco
RNF project after this.”
Of course, it always helps to have
plenty of support and resources
during a project of this magnitude. “Our IA, Jamie Treat, was
most helpful throughout the restoration. In our opinion, having a
good relationship with your IA is
critical. So many people have helped
us,” shares Dave, “but I give Jeanne
all the credit, because none of this
would have happened without her.”
Reflecting on their project and
flying in general, Jeanne shares with
a gracious smile, “The Waco people
are so great for helping and encouraging us, and I’m sure other type
clubs are the same way. And we’ve
had so many adventures through
our flying. That’s really what flying
does; it gives you another dimension of life.” Well said, Jeanne.
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35
Meyers 200B
John Lyon’s classic speed demon
Budd Davisson
Meyers 200B, N489C, was born
in Tecumseh, Michigan, in a tiny
building (10,000 square feet)
that seemed more like Geppetto’s
workshop, alive with hand-done
craftsmanship, than an aircraft
factory. It was the fourth production bird to be built, and in fact,
its original birth certificate reads
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MARCH / APRIL 2014
Meyers 200A even though it’s now
a 200B. However, what appears to
be a glitch in its birth certificate
does not mean that it’s an orphan
child. Rather, it means that it’s a
very lucky child of aviation: Sometime in the 1960s, the owner flew
the airplane with the propeller
bolts only finger tight. It flew for
almost three hours before winding
up on its belly in a field. When returned to those who created it for
rebuild, it was upgraded to 200B
standards, all of which worked
very much to the benefit of John
Lyon in Los Angeles, the present owner, who many years later
sorted out the paperwork and got
PHIL HIGH
it redesignated as 200B. A Continental IO-520A of 285 hp was
installed in place of the original
260-hp IO-470 during the rebuild.
“When I found the airplane at
Montgomery Field in San Diego in
1976, it was covered with sheets
and was really in excellent condition,” he remembers. “It had been
sitting for a while but needed very
little work. That would all come
much later, after I’d put quite a bit
of time on it. In fact, when I bought
it, it had 2,100 hours on it. Now it
has over 4,500 hours. So, it hasn’t
been a hangar queen.”
Born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, John says his dad, a WWII
Navy vet, was always starting new
businesses, and he moved the family to Ruidoso, New Mexico, to start
a café because “. . . it had 26 bars but
only one restaurant.” Eventually,
they wound up in Los Alamos, New
Mexico, where his dad provided security and other services to the AEC
during A-bomb tests.
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37
Where possible everything on the
airplane was faired for speed.
PHIL HIGH PHOTOS
As originally built in
Tecumseh, before being
sold to North AmericanRockwell, the Meyers
200 series was mostly
a hand built airplane,
with limited production
tooling, which added to
the man hours required
to build it.
“When we lived in Tulsa, my
granddad would take me to the airport, and we’d sit on the roof terrace of the cafeteria of the Spartan
School of Aviation and watch the
airliners,” John says. “I was collecting baggage tags at the time. Even
then I knew I wanted to fly, but
most of the other towns we moved
to didn’t have airports. So, I didn’t
get back to aviation until much
later, when I’d graduated Har-
vard Law School and was in-house
counsel for a company in New York
City. A friend was taking lessons
at the now-gone Ramapo Valley
Airport that was a little west and
north of the city. One day, he asked
me if I wanted to come along. I was
just standing around just watching
when a guy asked me if I wanted to
get a close look at an airplane. Before I knew it, we were racing down
the runway, and we were barely in
the air before I was totally hooked!
I started taking lessons right then
and there.
“I was flying the Meyers out of
Van Nuys, when in 1988, I decided
it was time for a complete restoration. It was still flying fine, but it
was time to look inside of it. I hired
mostly freelance mechanics, and
we took everything off the airplane
that didn’t take a cutting torch to
remove. I was pleasantly surprised
to find no corrosion at all. In fact,
the Meyers guys had shot most of
the rivets wet, so they were building it for the long run with safety
being first and speed second.
“Every piece of glass had to go,
The main and nose gears both use
the same size tires making the 200
a little happier on grass fields.
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MARCH / APRIL 2014
During the rebuilt process, early in John’s long
ownership of the airplane, he upgraded the
panel to “…the very latest and greatest 1990
had to offer.”
PHIL HIGH PHOTOS
Lyon now has a home that allows him
instant access to Flabob.
The wrap-around windows give fighter-like visibility to the rear.
and the doors needed a lot of work to make them
fit better. The main doorframe is fiberglass, and every piece of metal around it is a compound curve.
So, getting the door to fit perfectly takes a lot of
work. Meyers’ doors were originally hand formed,
so every one is slightly different. We spent a lot of
time getting all of that set right.
“There are four fuel tanks in the center section
and outer wings that are suspended in straps. They
are thin and prone to cracking, so every one of
those had to be gone through. The same thing was
true of the landing gear. It pivots in Oilite bushings, so every 600 or 700 landings the entire gear
has to be re-bushed.
“The elevator trim is a vernier knob on the panel,
so a Bowden cable runs all the way to the tail where
it drives a screw jack. That has to be watched carefully and lubed at least every five years. That goes
for a lot of really early parts, which at this stage of
the game are over half a century old. You have to
maintain them. This includes things like the hy-
John Lyon and the Flabob Connection
As a businessman and lawyer, John moved to Los Angeles,
where his circle of flying friends expanded to include, among
others, Tom Wathen.
“I checked Tom out in his newly acquired Meyers 200,
when both of our Meyers were based at Van Nuys,” says John.
“In fact, Tom generously let me fly his 200 during the six years
it took me to rebuild my own airplane.
“Tom and I later worked on setting up his foundation, the
Tom Wathen Center, dedicated to providing education through
aviation. In 2000 I was helping Tom look for a place where
the Tom Wathen Center could do its work. One candidate was
Flabob Airport, and I heard some rumors which prompted
me to call Tom in France, where he was on his honeymoon.
Tom asked me to go find out what was going on and to take
his stepson Doug who was a real estate expert. Doug and I
went to Flabob, where we learned that the owners were going to sign sale papers the next morning to sell the airport to
developers who would scrape it and build houses. We said
that Tom would match the offer and keep it as an airport,
and Doug wrote a deposit check. He called Tom at one in the
morning (French time) and said, ‘Good news! You now own
an airport.’ He also asked Tom to transfer some funds the next
morning to cover the rubber deposit check he had written.
“Like so many others, I’ve always considered Flabob to
be the pilot’s form of paradise. In fact, I now have a second home adjoining the Flabob Airport, with a hangar in the
backyard, where the Meyers lives most of the time. It’s every
boy’s dream. Not the one with Gina Lollobrigida in it, the
other one with the airplane in the backyard.”
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39
Meyers 200: A History
Al Meyers is one of those aviation pioneers who came
out of the 1930s that blazed a trail well into the 1950s and
beyond. Unfortunately, not many folks know his name
today, which is a shame. The three aircraft designs that
bear his name are near-cult objects to those who know
or own them, because their quality, performance, and
reputations put them in a class of their own.
It’s a curious fact that exactly when America was in
a well-developed economic tailspin, aviation spawned
one entrepreneur after another. It’s often overlooked
that names such as Cessna, Beech, Stearman, Mooney,
and many others were actually the names of men who
left giant aviation concerns to establish aircraft companies of their own, even though the Depression was in
full swing. Al Meyers was one of those. After stints with
Chance Vought, Glenn Martin, and Stinson Aircraft (all
of which also carry the names of their entrepreneurial
founders), he set up his own company in Michigan. His
specialty was designing aircraft that had a number of
unique features, with safety, performance, and reliability
being the keynotes throughout.
The first of those aircraft was the OTW biplane of 1939,
which supposedly had the honor of being the only Civil
Pilot Training aircraft never to kill a student. It is also likely
to be the only all-aluminum structure biplane (fabric
wings) ever certified.
The war behind him, Meyers’ creative business streak
saw him applying what he knew about aluminum fabrication to building boats. Where the anticipated boom in
light aircraft had led many aviation companies off on a
wild goose chase, which resulted in scores of bankruptcies, Meyers’ boat business flourished. He had tapped into
a goal many returning veterans had on their minds: They
didn’t want to go flying; they wanted to go fishing.
