SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2021
BETTER THAN NEW CESSNA 150 AERIAL LUXURY AIRVENTURE 2021 VAA AWARD WINNERS
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Message From the President
September/October 2021
SUSAN DUSENBURY, VAA PRESIDENT
STAFF Publisher: Jack J. Pelton, EAA CEO and Chairman of the Board Vice President of Publications, Marketing,
AirVenture 2021
and Membership: Jim Busha / jbusha@eaa.org Senior Copy Editor: Colleen Walsh Copy Editors: Tom Breuer, Jennifer Knaack
A VAA record-breaker
Proofreader: Meghan Plummer Graphic Designers: Erica Horst, Julee Schampers, Cordell Walker
I COULD SAY THAT EAA AirVenture
Oshkosh 2021 was a record-breaking event, which would be a true statement, but I think that a more apt term would be blockbuster. All of our expectations were strikingly surpassed in the Vintage Village and throughout the Vintage area grounds. Of course, before the fly-in there was some uncertainty about projected outcomes as we were well aware that for so many this would be their first big public event as we start returning to some sort of postCOVID-19 normalcy. In the end, it turned out to be a grand reunion of friends and airplanes. Record breaking! On Tuesday, July 27, the Vintage area set a new record of 1,420 showplanes, which was more than 20 percent above our previous record of 1,105 showplanes. All of our areas, which include the Tall Pines Café, Red Barn operations, the charging station, and the Vintage Bookstore, as well as other Vintage operations, reported record attendance. We are still updating our data, but at the time of this writing, VAA has recorded 27,731 hours of volunteer time from 578 volunteers. That amounts to an average of 48 hours per volunteer. (Remember, some of these volunteers arrive on the Vintage grounds weeks before the published start date of the fly-in!) Thank you, volunteers, for sharing your time and talents. You are at the very heart of all that happens in the Vintage Aircraft Association! In actuality, the vintage airplane count was higher than stated. On
Tuesday the 1.46-mile-long Vintage flightline was completely full with every available aircraft parking spot taken. That included some creative aircraft parking by our talented flightline volunteers. At that point, our flightline volunteers marshalled vintage aircraft to the EAAcontrolled parking areas. I took time out that day to drive to both the South 40 and the North 40 to take note of the vintage aircraft that were being parked in those areas. I did not take an actual count, but I think the number of vintage aircraft that were parked in those two areas was notable.
ADVERTISING Advertising Manager: Sue Anderson / sanderson@eaa.org
CONTACT US Mailing Address: VAA, PO Box 3086, Oshkosh, WI 54903 Website: www.eaavintage.org Email: vintageaircraft@eaa.org Phone: 800-564-6322 Visit www.eaavintage.org for the latest in information and news.
Current EAA members may join the Vintage Aircraft Association and receive Vintage Airplane magazine for an additional $45/year.
I could say that EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2021 was a record-breaking event, which would be a true statement, but I think that a more apt term would be blockbuster.
EAA membership, Vintage Airplane magazine, and one-year membership in the EAA Vintage Aircraft Association are available for $55 per year (Sport Aviation magazine not included). (Add $7 for International Postage.) Foreign Memberships Please submit your remittance with a check or draft drawn on a United States bank payable in United States dollars. Add required foreign postage amount for each membership. Membership Service P.O. Box 3086, Oshkosh, WI 54903-3086 Monday–Friday, 8 AM—6 PM CST Join/Renew 800-564-6322 membership@eaa.org EAA AirVenture Oshkosh www.EAA.org/AirVenture
CONTINUED ON PAGE 64
PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF EAA ARCHIVES
888-322-4636
www.eaavintage.org
1
Contents FE AT UR E S
16 Don’t Lose Your Cool By Scott McFadden
22 When Luxury Was King The battle of the aerial limousines By Budd Davisson
30 Phoenix Rising The return of the Speed Bird By Connor Madison
40 Saving a Record-Setter The revival of Miss Dairylea By Sparky Barnes
50 Anything But Average A timeless restoration of a Cessna 150 By Christina Basken
2 September/October 2021
PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTINA BASKEN
September/October 2021 / Vol. 49, No. 5
COLUM NS 01
Message From the President
By Susan Dusenbury
04
Friends of the Red Barn
06
VAA News
10
Gone West
12
How To? Prepare a Surface for Fabric Covering By Robert G. Lock
14
Good Old Days
60
The Vintage Mechanic Continental W-670 Main Bearing Failures, Part 2 By Robert G. Lock
64
Flymart
COV ER S
Front EAA Photographer Connor Madison catches the Speedbird in a gentle left turn.
Back The iconic 150 keeps soldiering on. Christina Basken captured this iconic beauty over southern Wisconsin.
QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS? Send your thoughts to the Vintage editor at jbusha@eaa.org. For missing or replacement magazines, or any other membership-related questions, please call EAA Member Services at 800-JOIN-EAA (564-6322).
www.eaavintage.org 3
Friends of the
RED BARN 2021-2022
Thank you for your generosity! FOR ONE MAGICAL WEEK every year a temporary city
with a population of 40,000 materializes on the EAA grounds at Wittman Regional Airport. This aviation Brigadoon is called EAA AirVenture Oshkosh. AirVenture 2021 was aviation at its finest, surpassing all expectations with record-breaking attendance of both people and showplanes. On Tuesday evening our Vintage flightline volunteers had parked over 1,420 vintage airplanes along our 1.46-mile-long flightline. This surpassed the old record by over 300 vintage airplanes. Showcased among these 1,400plus aircraft were some of the most beautiful, rare, and spectacularly restored vintage airplanes in the world. How fortunate we all were to revisit a bygone era through these magnificent re-creations. As a dedicated member of the Vintage Aircraft Association, you most certainly understand the impact of our organization on the vintage aviation community. Of course, the Vintage Aircraft Association operates 12 months per year, but it is during AirVenture that most of you become active participants in our organization while sharing good times with your friends. During the week of AirVenture our iconic flagship building, the Red Barn,
becomes the heart of the Vintage experience for our members and guests. The Red Barn is a serene and charming place to meet friends — both new and old. It is energizing and relaxing at the same time. There is no other place like it at AirVenture. It is the fun place to be! For us to continue to support this wonderful place, we ask you to assist us with a financial contribution to the Friends of the Red Barn (FORB). For the Vintage Aircraft Association, this is our only major annual fundraiser, and it is vital to keeping our Vintage “field of dreams” alive and vibrant. We cannot do it without you. Through your contributions we were able to complete a multiyear plan of improvements on our buildings and on the Vintage grounds. Work continued through contractors during the pandemic and through both contractors and volunteers once the EAA grounds were opened to volunteers in June 2021. We still have a lot of work left to accomplish. Your contribution plays an indispensable and significant role in providing the best experience possible for every visitor to the Vintage area during AirVenture. Contribute online or make your check payable to Friends of the Red Barn and mail it to Friends of the Red Barn, Vintage Aircraft Association, PO Box 3086, Oshkosh, WI 54903-3086. Be a Friend of the Red Barn this year! The Vintage Aircraft Association is a nonprofit 501(c) (3) organization so your contribution to this fund is tax deductible. Looking forward to 2022! Blue skies! SUSAN DUSENBURY, PRESIDENT VINTAGE AIRCRAFT ASSOCIATION
4 September/October 2021
PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE DAHLGREN, DAVE WITTY
C A L L F O R V I N TA G E A I R CR A F T A S S O CI AT I O N
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 three years, after which the nomination must be resubmitted. Mail nominating materials to: VAA Hall of Fame, c/o Amy Lemke VAA PO Box 3086 Oshkosh, WI 54903 Email: alemke@eaa.org
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. •Email 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 be 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 email address. •Include any supporting material with your petition.
