V8-powered solo

Nigel Hitchman gets an offer of a lifetime to solo a 1929 Command-Aire 3C3 powered by a V8 Curtiss OX-5 engine…

Iwas invited to the fantastic flying days fly-in at vintage aircraft collector Walt Bowe’s ranch at Ala Doble, California in mid-October. I’ve known Walt for quite a few years, ever since he started attending the famous Brodhead, Wisconsin vintage aircraft fly-ins there, flying Denny Trone’s collection of antique biplanes –along with a few other friends, Chris Price, Andrew King and Ted Davis. I have been very lucky to get rides in many aircraft in the collection, including a Travel Air 3000, Waco DSO, Thunderbird, Krieder-Riesner KR-31 and Command-Aire 3C3, the first two Hispano-Suiza powered, the others OX-5, but I’d never flown any of them. Since Denny died in 2008, we haven’t seen any fly-ins where many of the old water-cooled OX5 and Hisso aircraft have been flying. Sometimes there have been one or two, but that’s been it. Ala Doble promised to be different, with Walt and friends flying many from Walt’s collection. In the end we saw a Hisso-powered Curtiss Jenny and Waco DSO, and OX-5-powered Waco GXE, American Eagle and Command-Aire, as well as a Hisso Standard J-1. There was also an OX-5-powered Alexander Eaglerock, but that wasn’t flying. It was amazing to see seven of these water-cooled V8powered biplanes together, along with many more fabulous vintage aircraft, including an incredible Lockheed Vega, finished in Shell Oil colours, which was by United Aircraft and Transport Corp, which then became United Airlines.

The following morning, Andrew walked over to me and handed me a flying helmet. “Come on, we’re going flying!” So off I went. I figured it would be something good, but it was way better than I imagined – we were flying the 1929 Command-Aire 3C3.

Some history

The Arkansas Aircraft company, later renamed CommandAire, was formed in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1926. The first design by Morton Cronk was not a success and was extensively redesigned by Albert Voellmecke, who had come from Heinkel in Germany in his quest to find a company to produce the Heinkel HD-40. He wasn’t successful with the latter, but instead decided to join the company – and later became chief designer. After improving the design and re-organising the company this became the Command-Aire 3C3, featuring a steel tube fuselage and wood wings – no brakes – and a tailskid, and was powered by the Curtiss OX-5. Around 200-250 aircraft were produced before the effects of the Great Depression took hold, and the Command-Aire closed its doors in 1931.

One of the unusual features of the aircraft are the Voellmecke designed, almost full span ailerons, which are effective even below the stall speed – a novelty at the time. Around 10 Command-Aires still exist of which only two or three fly.

The OX-5 was a development of the earliest Curtiss motorcycle engines which Glenn H Curtiss began building in 1902. His success had resulted in him being crowned as the world’s fastest man on a motorcycle in 1907, with a speed of 136mph, a title he held for seven years. The first Curtiss aviation engine was a modified 5hp motorcycle engine, which was fitted in an airship in 1904. By 1906 he had developed an air cooled V-8 engine which powered aircraft developed by the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA), a Canadian-American aeronautical research group led by inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell.

As the engines grew larger, water cooling was developed, and the first OX series engine was produced in 1912 for the Navy Curtiss A-1 Amphibian. This led to the 90hp OX-5 of 1915. The engine featured a single ignition and the valve train had to be oiled and greased externally by hand before each flight. The 8.2L, 90hp engine weighed in at 390lb and would primarily power the Curtiss Jenny trainer – and 12,600 were built between 1915 and 1919.

While it was big and heavy, thanks to its fairly good fuel economy (30l/h) and its low surplus cost, with almost-new examples selling as low as $20 – many of the early civilian aircraft produced by the big manufacturers of the 1920s used the OX-5, which were fitted in Waco, Swallow, American Eagle, Laird and Travel Air aircraft – the OX-5 became a legendary engine. Even in 1929 more than 2,500 of the 6,600 licenced aircraft were flying with OX-5 engines.

While many were flown across the country in the 1920s, these days most of the OX-5 powered vintage aircraft that are still flown are restricted to local flights around the airfield and local area, although some cross-country flying is still undertaken particularly in the Midwest where there are lots more big fields to land in should anything go wrong.

Below Air-to-air of the Command-Aire in 1996 just after it was restored. Comparing it to the current pictures, you can see what a great job was done and how well it’s been kept.

Nc583e

NC583E is a Command-Aire 3C3-T which was a two-seat trainer version with a ‘bathtub’ cockpit, with the trainee pilot sitting in the rear and the instructor up front, and are really just separated by a crash pad on a small bulkhead where the instrument panel would be. There are no instruments in the rear cockpit, except a compass fitted low down to the right, almost out of sight, presumably a modern addition just to meet certification requirements. In the front cockpit, there's just the water temperature and tacho on the left and the oil temperature and altimeter on the right, all easily seen around the instructor sitting in the front. The Johnson airspeed indicator is on the wing strut.