Meyers’ boating success gave him the financial latitude to get back into designing what he knew and loved
best—airplanes. But rather than evolving something out
of the OTW, he looked around at the sleek designs other
40
MARCH / APRIL 2014
companies were
producing and
decided to do
them one better. The first of
those designs
f l e w i n 1 9 4 7,
the two-place
125/145 was of
limited produc tion (only
22 were built),
but they laid
the groundwork for his
fire-breathing
200 of 1958. Here was an airplane that promised (and
delivered) a cruise speed of 200-plus mph, which the
competition couldn’t touch. In fact, for the next decade,
as the design went through a variety of owners, it became
the darling of the racing set and established a number
of records, culminating with Don Washburn clocking 239
mph over a 3-kilometer course in a bone-stock 200D, the
final production version of the airplane. At the time, it
was the fastest normally aspirated, reciprocating aircraft
in certified production. Even today there are few that can
beat it, and most of those are turbocharged.
A purebred, the Meyers had a serious Achilles heel,
nonetheless: It was complicated (read that as “expensive”) to build. The basic structure that made it so strong
and has yet to see an AD against it didn’t lend itself to
mass production. The cabin and center section from main
The chronology of the production breed reads as
follows. Note that sources of production numbers vary.
Meyers Production
200 – single prototype with 230-hp O-470
200A – 8 to 11 built, 260-hp Continental IO-470
200B – 13 to 17 built, slight structural improvements, higher-limit speeds
200C – 7 to 9 built, raised roofline and larger windshield
200D – 4 to 8 built, 285-hp Continental IO-520A,
flush-riveted wings
Aero Commander production
200 – 77 to 83 built (approximately), same as 200D
gear to main gear was 4130 tubing
with all the external sheet metal attached to it; so the parts count was
high, and it required more handwork
than a straight monocoque structure
would have needed.
Al Meyers had a dedicated group
of craftsmen who literally handbuilt each airplane. They had only
temporary, one-piece-at-a-time
jigs and tooling, which worked fine
for them because they were building to order. When someone wrote
a check, they built an airplane. The
result of that approach was that every one of the approximately 30 to
40 planes to come out of his little
plant was literally custom built with
no two exactly the same. However,
when North American–Rockwell’s
Aero Commander division bought it in
1965, intending to cut costs through
mass production, it found it had bit
off more than it could chew. Highproduction tooling/jigs didn’t exist,
and in the process of building the 77
to 83 aircraft to come off its line, a lot
of money was spent trying to tool up
to the usual Aero Commander standards. Unfortunately, it just couldn’t
get the labor costs down, so it shut
the production line down in 1967.
The exact number of Meyers 200s
produced is a little fuzzy, but 115 to
130 is close. The number still surviving is also hidden in the haze of history, but most assume something like
100 of the total production still exist,
which has to be one of the highest
survivor-to-production ratios of any
aircraft produced. This is a testimony
to the airplane’s tanklike construction and flight characteristics. It’s
one of the few production airplanes
in history never to have a single airworthiness directive on its structure.
It also formed the basis for the 400hp Intercepter 400, the first certified,
pressurized turboprop single-engine
aircraft, which sadly never went into
full production.
PHIL HIGH
draulic selector valve, landing gear
scissors, and anything that moves
or rotates.”
Like so many airplanes of the
time, there was a rotating beacon
mounted on the vertical fin that
“. . . was really big! I mean big! So,
we got a 337 to put that smaller
one on. At the same time, we 337’d
a new set of wingtips for it.”
One of the biggest advantages to
John’s airplane having spent some
time lying on its belly in a cornfield
and going back to Meyers to be repaired and upgraded was that its
new “B” model status meant it was
eligible for installation of an autopilot, so John added a Century III
coupled to the new KLN 89B GPS.
The real strong suit of the Meyers is, and always has been, the
fact that it’s one of the fastest—if
not the fastest—normally aspirated single-engine aircraft (civil-
ian) ever built. Certainly, when it
was produced, it was the fastest.
At cruise, they claim well over 200
mph (174 knots), but John says, “I
generally get about 167 knots (192
mph) at 65 percent and 14.5 gph.
It’ll go a lot faster, but I see no reason to burn that much gas.”
With that kind of speed, when
he was rebuilding it, he concentrated on making sure it was not
only comfortable but equipped for
the A-to-B mission for which the
airplane was designed.
“ We c o m p l e t e l y r e d i d t h e
panel,” he says, “but didn’t get
crazy with the layout. It’s pretty
much what 200s had in the early
’60s, because the 1958 layout was
a little scattered. So, now I’m flying with the very latest and greatest 1990 had to offer. And it all
works perfectly! No reason to fix
what doesn’t need fixing.”
www.vintageaircraft.org
41
The fuselage and center section is steel tubing and, as the rudder pedals attest, everything about the
Meyers is robust.
Red, Dark Red, and Las
Vegas Gold. For this reason, I call the airplane
The Red Menace.”
When it comes to flying, John says the ailerons feel a little heavy
but that the response is
faster than most aircraft
of the type. The stability
is such that the autopilot
is almost never turned
on because the airplane
will go straight ahead almost indefinitely.
On takeoff, he says,
PHIL HIGH PHOTOS
“It definitely needs some
It only takes a casual glance at right rudder even before leaving the
the cockpit to see that the uphol- ground. With a span of only 30 feet
stery, although having seen use 6 inches, the wing is shorter than
since the rebuild, still looks like some in the category, which is where
new. It’s during this examination some of the speed comes from, but
that the overall visibility from it gets off fine. However, it wants
inside of the airplane is noticed: some speed before it’ll begin really
It has complete 360-degree vis- climbing. Still, even though it’s reibility, almost as if it has a bubble ally fast, the stalls are incredibly becanopy but without the sun glar- nign. It doesn’t have a mean bone
ing down on you.
in its body. Every Meyers 200 had
“When we painted the airplane, hand-tuned, individually adjusted
we used a late Meyers’ scheme but stall strips. When stalled from any
picked cabin Waco colors,” John attitude, so long as the ball is censays. “It is all Fitch paint: Sunproof tered, it will roll wings-level.”
42
MARCH / APRIL 2014
Since it is such a high-performance airplane, it’s easy to assume that the landings are critical
and you’ll be coming down final at
fighter speeds. Not so, according
to John.
“I fly final at 80 knots with a
little power,” he says. “The landing
gear is really dirty and can be used
as speed brakes because it can be
lowered as high as 145 knots. It’s
hard to believe how easy it is to
slow the airplane down for the approach, considering how fast it is.
And it’s so stable on approach, you
feel as if you’re in an airliner.
“I like to see 70 knots over the
fence, and it squats onto the mains
really easily. Also the fact that the
nose tire is the same size as the
mains means it’s happier than
some high-performance tri-gears
on unimproved surfaces.”
The Meyers 200 is one of those
machines, not unlike “D” Jaguars
or other exotics, that doesn’t appeal to everyone. But those who
feel the mechanical arrow through
their hearts could have nothing
else. So, don’t look for a “for sale”
sign on John Lyon’s Meyers 200B
anytime soon.
The
Other Member
of
Our Family
Part 1, Aeronca 7AC Champ NC1585E
Richard “Dick” Pedersen
I
was just a 9-year-old kid
in 1959, helping my dad,
Harry Pedersen, rebuild
Bonanzas at the Rusk
County Airport in Tony,
Wisconsin. He had started
a Bonanza rebuilding business in
1957 at this small airport that had
two sod runways, a gas pump, and
a very small building that served as
the office for the airport manager,
Elmer Wisherd.
My dad had a beautiful blue and
white 1949 A-35 Bonanza that he
had rebuilt using parts from 11 different wrecked Bonanzas while he
44
MARCH / APRIL 2014
photos courtesy author
was still living in California and
decided to sell it in late 1959 as he
was rebuilding another Bonanza
for himself at the time. In December of 1959 a farmer from the
Withee, Wisconsin, area drove up
to Tony with his wife to look at the
Bonanza. He had already looked
at other planes, but his wife didn’t
like any of them. After he looked
over the Bonanza he brought his
wife into the cold unheated hangar
to see the Bonanza, and she took
one look at it and told her husband
that this was the plane he could
buy as she liked the looks of it and
the paint colors.
T he buyer and my dad then
began negotiating on the deal.
My dad was a horse trader, so to
speak, and this fellow had a 1946
Champ that he wanted to trade as
a down payment on the Bonanza.
My dad agreed to trade as he was
always trading Luscombes, Cessna
120/140s, Champs, and Chiefs
any time he could make a little
money on the deal. Being only 9
years old, I couldn’t understand
why my dad was so excited about
trading off a beautiful Bonanza
for a lowly old Champ.