VAA News 2021 AIRCRAFT AWARD WINNERS ANTIQUE (THROUGH AUGUST 1945)
Bronze Age (1937-1941) Champion — Bronze Lindy
Antique Continuously Maintained Aircraft
Dennis Van Gheem De Pere, Wisconsin 1937 Stinson SR-9C, N18410
Mark McGowan Plymouth, Michigan 1940 Taylorcraft BC-65, N24371
Customized Aircraft Runner-Up Benjamin Redman Faribault, Minnesota 1940 Waco UPF-7, N164
World War II Trainer/Liaison Aircraft Champion — Bronze Lindy Grant Van den Heuvel Oconomowoc, Wisconsin 1943 Taylorcraft L-2, N61087
World War II Era (1942-1945) Open-Cockpit Biplane
World War II Era (1942-1945) Champion — Bronze Lindy
Jill Manka Lakeland, Florida 1942 Stearman PT-17, NC33NA
Frederick Stimson Fort Worth, Texas 1944 Beechcraft D17S Staggerwing, N67716
World War II Era (1942-1945) Outstanding ClosedCockpit Monoplane
Customized Aircraft Champion — Bronze Lindy
Seth Connell Little Rock, Arkansas 1941 Piper J-3C-65, N49901
Neal Goodfriend Sanger, Texas 1942 Waco VKS-7F, N31674
Antique Reserve Grand Champion — Silver Lindy Silver Age (1928-1936) Runner-Up Bernard Harrigan Fontana, Wisconsin 1929 Fleet 2, N431K
Roger James New Carlisle, Ohio 1934 Waco YKC, NC14139
Antique Grand Champion — Gold Lindy World War II Era (1942-1945) Runner-Up Hunter H. Harris Easton, Maryland 1942 Stearman PT-17, N909PT
Silver Age (1928-1936) Champion — Bronze Lindy Frederick Hansen Fox Lake, Illinois 1929 Travel Air 4D, NC692H
Mid America Flight Museum, 1929 Travel Air 6000
Mid America Flight Museum Mount Pleasant, Texas 1929 Travel Air 6000, NC8112
CLASSIC (SEPTEMBER 1945-1955) Outstanding Aeronca Champ — Small Plaque Brandon Abel Henderson, Nevada 1946 Aeronca 7AC, N2307E
Outstanding Beech — Small Plaque Aaron Leyda Bartlesville, Oklahoma 1948 Beech A35, N505B
Outstanding Cessna 170 — Small Plaque Miles Bowen Brighton, Michigan 1955 Cessna 170B, N3498C
PHOTOGRAPHY BY TANDESS O’NEAL
Outstanding Cessna 190/195 — Small Plaque Michael Larson Erie, Colorado 1949 Cessna 195A, N9857A
Ken Morris, 1949 Cessna 140A
Outstanding Ercoupe — Small Plaque Steven Westlund Belleville, Illinois 1946 Ercoupe 415, N2996H
Custom Class C (151-235 hp) — Small Plaque Outstanding Piper J-3 — Small Plaque David Brown Mansfield, Ohio 1946 Piper J-3C-65 Cub, NC6153H
Edward Warnock Garden Valley, California 1949 Luscombe 8F, N2183B
Custom Class D (236-plus hp) — Small Plaque Outstanding Piper Other — Small Plaque Michael Crosta Sugar Grove, Illinois 1953 Piper PA-20 Pacer, N1125C
Chauncey Webb Marana, Arizona 1950 Cessna 190, N1401
Best Customized Runner-Up — Large Plaque Outstanding Stinson — Small Plaque Jeff Thomas Texarkana, Texas 1948 Stinson 108-3, N6717M
Walt Fanti Greer, South Carolina 1947 Navion F, N512WD
Class I (0-85 hp) — Bronze Lindy Custom Class A (0-85 hp) — Small Plaque David Satina Norton, Ohio 1948 Piper PA-15 Vagabond, N4444H
Aeron Fout Melbourne, Florida 1948 Piper PA-17 Vagabond, N17VG
Class II (86-150 hp) — Bronze Lindy Custom Class B (86-150 hp) — Small Plaque David Smith Milaca, Minnesota 1950 Cessna 170A, N9775A
Danny Simpson Waunakee, Wisconsin 1955 Piper PA-22 Tri-Pacer, N2905P
Class III (151-235 hp) — Bronze Lindy Scott Crane Poplar Grove, Illinois 1948 Beechcraft 35, N4560V
Class IV (236-plus hp) — Bronze Lindy Brian Aukes Huxley, Iowa 1953 Beechcraft D18S, NC411J
Champion Customized Classic — Bronze Lindy Roger James, 1934 Waco YKC
PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTINA BASKEN
James Pyne Streator, Illinois 1947 Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser
www.vintageaircraft.org
7
VAA News Reserve Grand Champion — Silver Lindy Ryan Johnson Dodgeville, Wisconsin 1947 Piper J-3C-65 Cub
Grand Champion — Gold Lindy Ken Morris Poplar Grove, Illinois 1949 Cessna 140A, N3779V
CONTEMPORARY (1956-1970) Outstanding Beech Single-Engine — Outstanding in Type Michael Turner Suffolk, Virginia 1968 Beechcraft V35A, N7797R
Outstanding Piper PA-24 Comanche — Outstanding in Type
Outstanding Cessna 150 — Outstanding in Type
Karl Aber Fairview Park, Ohio 1959 Piper PA-24 Comanche, N6022P
Lucas Waddell Fort Worth, Texas 1970 Cessna 150K, N6291G
Outstanding Piper PA-30 Twin Comanche — Outstanding in Type
Outstanding Cessna 170/172/175/177 — Outstanding in Type
Brett Swartzendruber Hesston, Kansas 1963 Piper PA-30 Twin Comanche, N217HC
Glenn Chiappe Lago Vista, Texas 1957 Cessna 172, N8686B
Outstanding Cessna 180/182/185/210 — Outstanding in Type Blaine Pridgen Arnaudville, Louisiana 1959 Cessna 180, N2660G
Outstanding Limited Production — Outstanding in Type Zachary Sweetser Orchard Park, New York 1959 Luscombe 8F, N9927C
Best Continuously Maintained — Outstanding in Type Charles Morris Fort Worth, Texas 1964 Cessna 172E, N5744T
Outstanding Champion — Outstanding in Type Don Hendrickson Helena, Montana 1970 Citabria 7KCAB, N9064L
Most Unique — Outstanding in Type Blake Deal Jacksonville Beach, Florida 1959 Aero Commander 500, N159K
Outstanding Mooney — Outstanding in Type Daniel Johnson Mount Hope, Kansas 1964 Mooney M20E, N6975U
Preservation Award — Outstanding in Type Raymond Cook Spring Grove, Illinois 1959 Piper PA-18 Super Cub, N4273S
Outstanding Piper PA-22 Tri-Pacer — Outstanding in Type
Class I Single-Engine (0-160 hp) — Bronze Lindy
Daniel Fulwiler Algoma, Wisconsin 1958 Piper PA-22 Tri-Pacer, N8654D
Paul Wolff Baraboo, Wisconsin 1956 Piper PA-22 Tri-Pacer, N4860A
8 September/October 2021
PHOTOGRAPHY BY CONNOR MADISON
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Class II Single-Engine (161-230 hp) — Bronze Lindy Paul Papasavas West Orange, New Jersey 1965 Mooney M20E, N23FH
Class III Single-Engine (231-plus hp) — Bronze Lindy
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Robbie Wills Conway, Arkansas 1969 Beechcraft E33A, N2939A
Dean Richardson Memorial Award — Bronze Lindy Dan Maggart Winchester, Illinois 1968 Cessna 177, N3241T
Outstanding Customized — Bronze Lindy William Hollan Winston-Salem, North Carolina 1968 Piper PA-22 Tri-Pacer, N8857D
Outstanding Multiengine — Bronze Lindy Shannon Hankins Tulsa, Oklahoma 1966 Piper PA-30 Twin Comanche, N8063Y
Reserve Grand Champion Customized — Silver Lindy Raymond Cook Spring Grove, Illinois 1968 Piper PA-18 Super Cub, N4342Z
Grand Champion Customized — Gold Lindy Keith Kocourek Wausau, Wisconsin 1965 de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver, N22KK
www.vintageaircraft.org
9
Gone West
Sylvester “Wes” Schmid Sylvester “Wes” Schmid of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, age 99, was born into eternal life on Saturday, June 26, 2021. He was the beloved husband of 56 years to the late Julie (nee Snowhook) who passed away in 2009. Wes is the dear father of Kathi (Randy) Otto, Rob (Kathryn) Schmid, and Mary (Hal) Hinderliter; and the proud grandfather of Max (Lucas) Otterson, CJ Otto, Joe Schmid, and Ray Hinderliter. Wes is further survived by other caring relatives and friends. He was preceded in death by his brothers, Arthur, Rob, Will, and Dennis; son-in-law Steve Brown; and other beloved in-laws, nieces, nephews, cousins, and friends. Wes was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, on December 31, 1921, the fourth of five boys born to Caroline (nee Nigl) and Alfred Schmid. His mother passed away when he was 6 years old, after which Wes and his brothers were brought up by several of his mother’s sisters, most importantly by their widowed Aunt Rose (nee Nigl) Miller, who had 10 children of her own. Wes was just shy of 20 years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan. He first served stateside in 1942 as an MP (military police) in Indian Town Gap, Pennsylvania. He requested overseas duty and became an amphibious engineer attached to the 7th Infantry Division, participating in the invasion of Leyte, Philippines, in late 1944 and Okinawa, Japan, in 1945. After the war ended, he was assigned to occupation duty in Korea, returning to Oshkosh in December 1945. Wes attended college on the GI Bill, enrolling first at the Oshkosh State Teachers College, followed by a year of college in Kentucky before earning his degree in journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Upon graduation, he began his career at Olson Publishing Co. in Milwaukee, where he met Julie, who would become his wife. They married in 1953, and in 1956 they welcomed their first daughter, Kathi, followed by their son Rob in 1963, and youngest daughter Mary in 1967. Wes left Olson Publishing to start his own advertising agency, S.H. Schmid & Associates, where he worked until he retired at 85!