Unusually for an aircraft of this era, the Command-Aire has a trimmable horizontal stabiliser, controlled by a handle in the cockpit on the left side below the throttle lever. Also on the left side is the single magneto switch. On the right side is the unintuitive fuel on/off wheel, turn it 90° to turn on or off the fuel, and a choke for starting, although this wasn’t used. Heel brakes have been fitted, which are only really useful for slow speed turning and coming to a stop on tarmac.

The remains of NC583E were owned by noted antique aircraft collector, Andy Anderson, which included a fuselage with nothing firewall forward, tail surfaces and landing gear, and a set of wings only good for patterns. Andy listed these for sale in Trade-a-plane in 1976 and they were bought by Delta Airlines pilot, Art Knowles, who had been looking for one for a while. Art decided to restore it to its original configuration as much as possible. Collecting parts, he found an OX-5 that Tom Hegy had in Wisconsin, plus a couple of other engines to use for parts, and had Forrest Lovley build up a radiator and sent the instruments out to Vintage Aero in Westport, NY. The wings were built by Shirley Gerard in Art’s hangar, after he had heard that she was building another set of wings for a neighbour at the Justin Time airstrip where he lived. Unfortunately, Ross Perot was in the process of buying up all the local land in order to build the new Alliance airport and Art was forced to move out. He bought a ranch with an airstrip, but this took up a lot of his time, so there was little time to finish the Command-Aire, but in 1992 it was sent to Tom Brown in Unity, Wisconsin to complete, including all the sheet metal parts, covering in ceconite and painting in dope, then putting everything together.

The restoration was finished in mid-1996 and test flown, and then Art took it to Oshkosh where it won Silver Age (1928-1932) Champion. It stayed in Wisconsin for a while at Brodhead and then went down to Texas, where Art flew it for a few years. It was in the Biplane Museum at Bartlesville, Oklahoma for a time, before being sold to Western Antique and Automobile Museum (WAAM) at Hood River, Oregon. Flown there occasionally, it was eventually sold to Walt Bowe over the winter of 21/22 as part of a deal which saw them receive Walt’s Ford

Trimotor in return for the Command-Aire, Denny Trone’s old Waco DSO, and a Waco Taperwing.

Present day

Andrew took me through the pre-flight routine and then gave me a briefing on how to fly it. I’ll confess, right now I started to feel a little nervous, as it appeared that Andrew wasn’t actually coming along! “I can’t fly this thing solo straight off,” I thought, never having flown anything powered by an OX-5 engine. With aeroplanes like this, you become really conscious of their rarity. Luckily, Chris Price appeared, and he was going with me. “Great!” I thought! Turned out Chris had never flown this CommandAire either, but had flown plenty of OX-5 powered aircraft and was very experienced with these machines.

Having climbed into the rear cockpit, Chris started to show me where all the controls were… there weren’t many! Where there might be an instrument panel for the rear-seat pilot there's just a cross member mostly covered by crash padding, and on top of which sits a small windscreen. Fuel turned ON, how the trimmer worked, where the single magneto switch was, the aircraft’s small heel brakes and conventional stick and rudder pedals.

Pointing to the airspeed indicator on the right wing interplane struts, ‘minimum 70mph for approach’ was the only important speed Chris had to share. Chris took the front seat of the ‘bathtub’-style cockpit. Pointing to the water temperature gauge, he cautioned that if the water temperature started to get above 180, you definitely want to be landing. Changing to the tacho, he explained we might get 1,400rpm on take-off, but as soon as we got airborne and were climbing away, then bring the power back so the OX5 is turning 1,200rpm or less. This is a big, torquey engine, swinging a big prop, so it’s just about picking the minimum rpm to just maintain a positive rate of climb.

Above The front cockpit instruments.

Left Johnson airspeed indicator with a vane on a spring, no problems with blocked pitot tubes here!

Below The tandem ‘bathtub’ cockpit layout has no instruments in the back, except the compass that's almost out of view on the right. Below that is a choke control for starting the OX-5 and the fuel on/off control, just a 90deg turn on the knob.

Above Nigel in the back and Chris Price in the front get airborne from Ala-Doble’s hard runway at the start of the flight. The rest of the take-offs and landings were done from the grass strip visible in the distance.

Below Another Command-Aire pilot, Bernie Vasquez makes a low, slow flypast at dusk.

Engine primed, brakes on, stick back, throttle cracked, mag on, Andrew swung the prop and it started on the first blade. After a short warm up we made our way to the runway. As there was almost no wind, we took off to the north, away from the power cables at the south end of the runway, planning to land back in the opposite direction, again avoiding the cables. Chris did the first take-off, pointing out the salient facts, and we climbed away, circling back over the field and then did a few manoeuvres to get used to the aircraft. It’s worth me noting here that we weren’t communicating with headsets and an intercom.