The Champ
NC1585E was a 1946 7AC in
original condition with the original fabric on it yet and had only
180 hours’ total time on it when
the former owner flew it up to the
Rusk County Airport on December 29, 1959, to pick up the Bonanza. The Champ was 13 years old
at this point, and as Champs went,
it looked like the average Champ to
me, and I still had a hard time understanding my dad trading off a
beautiful and fast Bonanza with a
new leather interior and shiny new
paint for such an old and slow rag
bag as this Champ. Airplanes that
were 13 years old back in 1959 were
considered old, and if they had 700
to 800 hours on them they were
considered high time. Little did I
know back then as a kid that this
would be the plane that I would
solo in, and close to 50 years later I
would be totally restoring it, while
still at the Rusk County Airport,
owning and running the Bonanza
maintenance business myself.
This Champ first took to the air
on September 16, 1946, from the
Aeronca factory at Middletown,
Ohio, with H.J. Rosing at the controls for the 30-minute test flight.
The Champ’s fuselage before the finishing touches.
The Champ’s fuselage painted.
www.vintageaircraft.org
45
Case, crank and cam.
Case and parts.
Crank and rods.
46
MARCH / APRIL 2014
On September 20 and 21, 1946,
85E made the ferry flight from Ohio
to Wisconsin logging seven hours
and 25 minutes. On September 29
the first owner, V.S. Lewandowski,
received a checkout flight in his new
plane. The Champ appears to have
only been annualed every other
year until March 16, 1950. That was
the last flight before 85E was put
into long-term storage, with only
119 hours’ total time.
If I remember the stor y correctly, Mr. L e wandowsk i was
an Aeronca dealer and had this
Champ and a new Chief that he
couldn’t sell so he put them into
storage until he could find buyers
for them. On July 5, 1957, 85E received its third annual inspection,
this time by Don Woods from the
CAA GSDO-21 office. 85E was apparently sold to Roland Misfeldt,
the farmer from Withee, Wisconsin, at this time. She logged 61
hours from that annual in 1957
until my dad took over ownership
on December 29, 1959.
The Champ turned out to be my
father’s “hangar queen.” He always
had it for sale but kept the price
high on it, and when a buyer would
come to look at it and seemed really interested the price would go
up several hundred dollars. Several
hundred dollars back then was like
several thousand dollars today. He
didn’t fly her all that much, just fun
flying and looking for deer in the
winter time for the Wisconsin Conservation Department when the
deer would yard up due to the deep
snow we would get back then. I can
remember freezing my butt off in
the back seat as my dad would circle
the deer yards for what seemed like
hours to me. I would climb out after
we landed, frozen stiff, with a splitting headache and queasy stomach
from the noise, vibrations, and constant circling he would do at low al-
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Engine installation.
Cowling.
titudes. But by the next weekend
I would be ready to go again. And
once again would arrive back at RCX
an hour later frozen and nauseated.
One would think I would have given
up on flying after riding in this old
Champ so many times, but something was starting to kindle a fire in
me about 85E.
Overturned
One May evening in 1962 when
48
MARCH / APRIL 2014
my dad came home from working
at the airport, he had a more serious than normal look on his face.
He said he had some bad news
about the airport. The night before there had been some storms
that ripped through parts of Rusk
County, and the airport was one
of the hardest hit areas. A bunch
of planes were damaged, and some
of the hangars were blown down.
The T-hangar that his Champ was
in was one of the hangars that was
down, and the Champ was lying
upside down on top of what was
left of the hangar.
I had been in school that day and
wanted to go out to the airport after supper and see what had happened, but my dad had already
flipped the Champ back over onto
its landing gear and had moved
it into his big Quonset hangar. I
knew this was going to be a project my dad would have to rebuild
as the Champ wasn’t damaged as
badly as one would think. The aft
fuselage by the vertical fin was
twisted somewhat, the rudder was
damaged as well as two wing spars
and a bunch of wing ribs. Surprisingly, none of the original windows
or the windshield were damaged
as the wood prop somehow turned
to the vertical position when the
Champ was picked up and turned
over in the strong winds.
My dad always left the prop in
the horizontal position when the
Champ was stored, but fortunately
it somehow rotated to the vertical
position before the plane landed
on top of the remains of the hangar, which prevented more damage from happening to the wings,
windshield, upper fuselage, and
cowling. The prop tip didn’t even
get damaged, but there was a bad
gouge on the forward side of one of
the wood blades.
My dad started the rebuild on
85E al mo s t i mme d i ate l y a nd
bought two new wood spars for the
right wing from the Champion Aircraft factory in Osceola, Wisconsin,
and a section of aft fuselage and a
rudder from a damaged Champ in
Pipestone, Minnesota. He repaired
a bunch of the wing ribs, replaced
some leading edge sections, and
re-covered the entire plane in Irish
linen and butyrate dope.
Not much else exciting hap-
pened with 85E until July 9, 1965.
This was the day of my first dual
instruction with Elmer Wisherd as
my flight instructor. 85E was never
used for pilot training so it was a
new experience for both of us, although I’m sure 85E caught on to
what we were trying to do faster
than I did. My flying lessons were
sporadic as I was only 15 at the
time and Elmer would work me in
between all of his other students,
his A&P work, and airport manager duties. He would come over
to my dad’s shop and holler in the
door, “Has he done enough riveting to earn another hour of dual?”
Of course my dad would always say
yes as he wanted to see me continue an active interest in aviation, which by this point in my life
I knew what I wanted to do, and it
all involved aviation. On February
13, 1966, I had a flying lesson I will
never forget.
There wasn’t much snow that
winter and the Flambeau River
forms a large flowage just off the
departure end of Runway 32, and
there is a 60-foot bank at the end
of 32 that drops down to the flowage. The lack of normal snowfall
that winter along with some high
winds had swept the entire flowage
free of snow, leaving smooth, bare
ice on the entire flowage. Elmer
and I were departing on 32 on my
fourth lesson, and we were almost
at the departure end of 32 when
Elmer chopped the power and hollered “force landing.” I instinctively
dropped the nose somewhat to
maintain 60 mph while making a
slight turn to the left to better line
up with the flowage. I made a halfway decent landing on the glare
ice, and I had let the Champ slow
down to what would have been a
normal taxi speed when Elmer hollered forward to me to try and turn
around so we could take off going
the other way. I put the Champ
into a gentle left turn and we slid
sideways for quite a ways across
the ice until Elmer gunned the 65hp Continental several times and
got us pointing in the right direction for takeoff. Then we would
take off and climb up about 200
feet and chop the power and land
again, and shoot touch-and-goes
all the way down the flowage until we got close to the other end
of the flowage, then Elmer would
take over and make a low-level 180
and give the plane back to me for
some more touch-and-go practice
all the way down the flowage again.
We did this for almost an hour to
sharpen up my landing skills, and
I was having a blast but the setting
sun ended this fun flying all too
soon. I had to climb back up to land
at RCX as the “official” runway was
60 feet above us.
Solo
On August 3, 1966, I soloed 85E
after seven hours of dual instruction. The Champ flew much better
without all the extra weight in the
back seat and was also much quieter without all the hollering com-
ing from the back seat. I flew 85E
solo for a little over a month, and
then 85E didn’t get flown much
after that as we always had late
model Musketeers and Bonanzas
to fly after rebuilding them. During
this same time period, my father
had acquired a large parcel of land
in the woods north of Tony, Wisconsin, and he and I built a 3,000foot sod runway and hangared
the Champ there for many years.
Also during this time period I had
started my own collection of planes
so the Champ was now a real hangar queen that didn’t get out much.
Unfortunately for 85E the hangar
it sat in for many years was in the
woods, and the mice and red squirrels were always a problem. They
seemed to like 85E, and no matter
what we tried using to keep them
out of the wings never seemed
to work. The mice would roll the
mothballs around in the wings
for nightly entertainment, and
Decon was like candy to them; in
fact, they would even eat the cardboard box that it came in. Mousetraps would have to be tied with
wire to something on the outside
of the plane; otherwise, they would
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49
sometimes crawl further into the
wing after they sprung the trap,
which made retrieval of the trap a
problem. The Champ didn’t get annualed on a regular yearly schedule
during this period, and whenever
I would feel the need to annual it
I would have to cut more inspection holes in the wings to remove
mouse nests and to check for corrosion and chewing damage. It got
to the point that there were more
inspection holes in the bottoms of
the wings than are now required by
AD 00-25-02R1 for the wood spar
inspections. The wings looked as
if they had been shot with a shotgun several times and patched with
metal inspection covers.