10 September/October 2021
SYLVESTER “WES” SCHMID December 31, 1921—June 26, 2021
Early in his marriage to Julie, Wes met Paul Poberezny and joined the Experimental Aircraft Association. He was an early member of EAA and served 33 years on the board of directors. He also served on the board of the Antique/Classic Division and held the position of chairman of the forums for 50 years at the annual AirVenture convention in Oshkosh. EAA dedicated the Forums Headquarters in his name. In 2012, he was inducted into the EAA Hall of Fame, Homebuilders Division. To watch a short video about his involvement in EAA, please go to EAA.org/Videos/1973932263001. Wes authored hundreds of articles for various EAA publications, and authored or co-authored numerous books about air racing and homebuilt airplanes. Certificated as a pilot in 1963, he owned two airplanes and built one of them. Despite increasing health issues as he aged, Wes lived independently in Wauwatosa in the home he owned since 1961. He was adamant about his independence and was remarkably successful with that independence until one week before his death. He remained mentally sharp during his last days, including charming the hospital and hospice staff. Wes Schmid was larger than life and left a lasting imprint on everyone he met. Although he outlived most of his peers, he leaves a void in the lives of many generations that followed.
How To? ROBERT G. LOCK
Prepare a Surface for Fabric Covering
PHOTO 1
BY ROBERT G. LOCK
PREPARATION OF A STRUCTURE to receive fabric covering requires some
thought be given to sharp edges or overlaps that need to be covered with tape. And, depending on what type of fabric attachment is chosen, one may want to cover the leading edge metal with a polyester padding that will blend out surface irregularities such as skin overlaps. I always cover any nailheads on the leading edge with a good grade tape — I particularly like to use “gaffer’s tape.” Gaffer’s tape has an adhesive that securely bonds it to an aluminum leading edge. Do that first before installing the polyester padding. Then inspect the rest of the structure, checking if there are any sharp edges that could penetrate and damage the fabric. I always put tape over trailing edge rivets. See Photo 1. Polyester padding then may be installed on the leading edge of the wing by bonding it along upper and lower edges of spars. Do not attempt to bond the entire leading edge, as the padding needs to be soft and pliable. In Photo 1, gaffer’s tape covers sheet metal attaching screws on a leading edge, and a strip of polyester padding is ready to be bonded in place. In Photo 2, the padding is bonded in place using manufacturer’s approved adhesive. The Champ wing chord is too wide to blanket-cover the wing; therefore, three strips of fabric had to be sewn together, so there was no need to glue fabric to the leading edge. Do not glue fabric to the padding; it won’t work. Using this method of leading edge protection will lead to a very smooth covering job where skin overlaps and nail or screw heads cannot be seen. Whenever possible I always use padding on the leading edges and a few other places on occasion. Photo 3 is a Bücker Bü 133 Jungmeister wing I covered many years ago for John Hickman. These wings were narrow chord, and the fabric could be blanketed in place and not require any machine sewing. The upper Bücker Jungmeister wing was covered with the Ceconite process back in 1970. This wing is all-wood construction, and the leading edge and other areas are covered with padding. The fabric was installed around the leading edge and glued to the inside of the wing spar. A little preshrinking was done to tauten the leading edge, and then it was coated with nitrate dope. Then the bottom of the fabric was bonded in place, wrapped all the way around the leading edge, and bonded to the area along the top of the spar. What did the airplane look like when it was finished? Well, here it is in Photo 4.
12 September/October 2021
PHOTO 2
PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF EAA ARCHIVES
July 13, 1929. Al Borkowski pulls off a trick landing within the confines of the Vico station in Gumption, Iowa. He uses his own radical forward slip he calls The Piledriver. Unfortunately, he came to rest on a small car that had just been topped up. Fortunately, the owner was in the office paying for his gas and buying some Mrs.Wagner's pies. Vico's attorney portrayed his damage as “repairable.” Men from the Aeronautics Branch can be seen racing from their car to remove the prop so Al can't try to fly it out. Al is NOT our kind of guy.
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PHOTO 4
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13
Good Old Days
From the pages of what was ... Take a quick look through history by enjoying images pulled from publications past.
14 September/October 2021
www.eaavintage.org 15
DON’T LOSE
Your Your Cool Cool SCOTT MCFADDEN, EAA 611467, VAA 726528
16 September/October 2021
THE FIRST GUY TO lose his aviation cool was Charles Taylor. In the winter/spring of 1903, “Charlie,” following the Wright brothers’ scratch pad sketches, built the engine for the Wright Flyer. He machined most of the engine parts from solid blocks or castings using a drill press, lathe, and hand tools. Developing 12 hp, the engine represented the first use of aluminum in aircraft manufacturing. Unfortunately, the engine never took to the air because it overheated and seized during its second day of bench testing. The second engine, again built by Charlie Taylor, powered the Wright brothers into history. Back to the topic at hand. Charlie and the Wright brothers used water and convection to cool their engine. We’ll stick with the basic system of direct air cooling. The key to successful cooling of our air-cooled aircraft engines is to get air to flow through the cooling fins! Sounds simple enough, right? The problem is there are a few relatively common issues that can upset things, especially if and when baffles/seals/ cowlings deteriorate with time and/or modifications are made without fully considering the airflow and pressure characteristics that affect cooling. During EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2019, I was asked about the engine baffles on my Taylorcraft, which appeared quite different from the same model/year aircraft just a couple of rows over. But before we get into that, let’s explore the basics. For air to flow, there must be a pressure differential (delta). In the case of the Taylorcraft, which is typical of the majority of fixed-wing aircraft powered by horizontally opposed piston engines, the “closed pressure engine cowl,” as the factory called it, was designed to create higher pressure above/forward of the engine and lower pressure below and aft of the engine — the division between the pressure zones created by the baffles, seals, and the engine itself. Round engines are perhaps a bit easier to visualize with the higher-pressure region in front of the engine and lower pressure aft. There are also up-draft (e.g., Shrike Commander, Globe Swift) and side-draft (e.g., Gipsy Major, Ranger), but all the same principles apply. How air flows around the engine is more important than how much air flows. This is clearly demonstrated by our experimental colleagues building high-performance aircraft with what seem like impossibly small cowling intakes. It’s not enough to have flow; we need to force, or at least encourage, air to flow in contact with cooling fins and other key under-cowl areas. Many aircraft are equipped with cowl flaps designed to increase the delta during certain phases of flight, but problems can still arise if the delta is compromised in any way.
Typical air cooling “system” — higher pressure forward and above, lower pressure aft and below. Must maintain a pressure differential (delta) for air to flow.
Taylorcraft’s “closed pressure engine cowl.” Note the “chin scoop.”
The original felt seals used on Taylorcraft, and other aircraft of our vintage aircraft era, are not adequate (at least for very long), in my view, and there are far superior materials available now. www.eaavintage.org 17
Here, the channel created by the crankcase baffle and front baffles is more apparent. Engine baffles work together to form a baffle “system.” Note that the baffle seals are installed such that air pressure “seals” them to their mating surfaces (other baffles, engine, or inner cowling surfaces).
The crankcase baffle directs the majority of air from the chin scoop to the upper (higher-pressure) area above the engine.
