The SwampHawk

By Kevin Lacey

In August of 2020, we received a private message on social media from a guy in Louisiana asking if we were interested in a Cessna 172. Heck yes, we are interested in a Cessna 172, but we have become somewhat cautious about committing ourselves to the unknown, especially if we have to travel six hours one way just to see what we are getting ourselves into.

We seem to get several offers a year by airport owners and operators to come clean out someone’s musty dusty hangar with the offer to keep anything we find inside, only to find very little, if anything of value to the Clube. Occasionally we find some good usable items but we usually end up disposing everything in a nearby dumpster or hauling it to the local city dump.

Before accepting the challenge, I asked for a few more details and a few pictures. The reply came back with a couple of pictures that were not very detailed, but just enough to get our interest up.

The airplane turned out to be a 1973 Cessna 172M with 1892 hours total time. It appeared that it was sitting in a field, mostly intact except for a few plastic fairings that were busted up or missing. A quick search of the airplane records with the FAA revealed that the airplane had been de-registered several years ago.

After deciding this might be a worthwhile adventure, all the Clube Members sat down to discuss the logistics of traveling six hours one-way to spend a couple of hours disassembling the 172 and loading it on a trailer and then driving six hours back with our new treasure.

The discussion began with “It’s only 210 nautical miles as the crow flies which is only about a two-hour flight, but by road it’s a six-hour drive. We have airplanes, why don’t we just fly down there? That way we can do it in one day, and we can be home for Sunday.”

The young Clube Members do not understand the logistics or finances involved in hiring a truck and trailer to make the trip, but they made their case and arrangements were made to have a truck and trailer meet us at the airport in Louisiana.

Early on a Saturday morning, the young Clube Members saddled up all the airplanes and off we went. The gentleman giving us the airplane and our transport truck and trailer were at the Louisiana Airport waiting for us when we landed. The FBO loaned us their crew van and pretty soon we were on our way to see our newly found treasure.

After driving through town, we pulled off the highway for a 10 mile drive down a one lane dirt road. At the intersection we noticed an interesting looking old school bus. The hood was opened up and the inside was painted pink, the rest of the bus was painted up like an alligator. Turns out, this was the advertisement sign for a gator petting zoo called Gator Country Alligator Park.

It seems like everything we do turns out to be an adventure. After the long drive down the tree lined one lane dirt road, over the railroad tracks and the creek, we finally arrived at the farm.

What was not clearly depicted in the pictures that were sent was that this Cessna 172 is sitting sideways on a dilapidated trailer with flat tires. After a quick analysis of the situation, the young Clube Members divided into groups and attacked the Cessna. One crew began the removal process of the wings while others went after the tailfeathers.

With work in process, I made my way over to the truck where the gentleman who was donating the airplane was still sitting and began to enquire just exactly how does a Cessna 172 find it’s way out here in the middle of nowhere, sitting sideways on a trailer.

He opens his door, reaches behind his seat, pulls out a wheelchair, places it on the ground by the truck and hops into it.

He then proceeds to explain that we are currently on his dad’s family farm. He also says that the land across from the gator petting zoo was his mom’s family farm where he grew up with both his parents. His dad bought the Cessna in 1991 and after clearing trees for a runway and making room in the barn, he began flying the airplane from the farm.

He goes on to explain that the airplane has not flown since around 2001 and somewhere around 2010, mom and dad began having issues that resulted in a divorce. In the divorce decree, the Judge gave dad until a certain date to remove all his stuff from mom’s family farm, otherwise all his belongings would become hers. In 2011, the FAA de-registered the aircraft because they failed to comply with the 3-year re-registration.

Determined not to let mom have the airplane, in early 2015 dad and his son began feverishly trying to get the airplane ready for a short flight in order to beat the deadline set by the judge. Frustrated that they were not able to get the engine to run properly, on the very last day, they hoisted the complete intact airplane up onto a trailer with a front-end loader, complete with the wings and tail still attached.

Then, with a couple of guys on each side of the truck armed with chainsaws they towed the 172 down the 10 miles of one lane dirt road, over the railroad tracks and through the creek to dad’s farm. When they got there, they unhitched the trailer, jumped back in the truck and left. And that is where the airplane sat for the next five years. Unfortunately, they left the log books at mom’s house and they were never to be seen again.