On January 30, 1986, the Pedersen family suffered a tremendous
loss. Harry Pedersen passed away
suddenly and unexpectedly on
that cold winter afternoon. Even
though I had enough planes of my
own at the time, I knew what I had
to do to keep 85E in the Pedersen
family as my father had wished. I
bought 85E from my dad’s estate
that year, and I also earned my IA
rating that same summer. 85E was
out of annual by several years, so
later that summer I went through
the Champ rather closely to determine just how bad it was internally.
It still had the fabric on it that my
dad put on in 1962, and it still
tested good as he had used lots of
silver and dope when he re-covered
it, and it had been hangared all of
its life. I replaced the rudder cables,
brake cables, air filter, and had
Maxwell Prop Shop in Minneapolis
50
MARCH / APRIL 2014
recondition the prop and magnaflux and cad plate the prop bolts.
85E had 609 hours’ total time at
this point. My dad never tried for
an IA rating so up until now 85E
had been annualed by some of
the best-known IAs in northern
Wisconsin, including Leon Loomis from the Mondovi area, Ken
Maxwell from Minneapolis, John
Kevari from Ironwood, Michigan,
John Hatz from Gleason, Wisconsin, and Elmer Wisherd from Tony.
This was about the only time that
85E would fly outside of the Wisconsin borders; otherwise, it has
spent most of its entire life in Rusk
County in northern Wisconsin.
Champ Restoration
I didn’t fly 85E very much after purchasing it as I had an RV-3,
1 9 4 9 T- 8 F L u s c o m b e , 1 9 7 0
Mooney M10 Cadet, and a 1980
Varga Kachina that I had either
built from scratch or had bought
wrecked and rebuilt. After selling my father’s house and land, I
was running out of places to keep
my planes, so I had to sell a few of
them as I needed the hangar space
to run my Bonanza business in. On
August 31, 1998, I took my last
ride in 85E for a while. The Champ
had 670 hours’ TT on it at that
time, and I had decided that now
was the time to totally restore it. I
pushed it into the shop and argued
with myself if I should just restore
the wings now and then a year or
two later do the tail feathers and
then the fuselage later yet, or just
bite the bullet and do a complete
restoration now.
After totally disassembling it, I
pulled out my knife and proceeded
to cut the fabric off of everything.
Now I was committed. I got a surprise as I was cutting the fabric off
one of the ailerons in that it still
had Grade A fabric on it, not the
Irish linen that my dad had used
back in 1962. Was this still the
original 1946 fabric, or had my dad
simply ran out of Irish linen and
used a piece of Grade A? I was quite
sure it was still the original fabric.
I knew this would be a long-term
project as I wanted to put it all back
to original, and I had never tried
my hand at fabric work. I had been
a sheet metal guy all of my life. Plus
I needed to keep the Bonanza business going, and that business was
getting harder to keep up with as
time passed. Due to the business,
I could only work on the Champ
project during the winter months
when I would take time off to do
things that I wanted to do for myself such as restoring/rebuilding
rare airplanes and finishing the interior of my new house.
The wood spar damage and the
chewed-up rib lacing were the main
reasons for starting this restoration
project. I started restoring the fuselage first by stripping the fuselage
down to the frame, then sandblasting the tubing and epoxy priming
with a water-based product that I
thought would be safer to use. Little did I know at the time that this
would be a mistake and cost me
some time in the future. After priming the fuselage tubing I moved on to
the wings as I had hauled them home
to my basement workshop. While
I was tearing the wings apart there
were some rumors starting about a
wood spar AD that might be coming out in the future. I found the
name of the FAA person responsible for the proposed AD and called
him to see what he thought the
problem was and what the requirements of the AD would be. I needed
new spars, all four of them, as two
were the original 1946 spars yet and
the other two were the two that my
dad had replaced when he rebuilt
the Champ. All four spars had chewing damage on them on the bottom edges. They could have possibly
been saved by splicing in a new piece,
but the splice would have to run almost the entire length of the spars.
I had my mind made up already that
I would be buying four new spars,
but I was undecided if I wanted to
buy four new wood spars or spend
even more money and buy the Milman STC’d aluminum spar kit that
was available. The wood spars were
the reason for the restoration, and
with a possible AD coming out on
wood spars I finally decided to go the
Milman route even though I knew
the aluminum spars would add 10
pounds to the empty weight.
After I opened up the box that
the spars arrived in and inspected
all the pieces that came with the
spars, I knew I had made the right
choice. The spars were beautifully
made and came with all the necessary spacer blocks and hardware
required to slide the old wood spars
out of the ribs and slide the new
aluminum spars into place. Everything you needed to complete
the project was there as it was a
very well-thought-out kit. I only
had one complaint about the kit,
and that was with the instruction
sheets. I called Milman to complain
about the instruction sheet print
being way too small to see and
easily read, and the good folks at
Milman were already working on
making the instruction sheets and
drawings to a larger scale. Those of
you who are laughing right now,
just wait a few more years and you
will know what I’m talking about.
I replaced all of the leading edge
skins with new ones that I fabricated, rebuilt all the ribs that had
some corrosion damage on them
from the mice, installed a few new
ribs to replace some that had been
patched by my dad after the tornado damage but didn’t look real
nice, installed new aileron bearings
and aileron cables, and rebuilt the
ailerons by installing new leading
edges and trailing edges to both
of them. Before assembling the
wings, I etched and epoxy-primed
all the pieces using Poly-Fiber
primer. Next I sandblasted the fuselage tubing for the second time,
as I had noticed several months
after priming it the first time the
year before that the white paint on
the tubing was taking on a snake
skin color with blotches of a darker
color starting to appear.
I contacted the water-based
paint folks, and they suspected
that the tubing was rusting under
the primer and wanted me to send
them a sample of the paint that was
discoloring on the tubing. When I
scraped off a sample, I knew right
away that they were right. After
sandblasting the fuselage again,
I epoxy-primed it with Poly-Fiber
primer this time, and didn’t have
any more problems. Fortunately
the rust under the water-based
primer was just minor surface rust,
and it cleaned up quite easily. Everything I primed from then on,
steel or aluminum, was primed
with Poly-Fiber products.
See Part 2 in the May/June issue of Vintage Airplane
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51
The National
Stearman Fly-In
A big kid’s Christmas!
Harry G. Ballance Jr.
photos courtesy author
Different national holidays
mean different things to different
people. If one were to ask 12 people
about Labor Day and what it means
to them, one would probably get
12 different answers. To many it
might be to celebrate yet another
day free from the daily grind of
their work. For others, it connotes
the close of the boating season, the
start of school, and hamburgers on
the grill. To be sure, the summer is
winding down. However, to a Stearman aficionado, it can only mean
one thing: the start of the National
Stearman Fly-In at Galesburg, Illinois. This fly-in was started some
43 years ago by Tom Lowe and Jim
Leahy and has continued to grow
and gather momentum over the
52
MARCH / APRIL 2014
years. One might ask why such an
unlikely place as Galesburg to hold
a fly-in such as this? I think the
only substantive answer is that it
was close to where they both lived.
However, the reason it continues
to be held there, with attendees
from all over the country, as well as
several from Canada and Europe, is
the spirit of the citizens of Galesburg and the surrounding towns.
This is no ordinary fly-in. At most
of the larger fly-ins I attend, once
I am safely on the ground, I tie my
airplane down and do not plan
to fly it again until I am ready to
leave. That is certainly not the case
here. Every day is filled with carefully planned events, to include
seminars, fly-outs to neighbor-
ing communities, and socializing.
Stearman people are, on the whole,
pretty accepting. One friend of
mine attended several years ago
flying a C-182. Nobody thumbed
their nose at him because he was
not flying a Stearman, and he was
included in all of the seminars and
social events he desired to attend.
In fact, he enjoyed it so much that
he attended the next year, as well,
still in the C-182.
This doesn’t all just happen. The
citizens of the community are a
powerful force all year long to make
each fly-in better than the one that
was held the previous year. The
level of volunteerism among the
citizenry is simply something to
behold. They run flightline tours,
they make coffee for the attendees, they drive courtesy vans to
and from the hotels, and they will
graciously do just about anything
else that is reasonable. I can recall
a situation some years ago where
a hapless pilot was stuck with a
punctured tailwheel tube. One of
the volunteers took the tube into
town and had it repaired—to FAA
standards, of course. Throughout
the year there are several fundraising events in Galesburg that offset
some of the costs of the fly-in. Perhaps the largest such event is the
annual golf tournament. What this
means to the Stearman pilot is that
it costs nothing to attend this flyin. In fact, the FBO even gives each
Stearman a quantity of free fuel.