A common problem on older aircraft is the loss of some or all of the pressure differential within the cowling. No delta = no flow = low cooling effectiveness. Changes to, and the deterioration of, the baffles, seals, upper and lower cowlings, and scat-type ducting as well as baffles missing altogether create problems. Changes like installing a lightweight starter can allow cooling air to not only bypass the cooling surfaces of the engine but also reduce the delta. Our cooling air will take the path of least resistance, which may not be the path we want, or it may flow very little or not at all. Poor baffle seals (both condition and fit); holes in the baffles, including gaps around accessories, ignition wires, oil lines, crankcase shapes, etc.; and holes in the forward part of the lower cowling will cumulatively reduce the delta and/or allow cooling air to bypass key areas. Pay attention to the cabin and carb heat systems. These systems extract a lot of heat from the exhaust system directly out from under the cowling (this is true whether or not these systems are on or off ). We don’t want leaks in shrouds, control boxes, or flex ducts. Baffles can be a pain in the butt! The average engine is normally quite active in terms of vibration and motion relative to the cowlings; baffles need to be light and often must conform to complex shapes, and there’s lots of rubbing/chafing going on. In addition, from an engine maintenance perspective, they’re generally in the way! Some baffles were supplied by the original engine manufacturer and others by the airframe manufacturer. They are often hard or impossible to find as replacement parts, difficult to repair, and a challenge to fabricate for sure. This potentially explains why some baffles simply vanish! One such example is the Taylorcraft lower crankcase
baffle, which is a critical part in the BC12D cooling “system” and similar to several other types. Don’t be fooled by appearances. Years ago there was an AD on the Piper Navajo concerning engine overheating. A visual inspection of the baffle seals was required to see if they were “blown back” (i.e., blown inside-out, allowing cooling air to bypass the engine into the accessory area and out the cowl flap). With the cowling off, the baffles and seals might look okay, but once the cowling is pressurized (during the takeoff roll once airspeed is attained), the baffle seals blow back and the delta is gone. The original felt seals used on Taylorcraft, and other aircraft of our vintage aircraft era, are not adequate (at least for very long), in my view, and there are far superior materials available now. A good look around the under-cowl area while the cowlings are on can reveal issues not apparent with the cowlings removed. Save time and a bunch of money by keeping your eyes open for impending problems. As discussed, there’s a lot of motion between baffles and cowlings. This motion can eventually wear through, for example, a complex shape cowling. Baffle seal material (0.063-inch cloth/neoprene) bonded to the surface (Proseal or High Tack) will head off this problem before it gets expensive. Back to AirVenture 2019 and the conversation about different BC12D appearances. The key difference was, when standing in front of my aircraft and looking into the “chin scoop,” the area under the engine was not visible, whereas on the other Taylorcraft the engine intake, etc., was clearly visible. It would appear the practice of discarding the crankcase baffle was more widespread than one might want to believe!
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Let’s take a closer look at why the crankcase baffle is so important on aircraft so equipped. The nose bowl has an intake (chin scoop) that can send air below the engine. This is actually what we want to avoid, as it will reduce the delta. The crankcase baffle, if it’s in good condition, channels air along the lower engine case area to cool oil returning from the cylinders, etc. More importantly, it chokes the airflow going under the engine such that the majority of air coming in the chin scoop is forced up, past the crankshaft behind the propeller hub, and into the upper cowling area. This is good, as it increases the delta. Trouble is these crankcase baffles are, frankly, a pain in the a** and often in poor shape or, as in the case of my Taylorcraft and others, missing altogether. I used to tape over the lower intake for winter operations at -20 degrees Celsius, but I now suspect this actually made the engine run cooler! As far as I’m aware, there is no source to purchase this baffle. I was not able to come up with a drawing either. I asked the good folks on the Taylorcraft forum for photos, and from the photos I fabricated one. The baffle riveted to the back of the nose bowl chin scoop should fit reasonably snugly into the crankcase baffle. Leaks in this area increase the pressure under the engine, reducing delta. The BC12D originally had no air filter. If one has been retrofitted, another potential problem is introduced. The filter housing needs to be sealed to the cowling in some fashion; otherwise, your cooling delta is reduced again.
Pay attention to how air pressure acts on baffle seals. We want the pressure to push the seals against the cowling (or other sealing surface), but there needs to be sufficient support and/or rigidity so the seal does not “blow out,” as in the Navajo case. This lack of rigidity is why the original felt baffle seals will let you down. For the Taylorcraft front baffles, the seals extend forward and up from the lower baffle flange so the air pressure seals them against the nose bowl. In one of the photos, you can visualize the “channel” created by the crankcase and front baffles that forces air from the chin scoop to the top of the engine. Taylorcraft designed a relatively complex cowling system as part of the effort to outperform the competition all using the same engine. The lower cowling has four vents, each with a flange, and there is a flange along the bottom edge. These flanges are not just for show. By protruding into the airflow, they cause a drop in pressure, drawing air from the cowling below the engine. My Taylorcraft had Aeronca Champ exhausts on it when I got it, and the holes through the lower cowling most likely acted as unintentional but detrimental air intakes. Air being forced into the cowling in this area will increase the pressure under/aft of the engine, reducing the delta and therefore the airflow through the cooling fins. To ensure against this probability, a small flange can be added like the one pictured or found on some production aircraft. Challenges of fabrication: The first task when making or repairing baffles is to identify the material.
Crankcase baffle missing? Not a unique condition, apparently.
More modern baffle seal material, while not authentic, is a better-performing, more durable replacement and worth the deviation from original, in my view.
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How air flows around the engine is more important than how much air flows.
A good look around before opening the cowlings can reveal issues not apparent with the cowlings off.
Enough to get the basic shape into this 6061-0, 0.040-inch material.
See how 2024-0 material takes initial shape — not your average waffle!
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Chances are this is easier said than done, given the absence of such information for our older aircraft. My “go-to” material is 2024-T3. For more complex compound shapes, 2024-0 can be formed, and if necessary sent for heat treating to T3. The 2024 is not weldable, however, so if welding is required, 6061 in either the 0 state (when extreme forming is needed) or T6 for more rigidity. Match the thickness of the original part, but sometimes starting with slightly thicker material is useful. The material gets thinner as it’s stretched and thicker as it’s shrunk, and thicker material will leave room for dressing out tooling marks. Often a portion of a baffle can be replaced so a more complex shape can be reused, but sometimes there is not much room for rivet heads. “Flush both sides” can be a useful riveting technique. Countersink for a flush rivet in the usual way, and cut a half countersink for the shop head. Perhaps not as strong as a conventional shop head, but where baffles are nonstructural, the shop head can be less than 1/16 inch tall employing this method. Check out the EAA video library for “poor man’s” hydroforming examples. I used the cut-up inner tube process with a bottle jack and apple press(!) to get my Taylorcraft front baffles started, then used a rivet gun (with rounded off and polished snap), and hammers/ dollies/plywood wood buck to achieve the relatively complex shape around the cylinders. To form the rear baffles, I used 3/4-inch plywood profiled using copper wire. So basically measure the profile every 3/4 inch, cut the plywood to match, and then glue and through-bolt together. After some sanding to radius edges, you end up with a male and female form that can be hinged (like a waffle press!). Obviously not mass production but it gets the party started for these relatively complex parts. Whether repairing or fabricating replacements, be prepared for many (many) installations and removals, including the cowlings and nose bowl where applicable, to gradually trim baffles for correct clearances before and during installation of baffle seals.
So, to avoid losing your cool, here’s my checklist: 1. Have a look at the chin scoop if so equipped, and how well your crankcase baffle seals around the scoop and the engine case. 2. Check to see if your air filter housing is sealed against the cowling. If you have a duct of some kind ducting air to the carb/throttle body, make sure it doesn’t have any leaks as well. 3. Check the location and size of tailpipe opening(s) and how the cowling is formed around them. 4. Look for any openings in the top cowlings, baffles, and lower cowling that may upset the delta. 5. Check your baffle seals to ensure they are installed correctly and that they actually seal against the cowl. 6. Plug any holes where air can bypass the cylinder cooling fins. This includes any deteriorated grommets, wire and tube fair leads, scat-type ducting for oil and/or accessory cooling, etc., and any modifi cations (like a retrofit starter). 7. Check your exhaust shroud, carb heat, and cabin heat systems. Any leaks will lower the engine cooling delta, but more importantly, these systems carry a lot of heat from the exhaust directly out of the under-cowl area via the cabin heat dump/exhaust, carb air box, and possibly the tailpipe area depending on the configuration.
The chin scoop fits snugly around the crankcase baffle to reduce the possibility of air pressure below the engine.
This lower cowling has been modified to provide more clearance for the tailpipe. The unintended consequence was a decrease in cooling delta within the cowling.
Interesting detail: The Continental A65 has what’s called a “summerization kit.” It consists of two tabs that are attached to the inboard end of the intercylinder baffles. I actually didn’t know anything about this when I was fabricating new intercylinder baffles for CF-CLR but noticed the gap between the baffles and the crankcase at the inboard end and, as a matter of course (based on what I’ve shared above), unknowingly incorporated the summerization kit into the baffle. The tabs are only about 1/2 inch by 1 inch, but clearly the manufacturer considered this significant and certainly smaller than holes and gaps that might be overlooked under the average older aircraft cowling! P.S. In case you’re wondering, my apple press also makes lots of juice, most of which becomes pretty good “high octane” cider … another delightful way to keep one’s cool.
An apple press is good for more than aircraft parts!