This aircraft, like many in Walt’s collection, has no electrics, so it was just pointing to things and shouting, but surprisingly it wasn’t that difficult to hear even with earplugs.

While the Command-Aire is a pretty big biplane, its handling was surprising. It has push rod controls that work well, and while it could hardly be compared to a Bucker or Stampe, it was a lot lighter and smoother than many of its contemporaries, and way more pleasing than the heavy Stearman C3 which I’d flown in the day before. Returning to land on the grass/dirt strip, I watched what Chris did and took note of how the aircraft reacted, flying it nicely down to hold-off height, and a gentle flare to three-point attitude, the wide gear absorbing any lumps and bumps for a soft landing roll.

Time for a quick debrief while we waited for another aircraft to land. Chris said the most important thing, “Don’t get the nose too high, that is what will kill you.”

This time, the Command-Aire was in my hands. My take-off was not quite as straight as Chris’ had been as I got used to the rudder, but it was pretty easy to keep tidy and the tail soon came up. At what I’d describe as a ‘leisurely pace’, we accelerated to what seemed like a good flying speed – I’d like to tell you what that ‘good’ speed was, but I really have no idea as I wasn’t looking at the airspeed indicator and just gauged how the Command-Aire felt through the stick. Then, a gentle pressure back on the stick and we were airborne, accelerating in ground effect and then climbing away. Chris reminded me to get the power back, his finger pointing at the tacho. A few turns got us back into a position to land, then pulled the power to idle as we turned base to final for a glide approach. The OX-5 likes to be warmed and cleared regularly with little bursts of power. Your tools at that point are a sideslip if a little high, or a burst of power if a little low, but otherwise keeping that speed around 70. With the sight picture looking good, I rounded out and started to flare. We touched a little mains first, rather than three point, but the skip was minimal and we were soon rolling on all three, with the Command-Aire showing no tendency to head for the weeds, it was quite easy to keep straight. Now roll towards the end and turn around. I managed to find the heel brakes to help with that and then it was time to go again, Chris said everything was good, so off we went for the same again, this time a proper three point landing.

Stopped at the end, the eight cylinders of that OX5 burbling away up front, this time Chris got out. “That last one was great, so don’t do anything different,” he shouted over the exhaust note and slipstream, but did remind me not to forget to clear the engine a little more on idle approach. Earlier, he had briefed me that if the engine did stop, get the nose pointed at the ground and just aim to land straight ahead, wherever I was.

So now I was on my own. Technically all I ‘had’ to do was much the same, and just remember what I’d learned from the last couple of flights. But, it’s fair to say that, now being the sole person in charge, you do feel a bit of responsibility for this magnificent machine. For many years I never even thought I’d be lucky enough to get a ride in one, and now here I was about to solo a rarity powered by a WWI-era OX-5 water cooled engine, which had survived for 90-plus years. I lined up and pushed the throttle in…

I again took off to the north, and turned to the west towards the hills just to fly around a little, before joining back on right base to land to the south. As I was on base, I saw a Waco Taperwing, which might be on left base for the dirt runway or might be going to do a flypast along the tarmac. Not being sure I continued, but after I started to turn final it looked like he hadn’t seen me and was also going to land on the dirt. So being that he was faster, I decided the best thing to do was go-around and start again. Once back on downwind I could see he had landed and the runway would be clear, so started my approach again, remembering to clear the engine and occasionally checking my speed was still good at around 70. Mostly I flew on attitude, all the way down to the roundout and flare, landing slightly main wheels first, but it just rolled on and the tail soon came down, keeping straight – don’t want to mess this up!

Soon we were slowed down and I was adding power again to taxi. While the water temperature had been getting warmer, it wasn’t quite at 180° yet and as the airfield was starting to get busy with lots of arrivals, I decided that one flight was enough.

Back to the parking area, mag off, fuel off – and relax. I was elated! What a great experience and what an honour to get to fly such a rare aircraft. Chris and Andrew were soon beside the cockpit to ask how it went.

I jumped out and wandered off in my V8 haze to find Walt and thank him. I feel very lucky to have some great friends… ■

COMMAND-AIRE 3C3

Specifications

General characteristics

Length 24ft 6in

Wingspan 31ft 6in

Height 8ft 4in

Aerofoil Aeromarine 2A

Seats Two

Empty Weight 1,290lb

MTOW 1,990lb

Useful load 700lb

Fuel Capacity 40 US gal

Price in 1929 including new OX-5 $3350, reduced to $2250 by 1930!

Performance

Max Speed 100mph

Cruise Speed 85mph

Stall Speed 35mph

Stall Speed 35mph

Rate of climb 550fpm

Range 450 statute miles

Engine Curtiss OX-5

90hp.

Fuel consumption 30l/h