When is the last time you ever got
paid to attend a fly-in?
There are several of us from the
Atlanta area who try and fly up
there in a “gaggle.” It is just more
fun that way, and there is some
safety factor if one of the airplanes has mechanical problems.
Sometimes we take two days to
make the trip, and sometimes we
can make it in one, if the weather
and winds are favorable. It is a
long one-day trip, however. We
try and arrive on a Saturday or
Sunday, even though the event
does not really start until a free
barbecue—hosted by the citizens of Galesburg—on Monday
evening. This gives us some slack
time in the event of bad weather
en route. This event only happens
once a year, and no Stearman pilot
would want to miss a single day of
it. As we cross the Ohio River into
Illinois, the countryside changes
dramatically. The harsh coal strip
mines of Kentucky give way to
neat farms, organized along the
section lines, all displaying various colors of crops, depending
whether or not it is corn or soybeans, and whether or not they
have been harvested. This is truly
some of the most beautiful country I have ever seen. However, just
because one is in Illinois, does not
mean that one is in Galesburg.
Illinois is a long, skinny state,
and there is still a lot of f lying
left before we arrive at our ulti-
mate destination. As we approach
Galesburg, I get sort of a “giddy
with excitement” or anxious feeling in my stomach, even after flying professionally all of my adult
life. As we enter the traffic pattern, we are rewarded by a choice
of two nicely maintained turf runways. Stearmans, lest the reader
forget, do not behave very well on
a hard surface runway. After rolling out and taxiing to the parking
area, we are rewarded by the sight
of row after row of Stearmans. In
spite of what Thomas Wolfe said,
we are “home” again. There are a
couple of events for those who arrive early. Kewanee, Illinois, hosts
a fly-out breakfast, while the city
of Galesburg holds a Labor Day
parade and asks those of us in attendance to fly over. One year the
www.vintageaircraft.org
53
Pete Smart, Cal Tax, Jim Ratliff and Harry Ballance refueling in Tullahoma, TN.
briefing included the directive “. . .
the citizens of Galesburg like airplane noise, so fly low and make
plenty of it.” At the barbecue supper on Monday evening, we see
old friends from previous years:
Stearman pilots as well as many
of the volunteers with whom we
have developed a close friendship
over the years of having attended
this event. Old men and not-soold women brimming with excitement catching up on the events
of the past year, like teenagers at
a soda fountain after the first day
of school.
Tuesday morning most of us
arise early, only to hear “Old Bob”
Siegfried out on “dawn patrol.” He
takes off before dawn, climbs up to
an unreasonable altitude considering the temperature and the standard adiabatic lapse rate, and sees
54
MARCH / APRIL 2014
his first sunrise of the day. Then
he slips down a couple of thousand
feet and sees the second sunrise,
finally catching a third one as he
lands. It is not every day one can
see three sunrises, particularly
from an open-cockpit biplane.
Typically, there is no official
fly-out on Tuesday, so a lot of the
Georgia contingent, with other interlopers, fly to the Amana Colonies in nearby Iowa for lunch. We
land on a beautifully manicured,
level and wide, turf crop duster
strip, owned and maintained by a
real nice guy named John Thompson. You just have to experience
it to believe it. This is some of the
most beautiful real estate in the
world. If the winters were not so
harsh, I suspect the price of land
would be higher than that of Palm
Springs. After a walk into town,
shopping for the wives among us
as well as those who stayed behind
to tend the home fires, and a bountiful midday repast, we all lumber
back to our airplanes and head
back to Galesburg. Supper that evening is in the nearby town of Monmouth, at a really good restaurant,
loaded with airplane paraphernalia, called Cerar’s Barnstormer.
Wednesday holds more seminars,
from anything to airplane rigging
to basic aerobatics, and then a brief
flight to nearby Kewanee for lunch.
In the afternoon there is an aerobatic contest, and then we are left
to our own devices to dine at the
many restaurants in Galesburg.
Thursday brings another round
of seminars, then a lunch trip to
Geneseo, Illinois. This, again, is
a beautiful grass runway, carved
out of a cornfield, complete with
corn growing on either side of the
runway. A lot of the formation
groups are honing their skills for
the contest on Saturday, and early
lunch arrivals can watch their arrival. You really don’t understand
how good corn on the cob can be
until you have experienced it fresh
from an Illinois cornfield. Another
event of interest, in terms of “giving back” to the local community,
is visiting the local schools. Typically, multiple teams of two will
visit several classrooms and tell
the kids about Stearmans, their
careers, what led them to become
pilots, and answer just about any
airplane-related question the kids
throw at them. Thursday evening
the Stearman Restorers Association hosts a complimentary pizza
supper. Friday there are short-field
takeoff, flour bombing, and spot
landing contests. There is no official fly-out, but a local family that
is heavily involved in aviation, the
Wolfords, hosts a fly-out to their
farm, just a short distance south.
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This really is a runway carved out of a cornfield. It is
beyond the power of the written word to describe the
Stearmans lined up in neat rows next to various farm
buildings and equipment against a background of cornstalks. It is also fun to climb on top of one of the big
grain storage bins and watch the arrivals, impromptu
aerobatic displays, and departures. Friday night there
is another banquet, if you will, in the Jet Air hangar
as well as a speaker who is of interest to the Stearman
segment of our society.
Saturday, regrettably, is the last day of the fly-in.
Typically there is a dawn patrol to a nearby city, last
year Burlington, Iowa. Participants take off at official
sunrise and venture to the breakfast destination. After returning, the afternoon is filled with formation
contests, all of which are pretty impressive. There is
another supper that evening, and most of the participants are rather melancholy that another week of
doing what we like best is rapidly drawing to a close.
Sunday morning the NSFI holds a farewell breakfast,
again in the Jet Air hangar. Most of the pilots load
up, knowing that this will most probably be the only
substantive meal they have until their arrival at their
home airport. The measure of local support is very
gratifying, as a lot of the locals drop by to wish us a safe
trip home and thank us for attending their event. We
typically try and make the trip to Atlanta in one day,
with only two fuel stops, which is doable if there is a
slight tailwind. There have been times, however, when
the weather precluded our even making it out of the
state of Illinois on the first day. Such is the nature of
flying the older airplanes. Kids look forward to Christmas. Big kids, like me, look forward to the National
Stearman Fly-In. Don’t miss it, even if you have to
drive. Only 6 more months to Galesburg!
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55
Reminiscing
With an Old Friend
A classic Stinson 108 stirs up the past
Scott Knowlton
T
he nondescript envelope
was waiting for me after
a four-day weather-filled
trip with my airline. Too
tired to open the rest of the bills and
bank statements that awaited me
on my return home late that evening, I busied myself with the routine tasks of putting away my roller
bag, overcoat, and hat while nursing
a beer. My eye caught the envelope
again sporting a United States of
America postage stamp; the return
address was Atlanta, Georgia. In our
age of e-mail, text messaging, and
social media this handwritten piece
of mail spoke of a different, simpler
time—an era when waiting for a response to correspondence was measured in weeks or months rather
than mere moments. At the same
time as my bed called, my curiosity
56
MARCH / APRIL 2014
photos courtesy author
got the better of me, and I finally
plucked the envelope out of the
pile and dug into it with my index
figure. It was a one-page typewritten letter from a man named Bruce
Greenwood stating that at one time
he owned a Stinson 108 that he
purchased in Tennessee as a young
ensign in the Navy. After owning
it for four years, life, marriage, and
the need for a home got in the way
of his airplane dreams, and he reluctantly parted with his beloved
bird and moved on to start and raise
a family. As often happens in later
life, Bruce began to reminisce about
his Stinson and wondered what
had become of it. Knowing the serial number of the aircraft, Bruce
was able in short order to follow the
path of serial number 268 built by
the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft
Company in the state of Michigan
in 1946. The beauty of the Internet
led Bruce to me in Canada as the
current owner, and his letter was intended to make contact with me in
order to find out about his old bird.
Making the link between old school
mail and present day communications he included his e-mail address.