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WHEN LUXURY WA S
KING THE BATTLE OF THE AERIAL LIMOUSINES BY BUDD DAVISSON
WHAT IMAGE POPS into your mind when someone uses the word “limousine”? It probably depends a little on your age group, with the younger amongst us picturing Brad Pitt or Leo DiCaprio stepping out of a mile-long custom creation at a red carpet event, a starlet on each arm. The gray dogs amongst us might have a similar image, but it’ll be a young Cary Grant, or maybe Marlene Dietrich, and the vehicle will be a hulking Packard, Cadillac, or similar limo. Those prewar limos defined comfort, luxury, and prestige — concepts that weren’t lost on the designers of the generation of airplanes that were aimed at the Depression-era, luxury-class market.
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PHOTOGRAPHY BY SCOTT SLOCUM
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LUXURY WAS KING Every prewar designer who wanted his airplane to keep up with the competition had to use a round engine of some kind, and none of them were small. The bigger, more serious limo-type birds almost all had either a 450-hp R-985 P&W or a 300-hp R-680 Lycoming or R-760 Wright. So, if the designer came straight back from the firewall to the instrument panel, which most did, then the narrowest the fuselage would be is around 48 inches. Some expanded the fuselage from the engine back, which gave airplanes like the Stinson SR-9 Gullwing a cabin that measures a whopping 52 inches across. How big is that? Well, a Beech Baron is 42 inches. A late model 182 is 42 inches. A Bonanza is … wait for it … 42 inches! Think about those numbers again: An airplane with a 985 that comes straight back to the instrument panel is going to be nearly a foot wider than a Bonanza. And it’s going to be round not flat on the top, and the windshield goes up from there, so the engine drives a lot of the dimensions of the cockpit. It’s automatically going to be much higher and wider. The result was that 1930s aviation interior designers had a huge space in which to work their magic. And if they even casually took note of what Packard, Cadillac, and their peers were building, the die was cast: The space dictated by the engine was going to be a cross between a living room and a limousine.
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When comparing the prewar, single-engine luxury aircraft against the best of the postwar single-engine designs, there is no comparison. The later aircraft pale in terms of what they offered the high-dollar market. If you’re comparing performance and fuel efficiency, that’s one thing, but if you’re comparing passenger comfort and the way in which the cabins are appointed, that’s something entirely different. There were almost no single-engine postwar aircraft that came even close to the prewar designs for the “limo feel,” with the exception of the Cessna 195 Businessliner. What put an end to enormous cabins and the luxury that went with them? That’s easy! The postwar birth of fuel-efficient and aerodynamically cleaner six-cylinder flat engines did them in. They promised speed while burning less fuel, but the passengers no longer rattled around in the arms of almost obscene comfort. A 450-hp R-985 Pratt & Whitney is a hair over 45 inches wide, not counting baffling or cowling. All dressed up, it was nearly 4 feet across. A six-cylinder O-540 Lycoming, which is typical of the new breed of motors, is just over 39 inches wide, but it’s a flat rectangle. However, flat engines had no effect on the manufacturing of four- and five-place airplanes until after World War II.
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The Staggerwing not only defined luxury but performance as well. Running close to 200 mph in limo seating allowed those aboard to arrive well ahead of airliners.
MAKING THE SPACE WORK
ST IN SO N RE LIA NT The Spartan brought aluminum and highspeed travel into a new age. Like others, it followed the ever-present, 450-hp R-985 Pratt & Whitney.
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So, now you have this huge space. How do you get into it? Where is the door? This design decision was driven by the airplane’s configuration. That and the fact that the cabin was a sizable amount off the ground. Sometimes the bottom door sill was waist high. When you’re swinging a minimum of 9 feet of propeller, that thumper up front has to be a long way off the ground. The biplanes really only had one place to put a door that made any sense. The pilot and passengers had to use a built-in step to get up on the left wing, and then walk forward until the way was blocked by landing wires or a strut that crossed the wing walk in front of them. And that’s where the door to the living room was usually placed. The door itself said a lot about what the passenger could expect once inside. Every single airplane of that size during the period had an honest-to-goodness living room style door, rather than a tinny-sounding compilation of sheet metal parts an inch or so thick. It would always be at least 2 inches thick, all wood, and it represented the best of the cabinetmaker’s art. It was an elaborate piece of furniture. Equally as important, as it was closed it made a deep-throated, soul-satisfying “thunk.” It was not unlike a refrigerator door closing, and that gave the passengers a subliminal feeling of solidity and safety. Once through the door, passengers usually stepped down a bit to the cabin floor. They couldn’t quite stand up, but they weren’t on their knees either. To their right was a bench seat that looked and felt more like a sofa than an airplane seat. It was often a full three-people wide and luxuriously upholstered. In fact, when modern-day restorers are researching the upholstery fabric needed to make their aircraft restorations appear original, they can almost always source the exact material needed from antique car restoration companies. The aircraft manufacturers of the day borrowed directly from their ground-bound limousine brethren in so many ways. In fact, Packard door handles and window cranks show up in more than a few aircraft of the period. As soon as the pilot’s or passenger’s head is inside the airplane, even before turning left to go between the two front seats to the flight deck, they are engulfed in “the smell.” It’s hard to describe, but just as WWII aircraft have a very distinct body odor borne of chromate, hydraulic fluid, and overheated Bakelite, the big airplanes of the 1930s often have a smell of their own as well. It’s a vague but pleasant aroma that appears to be a combination of the residential smell usually associated with large, expensive older homes and something that can only be described as “old airplane.” Modern Cessnas and Beechcrafts don’t have it, and there is no obvious reason why. Is it simply the fact that a round engine assaults our olfactory glands differently than a flat engine does? Or does fabric and wood smell different than aluminum and plastic? It’s hard to say, but the difference is definitely there.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY LEEANN ABRAMS, JIM BUSHA, BRETT BROCK, ED HICKS
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THE FLIGHT DECK WAS ACTUALLY A FLIGHT DECK
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Furthering the limousine feel of the decade’s big airplanes is the way in which the pilot is so separated from the passengers. They’re in the same cabin space, but there’s a sizable distance between the front and back seats. Often the rear passengers can’t touch the front seats with their feet. When on the ground, the pilot’s mini-throne can be reached only after climbing uphill between the two widely spaced front seats. Once the incline is conquered and the pilot snuggles into the usually oversized (for an airplane) seat, he’s very aware that he’s in command of a serious flying machine. One that, among other things, was born before T-instrument layouts and center radio stacks had even been dreamt of. And while he’s running his prestart checklist, he can crank the glass side window down for ventilation just as if it’s a car.
Depending on the bird in question, the yoke may be an actual circular steering wheel, its rim finely finished and shaped honey-colored mahogany. Or it may be a half-circle and made of black Bakelite. The panel, which is wonderfully devoid of plastic, is likely to be crackle-finished black accented with strips of mahogany or polished aluminum. Although mahogany sometimes makes up most of the panel. Regardless of the type, the overall effect is one that gives a nod to art deco sensitivities, which, during the ’30s, had worked their way into everything having to do with luxury, from houses to limos to airplanes. The interiors of the high-wing monoplane limos of the decade, primarily Stinsons, were very much the same as the biplanes, except you scrambled up a fixed ladder, often on both sides, under the wing to board. And now to the leading aero limo types. In an effort at showing no favoritism, they are in alphabetical order (we won’t mention that the Waco SRE is our favorite):
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A wide variety of Stinson Reliants not only provided comfortable transport but also were reknown for their load-carrying capacity.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY LEEANN ABRAMS, CHRIS HYNES
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Fairchild’s contributions to the passenger aircraft of the 1930s were the well-known F-24 and the far lesser-known 45. The 24 was nowhere near the size or power of most of its competition, but even though it was less-than-limo size, it excelled in having a well-appointed four-place cabin. In fact, its interior design was reportedly done by Raymond Loewy, who was possibly the most influential designer of the time. He was, for instance, responsible for a wide range of products that included Coca-Cola’s new bottle design and space age locomotives. With only 165 hp (Warner radial) or 200 hp (Ranger, six-cylinder inline), it was highly rated as being easy and pleasant to fly. It went back into production for several years after WWII. The Fairchild 45 was, for its time (1935), state of the art. A low-wing, retractable-gear monoplane equipped with a 360-hp Wright R-760 radial, its roomy cabin and smooth handling were aimed directly at the celebrity market. However, at a cruise speed of 160 mph, it was outclassed by both the Staggerwing and the Waco SRE, so only 17 were built. However, it holds an honored place in antique aircraft restoration history because of its central role in a U.S. Supreme Court case. To quote Wikipedia, “In 1997, Greg Herrick (Ed. note — Greg is well known to Vintage Airplane readers) requested drawings of a Fairchild 45 tail section for an ongoing restoration project. The request was refused, citing the design was a trade secret. This led to a Freedom of Information Act request and lawsuit that was debated in the United States Supreme Court. The effort led to the ‘Herrick Amendment’ added to the FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act of 2012.[1] The amendment released the ATC type certificate information for 1,257 aircraft first certified in 1927 through the beginning of World War II in 1939.” How’s that for a long-term contribution for a little-known design?