The plan was that dad and his son, together with the grandkids were going to fix the airplane up as a family project and have fun together with it. Unfortunately, a year or so later, the son was out with his friends one night when he bounced out of the back of a pick-up truck and ended up in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down.

The following year, dad passed away, so as he watched the fungus and mold generated by the Louisiana swamp land grow on the airplane, he decided that the airplane needed to go to someone that would make good use of it, and that is when he contacted the Tango Thirty One Aero Clube.

It only took the young Clube Members a few hours to disassemble the 172 and get the fuselage off the trailer and loaded on the trailer that would transport it to Aero Country. We got the Aircraft Bill of Sale and a few other supporting documents signed and taken care of and with about an hour to go before sunset, we were all back in the airplanes headed home.

The next Clube gathering was spent unloading the trailer, pressure washing and scrubbing every piece as it came off the trailer. Much to our surprise, under all that green fungus and black mold was a pretty clean airframe. There was no hail damage and there only appeared to be a few light spots of surface corrosion. The wings were stored on a wing dolly and the fuselage was stashed in the corner.

It would be a few months before the Clube Members could get back to the SwampHawk project because they were deeply involved in the restoration of 35Ugly with fresh paint and a newly overhauled engine when the opportunity to acquire the 172 came up.

Once they were finished with 35Ugly and she was back in service, it was time to focus on the SwampHawk with the goal of flying it to AirVenture 2022. Paint stripping seems to always be on the workscope around here, so that is where it began. With the fuselage all stripped down the Clube Members removed the landing gear for inspection and painting, all the windows and windshields were replaced and the instrument panel was removed. The fuel selector valve and gascolator were removed, cleaned, inspected, re-sealed and re-installed.

The engine was torn down and the parts were sent to Aircraft Specialties Services and Crankcase Services in Tulsa where they were inspected, serviced and re-certified.

While waiting on the engine parts to return, the fuselage was being cleaned up in preparation for a good coat of primer, when one of the young Clube Members crawled out of the tail cone and claimed that they had cleaned the inside of the fuselage the best they can but the Louisiana dirt just would not come up. Upon closer inspection, the belly skin and the bulkhead just below the rear window and the avionics shelf were corroded to the point that no amount of treatment would cure it.

The next couple of months consisted of Clube Members learning how to drill rivets as the belly skin was removed. We traveled to Air Salvage of Dallas and found a donor fuselage that had good stringers and the bulkhead that we needed. After a few rivet driving classes, the SwampHawk was being riveted back together. Shortly thereafter, the tailfeathers and the fuselage were acid washed, alodined, and a coat of corrosion resistant primer was applied.

With the fuselage all primed up, and several boxes of freshly certified engine parts sitting on the bench, the young Clube Members were ready to put the knowledge they gained at the Lycoming Engine building class at AirVenture 2021 to good use.

With some help with cylinders and bearings from our friends at Superior AirParts, the Clube Members began building their Lycoming O-320-E2D with the Ram 160 HP upgrade. Everyone had a chance to put something together on the engine. The engine mount was then installed on the airframe and the engine was hung in place. A new set of engine baffles was fitted and trimmed along with the installation of a Marvel Schebler carburetor from our friends at Tempest. Hartzell Engine Technologies sent us a Sky-Tec Starter and a Plane Power Alternator which pretty much rounded out the engine installation.

Currently, the Clube Members are waiting for more suitable weather to shoot a base coat of white paint on the fuselage and tailfeathers. With the base coat of white paint applied, all new flight cables will be installed along with new pulleys.

By the time this article hits the press, the engine will have been removed from the SwampHawk and taken to Barrett Performance Engines in Tulsa Oklahoma where the Clube Members will run the engine in the test cell.

The Instrument panel will be completely redone with a PS Engineering PMA8000 Audio Panel, an Avidyne IFD 540 and a certified Dynon SkyView HDX system complete with autopilot. The young Clube Members are pretty excited as this will be their Commercial and Instrument training platform.

They are also looking forward to showing off their work at AirVenture 2022.

The Tango Thirty One Aero Clube is a 501(c)3 non-profit youth oriented flying club run by an all-volunteer staff based at Aero Country Airport in McKinney Texas. You can follow the SwamHawk progress on FaceBook @t31aeroclube or on their webpage www.t31aeroclube.com.