I went to bed thinking about
Bruce and his letter and marveled
at the vast number of lives one old
classic airplane can touch. What
was going on in the world when
Bruce was the caring owner of my
Stinson? Were there more small airplanes flying the skies than there
are now, airports dotting the countryside, pilots flying for the sake of
just being up in the air? As the cost
of ownership and operation of an
aircraft continues to rise, I could
certainly identify with this man as
the notion to sell my airplane to
reduce my cost of living had frequently entered my mind. The next
morning, prior to getting lost in the
business of catching up on things
not done from my being away, I
made sure to respond to Bruce with
a quick e-mail acknowledging his
letter and confirming that I was in
fact the present owner of the Stinson he once owned and for good
measure included a couple of photos. This seemingly simple e-mail
to a stranger in another country
started a chain of events that would
conclude with Bruce and I meeting
and he having an opportunity to reunite with his long-lost Stinson.
Bruce quickly responded to my email with his own photos of serial
number 268 both before and after
he had her restored. As a fire inspector for an insurance company, Bruce
often traveled to different parts of
the country to do his work and asked
me if I might let him see his old airplane. Only a few short weeks went
by before Bruce informed me that he
had work scheduled in Niagara Falls,
less than an hour’s drive from the
Grimsby Airpark where I keep the
Stinson. Bruce gave me ample notice so that I could ensure my flying
roster would not have me scheduled
to work, and we agreed to meet on a
Wednesday evening in mid June.
With my schedule cleared and
weather looking very promising I
headed for my field at about 5:30 on
that warm, sunny Wednesday evening. A rental car was parked in the
airport parking lot, and as I pulled
in a gentleman in his mid-60s with a
bright grin on his face got out of the
car and approached me. “You must
be Scott!” he beamed and shook my
hand. “You don’t know how excited
I am right now!” he exclaimed walking with me toward my hangar. As
we talked I began to learn about
Scott Knowlton with former owner, Bruce Greenwood.
Bruce’s fascinating past. He served
two tours in Vietnam as an attack
reconnaissance officer on Vigilantes
aboard the USS Saratoga. Research
after my visit with Bruce revealed
that the U.S. Navy sustained heavy
losses of Vigilantes during the war.
Their mission was to first photograph an enemy area intended for
bombing and then return only minutes after the bombing mission
was complete to record the results.
Their pattern was well known by the
North Vietnamese Army, and as a
result a disproportionate number
of Vigilante crews either lost their
lives or were captured. Bruce downplayed his role in Vietnam and only
after a lot of questions and prodding did he reveal that he’d flown
150 missions, many of which took
place during the deadly Tet Offensive. What made all of this even
more fascinating was finding out
that the lion’s share of Bruce’s Stinson flying took place between his
two tours in Vietnam. I admit that
flying my Stinson has provided
me with a great source of therapy
to deal with the stress of daily life
and work along with the economic
uncertainty of my airline, but how
could I compare my trivial worries
to what must have been on Bruce’s
shoulders while at the controls of
the very same airplane?
The sun was sinking toward the
west as I opened the hangar doors
to shed light on the 66-year-old tube
and fabric classic for which I was
presently the custodian. Bruce quietly walked around her running his
hand down the fuselage, drumming
the fabric and judging her gleaming finish. “You sure keep good care
of her,” he said—the compliment
causing me to beam with pride. We
pushed her out onto the tarmac,
and Bruce stood silently respecting
my preflight routine. We talked for
a while about airplanes, ownership
costs, and the act of flying purely
for the simple joy of being aloft. “I
paid $3,500 for that plane in 1969,”
Bruce gestured toward my old Stinson, “but of course that’s the same
price you would have paid for a new
Corvette back then,” he added. I felt
a pang of guilt realizing I had been
harping over the rising cost of flywww.vintageaircraft.org
57
Bruce reflects on past memories
with his old classic airplane.
ing just moments before. I suppose
it’s easy to believe that flying was
cheaper in the “good old days,” yet
when Bruce owned my Stinson he
didn’t have cellphone data plans,
second or third TVs, or the multitude of other consumer distractions
competing with his desire to own
and fly his idea of a magic carpet.
I offered Bruce the left seat,
which he happily clambered into
donning the headset that had been
resting on the glare shield. He paid
full attention as I went through
my normal passenger safety briefing—something I was sure he must
have done countless times with
many passengers in the very same
airplane he was now sitting in. I
climbed in, started the Franklin engine, and caught a glance of Bruce
beside me while taxiing—his warm
grin and deep-set crow’s-feet both
evidence of a man who was not only
clearly delighted in the moment
but also very happy during his life.
We took off toward Lake Ontario
and headed east along the shoreline with the evening light playing
a glorious show along the Niagara
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MARCH / APRIL 2014
Escarpment and its plentiful vineyards. Clearly enjoying the view and
the ride Bruce seemed both ready
and eager to take the controls when
I offered them to him. I resisted the
temptation to give him my routine
instruction regarding the necessary
rudder input required to keep the
ball centered—something I always
do to prepare any general aviation
pilot to the idiosyncrasies of the
Stinson. Bruce took control, gently
centering the ball, and settled into
a smooth purposeful manipulation
of the yoke, rudder, and throttle
clearly demonstrating his knowledge and past experience of the airframe we were in. “I love the sound
of the old Franklin engine,” he
sighed, “and she still flies the same
way I remember.” I thought of the
many times Bruce must have flown
this old classic in the early ’70s and
marveled at how 40 years later the
machine could still perform in the
same familiar way. What machine,
other than a classic airplane, can deliver that kind of service?
The sun began to set to the west,
and as the light dimmed I had Bruce
steer us back toward the airport.
As we joined the circuit I offered
him the opportunity of landing his
old machine. Graciously, he turned
down the offer saying he wanted
to end the day on a high note. I resumed control on final approach
and endeavored to demonstrate a
flawless three-point landing. If you
want to get a healthy debate going, have a group of tailwheel pilots
compare the merits of three-point
versus wheel landings. I have always
been a strong proponent in the classic three-point landing with both
my students as well as myself. Perhaps it was the awe I had for my
passenger or the bright setting sun,
but regardless of excuses I unceremoniously thumped the poor old
bird onto the tarmac. Bruce smiled
at my poor performance and slyly
commented, “I’ve always been partial to wheel landings myself.” That’s
okay, Bruce, I thought, I won’t hold
that against you.
After putting the Stinson to bed
and bidding farewell to a very satisfied passenger and fellow aviator, I
reflected on the encounter I had with
the fine gentleman who used to be
the keeper of my Stinson. Little separated the two of us in the enjoyment
we derived from being at the controls
of an old rag and tube airplane. At
the same time the lives we lived during our respective care and feedings
of one particular Stinson were so
radically different. Here I was fighting the good fight in my own mind
as I paid my bills, raised my family,
and attempted to maintain a reasonable work/life balance while flying a
roster typical of most airline pilots.
The Stinson, I felt, was my escape
from the stresses of life—an elixir to
calm my spirits and worries. Bruce,
in comparison, flew the Stinson in
between bouts of high stress combat. I imagine during these flights
his thoughts would not have strayed
far from the friends he’d lost or the
unknowns facing him on his next
tour of duty. That chance letter I received from Bruce only a few short
weeks ago led me on a remarkable
path of discovery of a man who gave
yeoman service to his country. I felt
honoured to reintroduce Bruce to his
old airplane, but in doing so I feel I
became a richer person for it. Not
only did I have a renewed sense of
attachment to my venerable old taildragger and the rich history she carried with her, my perspective of the
many great things I am blessed with
in my life I normally take for granted
changed after hearing Bruce’s story.
I hope to be lucky enough to be the
custodian of Stinson number 268 for
many more years to come and in doing so look forward to meeting the
people like Bruce she seems to bring
into my life.
The Vintage Mechanic
ROBERT G. LOCK
Aircraft covering, Part 2
Nonstructural aluminum
To press on with our discussion of continued airworthiness of aircraft structures, we will concentrate
on nonstructural aluminum. This material would be
used on various secondary structures that are nonload-carrying, such as engine and cockpit cowling,
nonstressed panels, fairings, fuel and oil tanks, wheel
fairings, and such.
Essentially, nonstructural aluminum is not heattreatable but can be hardened by hammering, drawing, or bending. There are two types of aluminum
that come immediately to mind: alloy 3003 (3S) and
5052 (52S).