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Powered by both inline Rangers (pictured) and Warner round motors, the Fairchild 24 series had the comfort but at a lower cost than the bigger aerial limos.
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HOWARD
SPARTAN
The Benny Howard series of high-wing, 450-hp monoplanes can be traced back to his race-winning Mister Mulligan, which gave birth to the DGA (Damn Good Airplane) -7, -8, -15. The DGA-15 was the most popular. Powered by the revered R-985 of 450 hp, its enormous cabin was comfortable and well appointed. Today it is one of the more common of that period of aircraft, because during WWII the U.S. Navy ordered over 400 for utility use. A total of 520 were built.
The Spartan Executive heralded a new age in single-engine aircraft design. It was on an aerodynamic par with the latest fighters and was priced accordingly: $23,000 ($430,000 today). The brainchild of W.G. Skelly of Skelly Oil, he saw a market for a fast, modern airplane in the oil rich executives in his circle of friends. Then J. Paul Getty bought the company, and the quest for riches from the rich began. Even Howard Hughes is reputed to have owned one. Taking to the air in 1936, the Executive was the first allmetal retractable design available to the civilian market. It had full monocoque wings joined through a steel tube center section and fuselage that were faired with aluminum framing and skin. It boasted a 215-mph cruise speed, which was optimistic, but it was clearly faster than any of its competition and was easily one of the sexiest-looking civilian airplanes of its day. It’s probable that a majority of today’s pilots still think of it that way. Its interior appointments, outstanding visibility, performance, and good handling made it a legend, yet only 36 were built, and it was out of production before WWII began.
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By the time the concept of building aerial limos for the wealthy gained momentum in the mid- to late ’30s, Stinson was already a well-known, established manufacturer of near-airline-sized airplanes. Its SM-1 Detroiter first flew in 1926 and was an immediate success. Its Reliant line of four/five-place high-wing monoplanes debuted in 1933, with over 1,300 produced by 1941. They ranged from the SR-1 to the SR-10, with engines from 225 hp to the expected R-985 at 450 hp. It was produced in two distinct versions, the straight wing and the so-called “gullwing.” The SR-9 became a favorite with executives and celebrities and could be ordered with engines from 245 hp to 450 by both Wright and Pratt & Whitney. Comfort and practicality were the trademarks of the type.
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STAGGERWING BEECH All that needs to be said is the word “Staggerwing,” and all of the aviation superlatives an individual knows come to mind. It’s more than a legend. It’s the icon of 1930s aviation. When it first flew in 1933, it had yet to have a fully retractable gear, but it had engines as high as 710 hp (!), so it had far more performance than the market had seen. It also set the bar for passenger comfort, with luxury and comfort being major components of the design equation. However, it was expensive at a time when the Depression was really being felt. So, initially, sales were slow. By 1934, the landing gear was totally retracted and horsepower had settled at 285, although a wide range of engines could be ordered. The most popular version was the D17S of 1937, with the ever-present 450-hp R-985, and this was built all the way through WWII. A total of 785 Staggerwings were built, which includes 479 D17Ss, of which 412 were built for the military. So, we can thank a war for giving us such a large number of such a beautiful airplane. It’s notable that after the war, the Staggerwing was redesigned with what has to be the most artful nose configuration in civilian aviation as the G17S. Twenty were built, and they were coming off the production line at exactly the same time that a new upstart, the Bonanza, was being delivered. Bi-wings and V-tails were sharing the same production space!
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There is a seemingly endless line of different Wacos, with cryptic designations in both open and cabin biplane configurations. However, not all of the cabin versions were built to be flying limos, although even the earliest cabin Wacos, the so-called Standards, had lots of room. They all used less-expensive, lower-horsepower radial engines and built themselves an excellent reputation as being airplanes that could be counted on to haul four people or big loads out of shorter, less-than-hospitable runways. The company didn’t get serious about going after the high rollers until it introduced its Custom line that culminated in the E series of 1939. Waco realized the market was demanding more speed and comfort as well as longer range, so the E series, dubbed the Aristocrat, was introduced in 1939. The line started with the ARE and a 300-hp Jacobs L-6 engine, and ended with the SRE (400-hp R-985, rapidly increased to 450-hp). It featured a longer, slimmed-down fuselage and unequal length, staggered wings that were plywood skinned so they were much cleaner aerodynamically. The strut bracing of the earlier airplanes disappeared, to be replaced by wires, and the airplanes had an advertised cruise speed of 195 mph, although 180 mph was more realistic. This matched or exceeded what the newest airliner, the DC-3, could provide. The airplane still has a reputation for speed, style, and excellent handling.
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Postwar, the concept of airplanes that provided limousine accommodations was still alive and well. However, the search for luxury aerial accommodations had been transferred over to multiengine aircraft, of which the Twin Beechcraft D18 was the leader. The Cessna 195 was the last to carry the single-engine limo banner. It was discontinued in 1954, at which point the single-engine limousine airplane saw its day come to an end. It was a glorious run of glorious airplanes, but speed and efficiency, postwar character traits that epitomized everything about the postwar period, airplanes and otherwise, won out. It’s a little sad but unavoidable. A final, intriguing thought: If flat engines hadn’t been invented, what would C-172s look like? Try to picture a 172 with a 180-hp Warner Scarab. Only the nose wheel spoils the image.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY WILL CAMPBELL, ED HICKS, JIM KOEPNICK, CHRIS MILLER
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END OF AN ERA
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CLICK HERE
TO SEE A FLICKR GALLERY ON THE SPEED BIRD
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PHOENIX RISING
THE RETURN OF THE SPEED BIRD STORY AND PHOTOS BY CONNOR MADISON
THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN to Brodhead Airport
(C37) in Wisconsin know what a special place it is. The grass field looks as if it were plucked straight out of the 1930s, and the hangars there hold some truly unique and special aircraft. One such airplane is Chris Price’s one-of-a-kind 1935 Brunner-Winkle Speed Bird. Some may recall this airplane from its single appearance at EAA Oshkosh 1992 and the subsequent article in the May 1993 issue of Vintage Airplane. Since then, the Speed Bird has lived a relatively dormant life, that is until it came into Chris Price’s possession in 2020 and has since been reinvigorated.
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CLICK HERE TO SEE A VIDEO ON THE SPEED BIRD
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September/October 2021
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BIRD HISTORY The Speed Bird’s origin traces back to the Brunner-Winkle Bird company of New York. The company is best known for its production of three-place biplanes with sesquiplane wing design (the bottom wing is half the area of the top wing), powered by Curtiss OX-5 and Kinner engines. The Speed Bird was likely designed around the 1932 time frame. Like many aviation companies at the time, the Great Depression proved to be too much to withstand, and the company went out of business before the new design was ever produced. In 1933, the company was resurrected as the Speed Bird Corp., made up of former Bird employees. The company obtained the remaining inventory of Bird parts with the hopes of being a supply source for Bird aircraft owners. In 1935, the company completed a sport biplane that was roughly half the size of a standard Bird, with side-by-side seating for two and an 85-hp LeBlond engine. The airplane was named the Speed Bird and registered as X15641. It was the 220th and last Bird ever produced.
In 1936, the aircraft was moved to the West Coast for the Los Angeles Air Races, likely with the hope of marketing the aircraft, and in 1937 the Speed Bird Corp. relocated to San Jose, California. Company President Fred Anderson, who was also the owner of the Speed Bird, passed away not long after, and the company was dissolved. The Speed Bird was left outside and later on damaged by an errant taxiing aircraft. In 1950, Fred Anderson’s widow donated the airplane to the Aeronautics Department at San Jose College, where it remained until the school closed down the department. San Jose airport manager Jim Nissen, who was also an antique aircraft owner and restorer, was tasked with clearing out the department’s inventory. He was given the Speed Bird in exchange for his services. In 1967, Jim met John Denny, who happened to be visiting his hangar checking out Jim’s Fokker D-7 project. One of the key missing parts for Jim was that he only had one of the two Spandau machine guns for the airplane. As fate would have it, John was able to source a Spandau machine gun and gifted it to Nissen. John also expressed his interest in restoring a biplane, and in early 1968, Nissen agreed to sell John the Speed Bird project, minus the LeBlond as he had removed it for another of his projects.
“I LIKE THE FLIVVER PL ANES, AND IN RECENT Y E A R S I’ V E GOT T E N A L I T T L E BI T M OR E I N TO BI PL A N E S, A N D T H I S S ORT OF M I X E D B OT H T HOS E WOR L D S. I M E A N I T I S T H E T I N I E S T L I T T L E A I R PL A N E FOR A B I PL A N E .”