Alloy 3003 is pure aluminum alloyed with manganese, and 5052 is pure aluminum alloyed with magnesium. Of the two described above, alloy 5052 has
the most strength; therefore, it is popular for use in
cockpit cowling and fuel and oil lines. Both are weldable with either gas or TIG processes and are easily
handworked by hammering or bending.
When describing the working ability of these two
metals, there are three terms that stand out.
1) Ductility, which means the material is
flexible.
2) Malleable, which means the material is capable of being extended by hammering or rolling.
3) Fusibility, which means the ability to become
liquid with heat for the welding process to take place.
Remember, heat-treatable alloys are NOT WELDABLE (except for alloy 6061, which is both weldable
and heat-treatable).
The initial condition of aluminum is important if
cold-working is necessary. The wrought alloys are coded
with the letter “O,” which means annealed or in the
“dead soft” condition. In the case of nonstructural aluminum, you will see a code of 3003-O or 5052-O. To
form fuel and oil lines the tube material should be in
the “O” (annealed) condition and preferably alloy 5052.
As the metal is cold-worked, such as hammering or rolling (English wheel), the slip planes along
grain lines move and the material begins to harden.
Have you ever bent a mild steel clothes hanger until
it breaks? Initially the slip planes move, but as they
harden, adjacent slip planes move and, eventually,
in the area of the bend, two things happen. One, the
bend area gets hard and brittle; two, the bend area
gets warm due to the movement of the slip planes,
and it will eventually fail.
The amount of cold-working in nonheat-treatable
alloys will determine eventual hardness. For alloy
3003, full-hard is designated as H18, with H12 being
one-quarter hard, H14 being half-hard, and H16 being three-quarters hard. For alloy 5052, one-quarter
hard is designated H32, one-half hard is H34, threequarters hard is H36, and full-hard is H38.
The particular reason to have some knowledge of
hardness range is to know how much cold-working
the material will take before it cracks. Obviously H38
will not take much cold-working, while H34 can take
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59
Illustration 1 is taken from the Standard Aircraft
Handbook, page 72, and it describes tempers of nonheat-treatable alloys.
quite a bit. I have fabricated cockpit metal and fuel
and oil tanks from 5052-H34 aluminum.
When cold-working 3003 or 5052, the material
may become brittle from hammering or rolling. The
brittle area will turn to a dull gray color, which indicates that the slip planes have been used and the
metal is no longer ductile and malleable. The area may
be softened by the annealing process, which for us
“old-timers” was known as “torch annealing.” There
is nothing finer than to watch an expert work and
form aluminum into complex shapes. There are only
a few individuals left in the industry who are capable of this craft. When I lived in Reedley, in my back
yard was the prototype Beech 18, the very first twinengine aircraft built by Walter Beech. I remember inspecting the fairings and admiring the work as they
were hand-formed by craftsmen at the factory. You
could still see the hammer marks in these fairings after the many years of service.
From the Standard Aircraft Handbook, typical annealing procedures for wrought aluminum alloys are
60
MARCH / APRIL 2014
also shown (Illustration 1). An old trick to anneal nonstructural aluminum is to use an I need your “Woe Is
I” book! oxygen-acetylene gas torch. Light the torch
with acetylene gas only. Pass the torch over the area to
be annealed until black soot covers the surface. Now
adjust a soft neutral flame and pass the torch over the
sooted area. As the aluminum comes up to annealing
temperature, the soot will be burned off the surface. Do
not concentrate the heat in one location, rather keep
moving the torch. Concentrated heat from the torch
will melt the aluminum. Torch flame temperature is
about 6,000°F at the cone, and melting temperature
of aluminum is about 1,200°F. As one can see, it would
not take long to melt the aluminum. Once the soot has
been burned off, more cold-working can take place.
When riveting repairs are made to nonstructural
aluminum, the 1100 pure aluminum rivet (coded “A”)
is used. Never use structural rivets to make repairs to
nonstructural components. “A” rivets are coded with no
marks on the head, are very soft, and drive easily. When
received they are bright and shiny and are very soft.
Shown from left to right: “A” rivet with no head
marks from 1100 pure aluminum, “AD” rivet with
a dimple in the head from alloy 2117, “B” rivet with
raised cross on head from alloy 5056, “DD” rivet with
two raised dashes on head from alloy 2024, and “D”
rivet with one raised dot from alloy 2017. The “D”
and “DD” rivets require heat-treatment before driv-
Illustration 2 taken from the Standard Aircraft Handbook shows typical universal head rivets widely in
use for fabrication and repair.
ing because they are so hard. They are also called “ice
box” rivets because they must be stored in a freezer
or on dry ice after quenching to remain soft for driving. When driving the “D” and “DD” rivets, once they
are heat-treated and quenched they are about as soft
as an “A” rivet. This is the only method used to drive
these structural rivets.
Many aluminum parts on the aircraft may have
been anodized for corrosion protection. Anodizing
is an electro-plating process using either chromic or
phosphoric acid in a tank with electrical current being passed through the part. The chromic acid anodizing (CAA) will turn aluminum to a gold color, while
phosphoric acid anodizing (PAA) will leave the part in
a dull gray color. Most all the aluminum components
including the cockpit and engine cowl metal on the
Stearman were phosphoric acid anodized.
In the anodizing process a direct current (DC)
power supply is used with a rheostat to control both
amps and volts through the part. Only enough power
is used to cause bubbles to form around the part,
which indicates the process is taking place.
The sketch in Illustration 3 shows a typical aluminum anodizing circuit using chromic acid. This
method is perhaps the best for surface protection
against corrosion. Depending on how long the parts
are left in solution will govern final surface appearance of part, which is a golden color.
available, but the inspecting mechanic should evaluate
these methods before attempting the repair.
Illustration 4
Illustration 4 shows my 1929 Command-Aire 5C3
with new 5052-H34 aluminum engine cowling, cockpit,
and turtledeck cowling. Seats, baggage compartment,
and fuel and oil tanks were also fabricated from this
material, as were all other aluminum fuselage components. Although the fuel tank is cardboard for pattern,
it was made from alloy 5052-H34 aluminum.
Illustration 3
Repairs to nonstructural components are not
nearly as critical for airworthiness as are repairs to
primary structure. Cracks should be stop drilled with
a #30 drill bit and a patch riveted over the crack using
a minimum number of rivets. In some cases a crack
on soft aluminum can be welded instead of being
patched. It all depends on where it is and what appearance and final outcome of the repair are desired.
There is not much direction in FAA publications
for making repairs to secondary aluminum structure.
Sometimes one has to be “creative” when making such
repairs. It is not entirely necessary to bring the structure back to full strength but more to cover a crack with
a doubler. Flush repairs (smooth) are difficult to make,
and unless the mechanic is a “real pro,” the repair tends
to warp. In many cases the panel can be repaired by
welding, most likely with an inert-gas TIG weld process. There are very few aluminum gas welders left in
the world. There are some aluminum brazing processes
www.vintageaircraft.org
61
What Our Members
Are Restoring
Beechcraft Musketeer, Model 23
KEITH GREENE
Is it possible to have a love affair with an airplane?
The answer to that question is yes if it is the right airplane. For that would be N8748M, a Beechcraft Musketeer, Model 23, built in Wichita, Kansas, on August
19, 1963. It is one of 553 aircraft of this type that
Beech designed to compete with Piper and Cessna.
The aircraft was promoted throughout the United
States in the summer and fall of 1962. Starting on
July 20 and lasting until October 16, one man and
two young ladies flew three aircraft to major cities all
over the country giving demo flights. Known as the
Three Musketeers, they promoted the aircraft in 72
cities and 35 states in six different legs.
I started my search for a Model 23 in the fall of
2003. In June of 2004 I found N8748M in New York.
The aircraft serial number is M-536, and the production run ended with number M-554 in August of
1963. The plane was in fair shape; it just needed a little TLC that it was about to get.
62
MARCH / APRIL 2014
After 13 years of starting and stopping, catching
up on funds, and getting help when it was needed
most, I think the project is done. People that helped
till the end were Flint Pulis, Franklin County Aviation; Allen Hosier, Northwest Arkansas Avionics; Pam
Wells, Mena Aircraft Interiors; and Don Gray, Grays
Aircraft Painting.
I was in the fresh poultry sales business for 43
years and used the aircraft we owned to call on suppliers and customers along with pleasure flights when I
could. I do the Young Eagles program in our area, and
since retiring five years ago I am closing in on 100
demo flights.
Beech had several ideas in mind when it designed
the Musketeer: competition, training aircraft for its
proposed aero centers, and a comfortable, efficient
airplane for the small-business person. It succeeded
in all of those areas. N8748M will be 50 years old this
August and is still doing the economical chores it was
designed to do.
Straight & Level
continued from page 1
Also, as many of you know, the petition to eliminate the third-class medical is still pending a decision by the FAA. As you can imagine, this is a very
popular concept among those of us engaged in the
general/recreational aviation community. Our own
Indiana Congressional Representative Todd Rokita
and several other GA Caucus members proposed the
General Aviation Pilot Protection Act that further
enhances the original EAA/AOPA petition to eliminate or redefine the third-class medical rules. After
all, don’t we all personally self-certify ourselves every day we fly as “fit for mission?”
Again, this is not a spectator sport! Although we
have witnessed some real enthusiasm for this proposed legislation, we all need to continue to weigh in
here and communicate to all of our representatives
in Washington the need to support H.R. 3578 and S.
1941 and the General Aviation Pilot Protection Act,
which has already garnered more than 16,000 comments from the pilot population. We need to quickly
turn those 16,000 comments into 25,000. Hopefully, by the time you read this column we will see
all of these legislative initiatives passed through the
House and Senate.
I would also like to recommend to our members
that whether or not you choose to reach out to your
local representatives in Congress, when the debate
has ended, regardless of whether these initiatives
are successful or not, find out how your representatives voted on these issues and let them know that
you appreciate their vote or that you’re disappointed
with their vote.
As always, thanks for being a member, and please
do us all the favor of inviting a friend to join the
VAA, and help keep us the strong association we
have all enjoyed for so many years.
VAA is about participation: Be a member! Be a volunteer! Be there!
Let’s all pull in the same direction for the overall
good of aviation.
Remember, we are better together. Join us and
have it all.
Vintage Trader
S o m e t h i n g t o b u y, s e l l , o r t ra d e ?
Classified Word Ads: $5.50 per 10 words, 180 words
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by 1, 2, or 3 inches high at $20 per inch. Black and white
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desired issue date (i.e., January 10 is the closing date for the
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AIRCRAFT
1953 Piper PA 22-135 Tri-Pacer. 1475 TT. Hangared, Logs, 8/13
Annual. Great vintage plane. $21k OBO. Call George at
512-694-4067
WANTED
Restoring a 1929 Alliance Argo, looking for engineering
drawings, blue prints, and anything that could be of
help. 508-566-6673, dthissell@gmail.com
Donate your Airplane to Samaritan Aviation, a charity
that provides missions and medical services to remote
areas of the world. www.samaritanaviation.com 970249-4341
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63
Air Mail
continued from page 6
The candidates received 25 hours in the Super Cub; most of the instructors were USAF, but there were some German instructors. The time was 18
hours dual and seven solo. The washout rate was about 41 percent.
The rationale is easy to see: In those days it was considered a major and
expensive big-deal to send people over the ocean and start them in USAF flying training. If the least promising candidates could be identified early and
not sent, then the washout rate here in America would be reduced at a considerable cost savings. So this program with German applicants was primary
training in a certain sense, but the real purpose was not to teach students
how to fly, but to determine if it was likely that they COULD fly. Nevertheless, once they were in USAF flying training, their washout rate was about
the same as for the Americans (and the scattered folks from other countries).
Of course other programs in the world have undertaken similar screening
programs (perhaps Cessna 172s at the USAF Academy or ROTC for example), and the German air force itself has continued with it I think until today, for after the PA-18s, they used the Piaggio P-149D in Germany and in
recent years I think Grobs are being used at the Goodyear Airport (Arizona),
right next to Luke AFB.
Dennis K. McDaniel
Dear Jim:
I wish to compliment you and the others on the outcome of Vintage Airplane. The writing is interesting. The center-fold photo is quality and suitable for framing. I enjoy Steve Krog’s flying lessons and also Sparky Barnes
Sargent’s “Walking the Line.”
In the October 2012 issue was a picture of an Interstate Cadet. I looked in
my logbook and “Bingo”, that’s it! The very same aircraft I soloed back in 1947.
The color adds quality to the magazine and although I must wait an extra
30 days for the next ‘Vintage’, it is worth it. Keep up the good work!
Marv Hoppenworth
EAA 2519, VAA 2773
Monosport Corrections
This is from Marcus Ogle, son of Haswell Ogle (one of the last Monosport owners).
Since publication of “Sole Survivor,” several facts have come to light as
pointed out by a son of one of 8989’s previous owners.
A) In 1952, there were three men, Haswell Ogle, Bob Day, and a third
whose name has been lost, who pooled their money to buy the Monosport.
Both Ogle and Day flew the plane days before it was damaged.
B) The aircraft was damaged in a wind storm in August of 1952 as stated in
the logbook. Both Day and Ogle concurred with the log. Mrs. Ogle recalls seeing her husband’s new purchase for the first time, damaged, along with other
aircraft, as a result of the high wind. The aircraft was not ground looped.
C) The owner, Haswell Ogle, passed away in December 1982, not 1973,
as stated in the article. At the time of his passing, he was looking forward to
retirement so he could finish restoring the plane and fly it to OSH.
D) The Monosport never spent any time in a barn as alluded to. The airplane was kept in hangars and workshop garages in College Park, Maryland;
Roanoke, Virginia; New London, Virginia; and Colleyville, Texas.
64
MARCH / APRIL 2014
VAA
Directory
OFFICERS
President
Geoff Robison
1521 E. MacGregor Dr.
New Haven, IN 46774
260-493-4724
chief7025@aol.com
Secretary
Steve Nesse
2009 Highland Ave.
Albert Lea, MN 56007
507-373-1674
stnes2009@live.com
Vice-President
Dave Clark
635 Vestal Lane
Plainfield, IN 46168
317-839-4500
davecpd@att.net
Treasurer
Dan Knutson
106 Tena Marie Circle
Lodi, WI 53555
608-592-7224
lodicub@charter.net
DIRECTORS
Ron Alexander
118 Huff Daland Circle
Griffin, GA 30223-6827
ronalexander@mindspring.com
Jerry Brown
4605 Hickory Wood Row
Greenwood, IN 46143
317-422-9366
lbrown4906@aol.com
George Daubner
N57W34837 Pondview Ln
Oconomowoc, WI 53066
262-560-1949
gdaubner@eaa.org
Dale A. Gustafson
7724 Shady Hills Dr.
INpolis, IN 46278
317-293-4430
dalefaye@msn.com
Steve Krog
1002 Heather Ln.
Hartford, WI 53027
262-305-2903
sskrog@gmail.com
Robert D. “Bob” Lumley
1265 South 124th St.
Brookfield, WI 53005
262-782-2633
rlumley1@wi.rr.com
Joe Norris
264 Old OR Rd.
Oshkosh, WI 54902
pilotjoe@ntd.net
920-688-2977
Tim Popp
60568 Springhaven Ct.
Lawton, MI 49065
269-624-5036
tlpopp@frontier.com
ADVISORS
Lynne Dunn
145 Cloud Top Lane
Mooresville, NC 28115
704-664-1951
lynnednn@aol.com
Susan Dusenbury
1374 Brook Cove Road
Walnut Cove, NC 27052
336-591-3931
sr6sue@aol.com
DIRECTORS EMERITUS
David Bennett
375 Killdeer Ct
Lincoln, CA 95648
916-952-9449
antiquer@inreach.com
Charles W. Harris
PO Box 470350
Tulsa, OK 74147
918-622-8400
cwh@hvsu.com
Robert C. Brauer
9345 S. Hoyne
Chicago, IL 60643
773-779-2105
photopilot@aol.com
E.E. “Buck” Hilbert
8102 Leech Rd.
Union, IL 60180
815-923-4591
buck7ac@gmail.com
Gene Chase
8555 S. Lewis Ave., #32
Tulsa, OK 74137
918-298-3692
Gene Morris
5936 Steve Court
Roanoke, TX 76262
817-491-9110
genemorris@charter.net
Phil Coulson
28415 Springbrook Dr.
Lawton, MI 49065
269-624-6490
rcoulson516@cs.com
Ronald C. Fritz
15401 Sparta Ave.
Kent City, MI 49330
616-678-5012
itzfray@gmail.com
S.H. “Wes” Schmid
2359 Lefeber Avenue
Wauwatosa, WI 53213
414-771-1545
shschmid@gmail.com
John Turgyan
PO Box 219
New Egypt, NJ 08533
609-752-1944
jrturgyan4@aol.com