— C HRI S P RI C E
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TOP: The side-by-side seating arrangement is probably the most unique aspect of the Speed Bird. BOTTOM: A 145-hp Warner engine is what powers the Bird today.
RESTORATION Shortly after purchasing the Bird, John set out on a complete restoration of the airplane. Along the way, he sourced a 125-hp Warner engine to replace the missing LeBlond. After working on the project for 20 years, in 1988 John decided to contact Tim Talen, who was a well-known vintage aircraft restorer on the West Coast at the time. Tim agreed to take on the project and trailered it back to his shop in Springfield, Oregon. After thinking he’d be working with an out-of-state customer, Tim was surprised when John called him to say that he’d relocated to Oregon. Over the next few years, the project was a stop-and-start process, as John wanted to be in Tim’s shop to work on it. After moving to Oregon, about 15-20 miles from Tim, John would frequently drive his RV to the shop for weeklong work sessions. Tim remembered that they did make substantial progress on it during this time. Speaking to Tim today, he recalled that the project arrived to him as a relatively complete airplane. “I think John had gotten pretty much a complete airplane out of the college …. The things that were missing would have been the typical easy replacement stuff and the kind of things that you would replace and do anywhere. You know, cables and hardware and pulleys and stuff like that. Structurally it was pretty much out there.”
Even though it was a mostly complete airplane, there are a couple unique features of the airplane Tim encountered during the restoration that still stick out in his mind. One of those features was the brake setup, which was very similar to the system used on Laird biplanes. “Laird had an unusual rudder pedal where the pedal was actually a pivoting pedal, and so if you moved your foot outboard on the pedal and twisted the pedal, you would get brake action. So there was an unusual kind of a twisting, or a rotatable rudder pedal that had the brake pad on the outboard side of it. And this airplane had that feature also; it was a little unusual.” Tim also mentioned the gear geometry being a bit unusual. “It resembled very distinctly the setup on a Kreider-Reisner. The KR series of airplanes — KR-21s, -31s, -34s — all of that stuff had an unusual geometry to the landing gear, which for all practical purposes was not a friend to pavement. It was okay on grass, which was fine then; that’s what they had. But it’s not been a very friendly thing for paved runways, for some of those airplanes they’re a little bit cantankerous. So it had some unusual features to it, and that was kind of what was sort of neat about it. Plus the fact that it was a two-place, side-by-side biplane, open cockpit — that’s pretty cool.” As the project was nearing completion in the summer of 1992, John Denny brought his nephew Buck Dodson on as a partner in the airplane. Buck, who was also a pilot and air traffic controller, was very enthusiastic about taking the airplane to Oshkosh, despite it not being completely finished. As Tim remembered it, they were at the 90 percent done, 90 percent to go phase and were having problems getting the engine to run for any length of time. John was encouraged by his nephew’s enthusiasm and agreed to take the airplane to Oshkosh. Tim helped them build a special box around the airplane to trailer it there, and that’s where his involvement with the project concluded. Once at Oshkosh, the airplane still needed to fly in order to be judged. The biggest problem preventing that was the engine’s inability to run past a quick startup, and they found that the wrong model carburetor had been fitted. With the help of Bird aircraft expert Dick Hill and many others, the Speed Bird was fitted with a correct carburetor, and Dick was able to make a short flight down the runway, which qualified the aircraft to be judged. It was awarded the Outstanding Open-Cockpit Biplane antique award at Oshkosh ’92. After Oshkosh it was trailered back to California, where it remained in Dodson’s possession. The airplane was then flown on the West Coast for about six years before being donated to the Hoosier Air Museum in Auburn, Indiana, in 2000. www.eaavintage.org 35
“THE UNIQUENESS OF T HE SPE E D BIRD IN PA R T I C U L A R I S T H E S I D E- B YS I D E S E AT I N G , AND MOST BIPL ANES ARE TA N D E M ; 9 9 PE RC E N T OF THEM ARE TA N D E M .”
— C HRI S P RI C E
ENTER CHRIS PRICE Fast-forward 20 years to the spring of 2020 when it went up for auction and caught the eye of Chris Price. With his deep-rooted love for vintage aircraft, especially the small Flivver airplanes, this was an ideal airplane for him. “I’ve always liked Flivver planes,” Chris said. “I built a Heath Parasol and then a Curtiss-Wright Junior. I like the Flivver planes, and in recent years I’ve gotten a little bit more into biplanes, and this sort of mixed both those worlds. I mean it is the tiniest little airplane for a biplane. There are a couple other airplanes this small but very few. So it’s the best of both worlds for me — it’s that Flivver world and then the biplane world. The opportunity presented itself at an auction where the price was right and there weren’t very many people there, so voila.”
RETURN TO AIRWORTHINESS Thanks to being kept indoors for more than 20 years, Tim and Denny’s restoration work was still in incredible shape when Chris purchased the aircraft. The most concerning part for him was how many times the airplane had been taken apart and trucked.
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“The airplane had been trucked so many times, it’s only got about maybe 60 hours on it since the restoration, and it’s been taken apart maybe six times and been put in a truck and then trailered,” Chris said. “[When] it was trucked to the museum in Auburn, Indiana, in 2000, it was put back together as static display only; they just crossthreaded bolts and didn’t put cotter pins in. They put the fairings back on, which then buries all that stuff for doing an annual; it’s really hard to find some of those things unless you take the plane apart again. So I then took it apart again and took the wings and tail off and trucked it to Wisconsin. So that’s the sixth trucking that I know of. Then when I put it back together, I actually had three friends put it back together in a day, and they’re highly qualified airplane mechanics — Andrew King, Terry Bowden, and Trent Davis at Brodhead. “As far as mechanical-wise, it didn’t need anything; it just needed a whole bunch of inspection to really make sure everything was done correctly. It’s just unusual to have a plane taken apart so many times. And every time it was taken apart was by somebody else. That’s never a good recipe,” Chris said. “I was seriously tempted to fly it home from the auction, but I’m glad I didn’t. There were a couple things you just could not physically see unless you took them apart; bolts weren’t cotter-pinned or even had nuts on them at all. Nothing against anyone; it’s just the airplane was a static display only in the museum.”
ENGINE CHANGE Upon purchasing the aircraft, Chris elected to remove the 125 Warner, since it didn’t have any historical significance to the airplane, and replaced it with a 145 he had. This was also motivated by his involvement with Airmotive Components, which was working on a new piston for 145 Warners. Since the Speed Bird is experimental, he was also able to use it as a test bed for the new pistons. “The pistons, that was a really fun project. The 145 Warner was flying on my father’s Fleet model 1, and one evening we just had a huge amount of smoke coming out of one cylinder. It’s nice the engine had individual exhaust stacks, so you could tell immediately which cylinder is causing the problem. That night we took the cylinders off, and three of the pistons were cracked in half and the other four had cracks showing,” Chris said. “Warner 145s are really good engines. They are so good that the parts were used up. So since about the mid-1960s, it’s been really, really hard to find pistons, and specific valves are a little bit hard to find. [So] two years ago I was looking for new pistons, and I could only find five old-stock original pistons, and I need seven. So I got with a very good friend of mine, and we decided we’d start the process of making new pistons and going through all of the paperwork to do that. So far they’re working fabulously. They’re a forged piston; the original was a casting. It’s actually quite neat to think that Airmotive has made a part that is as good or well exceeds the original Warner part.” TOP: Two of the original Warner pistons show their wear next to the new forged piston. BOTTOM: The new prop with more pitch results in a much nicer flying airplane.
The requirements for approval on the pistons meant the engine needed 10 hours of flying time, and then the cylinders needed to be removed for inspection. Chris mentioned, “That’s really dull, flying around over the airport for 10 hours. So I had four other friends, we all took turns flying it; it had to be solo, but each pilot would take an hour turn. We did that in two days. The airplane’s fairly docile if you’re well-versed in other types; if you’ve flown a Stearman, you’ve flown a Cub, and you’re proficient, this airplane is a real nice-flying plane. It’s flying with an engine that’s almost double the size of the LeBlond. This is 500 cubic inches, and the LeBlond [was] 266. So it flies quite spritely; it’s a nice-flying airplane. A friend says when you’re flying in formation with this, it’s sort of like a little hummingbird, just sort of zippin’ all around.”
PROP CHANGES Despite the airplane being very docile now, during the aircraft’s last flying stint in the 1990s it had gained a reputation as a not-so-great-flying airplane. Chris discovered that a large part of that problem was in the propeller. “The propeller was almost 100 percent of the culprit for its bad flying characteristics,” he said. “The redline of the engine is about 2000 rpm; it’s 2025 to be exact. If you do a static runup with a Warner, you really shouldn’t get much over 1750 static … and this engine at static would go over redline. You couldn’t even get to full throttle, ’cause you’d be at 2000 rpm before you had like three-quarters throttle, and so we never pushed it. I think it would have gone to 2200 rpm. “That was another reason I didn’t fly it home from the auction. To keep it under redline, you’ve got to fly around with the power back, so then you don’t have very much manifold pressure, so then you don’t have very much power,” Chris explained. “My friend down there at the auction helping me inspect it said it’s like flying a Cessna 150 prop on a Cherokee 180. Then put four people in the 180, and you’d be spinning 3000 rpm and the airplane would barely [go]. You can’t put the power in because you’re over-revving it. That’s what was really going on. The length of [that] prop [was] 86 inches and the pitch was 49. The prop I put on it is an 86-68. So now I have 19 more inches of pitch. Now it flies great. So that’s why the airplane had a really bad reputation. It was always flying around, mushing, close to stall speed to keep the engine from over-revving.” www.eaavintage.org 37
TOP: Chris Price pilots the Speed Bird on a beautiful fall morning. BOTTOM: The airplane has spent its entire lifetime as an experimental aircraft.
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SIDE BY SIDE With the airplane properly sorted out, Chris has found he really enjoys its distinct features while flying. “The uniqueness of the Speed Bird in particular is the side-by-side seating, and most biplanes are tandem; 99 percent of them are tandem,” he said. “Without any intercom system, you’re very distant from your passenger or the person you’re flying with, and this one is so intimate. You can pull the power back and talk and say, ‘Aren’t the beautiful fall colors amazing?’ That makes it unique and really neat. I think what they were trying to market is, they were trying to market an airplane that you can take a friend for a ride, give your girlfriend a ride, something of that nature.”
FUTURE OF THE SPEED BIRD When asked if he plans to source a LeBlond engine for the airplane, Chris recognized that it would be a cool thing to do. “You know I really should …. Personally, the 145 is probably where it’s going to end with me, but I think it would be a better airplane if the LeBlond went back on it,” he said. “It’d be a little bit lighter; it’d probably be about 85 pounds lighter. It’d just be a docile little airplane. With me it’s going to be a 145, and that’s it. Somebody else, to put it back to a LeBlond would be really cool. They’re available engines; they’re not astronomically hard to find, easier to find than a 145. They’re not super-rare motors. Not quite as reliable as the 145; that’s what I like about the Warner. It’s going to stay the way it is.”
Whether it’s with the LeBlond or the Warner, it is special to see this oneof-a-kind airplane flying again in Chris’ capable hands. For Tim Talen, it has brought closure that he never got when the airplane was last in his care. As he put it, “It’s heartwarming to see it in the air again.” It is truly remarkable that this airplane is still around when you consider the amount of hardships it has endured over its lifetime. The best part is, Chris is determined to make sure it stays around for a long time, so future antique aircraft enthusiasts will be able to enjoy this unique little biplane.
BELOW: The instrument panel is original to the aircraft.
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PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAPHNE HUNT
Saving a Record-Setter THE REVIVAL OF MISS DAIRYLEA BY SPARKY BARNES
Of the thousands of Piper J-3 Cubs manufactured, very few set official records resulting in the laurels of the media being laden upon them. But in 1938, a daisy chain of headlines was heaped upon NX20261, a modified J-3 Cub powered by a 50-hp Franklin engine and dubbed Miss Dairylea. Even so, her fame was ephemeral, and the dust of decades slowly enveloped her achievement and her airframe … until a certain talented gentleman by the name of Bob Hunt carefully cradled her remains and revived rev her to full airworthiness.
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Master Restorer Formerly of Hackettstown, New Jersey, and now residing in Denver, North Carolina, Bob first became interested in flying because his father was a pilot. Bob started lessons in 1978 and soloed in a Piper Cherokee 140, built time in his Piper J-4, took his checkride in a Cessna 150, and acquired his pilot certificate in 1980. “I had about five hours’ flying time, and my father and I wanted a plane, so I purchased a 1939 Piper J-4 Cub Coupe, and we flew that for a few years. So then we got a Super Cruiser project when I was living in New Jersey, and my A&P Bill Shatt helped me in restoring that plane in 1986. I had the Stits VCR tape on rib stitching,” Bob said, “and I sat in front of the TV practicing stitching a tail feather. I’d play the video, stop, rewind, and play it again — that’s how I learned rib stitching. I’d never picked up a spray gun before, so I had to learn how to do all that — it was a ‘learn as you go’ type thing, but it came out pretty good. It first flew in June 1988, and I won the award for best PA-12 at Sentimental Journey that year. I was 32 when I started doing restorations, and about 13 years later, I got my A&P.” Bob’s asphalt seal-coating business kept him occupied from May to October each year, allowing him to devote the rest of the year to airplane restorations for himself and his growing clientele. “It’s only after 30 years of restoring airplanes that I’ve become pretty good at it,” Bob said, “and that’s because I’ve made every single mistake you can possibly make! Miss Dairylea is the 34th airplane I’ve restored.”
Endurance pilots Harold Allen (left) and Merrill Phoenix (right) in Miss Dairylea.
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Setting the Record
Miss Dairylea set a world lightplane endurance record of 106 hours and 6 minutes in September 1938 in Syracuse, New York, breaking the previous record set by a three-cylinder radial Lenape Papoose J-3P Cub flying nonstop from Newark to Miami and returning (63 hours, 54 minutes). The endurance flight came about when the Aircooled Motors Corp. of Liverpool, New York, wanted some publicity for its new four-cylinder, horizontally opposed Franklin aircraft engine. “Carl Doman, president of Aircooled Motors, discussed this idea with Harry Ward, head of Empire Transport; Merrill Phoenix, a well-known local transport pilot; Howard Piper of Piper Aircraft; and others, and the project soon took off,” wrote Harold Allen in his personal account of the endurance flight. Dubbed by the media as the “flying bachelors,” Merrill had selected Harold, an engineering teacher at Syracuse University and good friend of his whom he had taught to fly, to be co-pilot for the flight. As to their aviation background, a news clipping revealed: “Professor Allen, 31, has been flying for five years as a hobby. He owns a Fleet biplane, equipped with both landing gear and pontoons. … Mr. Phoenix, although only 29, has been flying since 1926 … one of the ships flown by Mr. Phoenix many years ago was the [Curtiss] Robin.” During preparations shortly before the flight, Merrill discovered iron filings beside the fuel tank filler neck, and a magnet lowered into the tank fished out more metal. Someone was trying to sabotage the flight before it even began! The tank had to be removed — no small feat in itself, for it was behind the engine and ahead of the instrument panel. That night, Harold dreamed of precisely how to remove the tank. He immediately went downstairs from the sleeping quarters into the hangar and easily removed the tank to clean it. From that point onward, Miss Dairylea was closely guarded. The Dairyman’s League bought the right to name the airplane. Champion furnished spark plugs, and Sunoco provided fuel. The Onondaga Hotel supplied the pilots with an abundance of food — and delicious fresh Dairylea milk, of course — and Sealright furnished the containers for food and waste. The flying bachelors launched September 2, the opening day of the New York State Fair, from the oval inside the racetrack at the fairgrounds. They were heavily loaded, and their struggle for altitude lasted the entire flight. A large radio transmitter and receiver had been installed, but once airborne, the pilots made a quick decision to remove that equipment and lowered it via rope to their ground crew. The Cub still wasn’t performing as well as hoped, and the pilots suspected the carburetor air heater they’d installed might be the problem. They succeeded in
PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF BOB HUNT
painstakingly cutting it off the air intake by inching a hacksaw blade back and forth through a gap in the firewall for several hours. It didn’t make an appreciable difference, though, and later in the flight, the engine was misfiring as well. Not only did their flight make a splash in the media, but it also it literally ended by splashing into Lake Onondaga. Miss Dairylea was only able to climb to 1,800 feet AGL, and the pilots decided to fly over the lake in the cool of night and change the spark plugs. The windshield’s center portion was a flexible plastic windshield that could be slid up and over the top of the wing, providing a way to access the Franklin’s plugs (all on top of the engine) as well as add oil. With wrench in hand, Merrill opened the windshield to start replacing the plugs as Harold throttled back. But they were losing altitude. Harold later wrote: “At 400 feet, I shoved the throttle forward, but three cylinders were not enough to keep us in the air. I headed for the marina at Liverpool …. As we approached the water, I cut the throttle and pulled it up into a full stall. We splashed into the lake just off the end of the dock …. I dove out the side door, and Merrill came out through the open windshield. … Merrill and I, one on each wingtip, swam the floating Cub ashore and pulled her as far up the bank as we could.” (Decades later, Harold and Merrill were surprised to learn that the Franklin’s misfiring was cured by the installation of Stromberg’s newly
developed rosette main jet; production engines were changed accordingly.) An Aircooled Motors company ad favorably summed up the Franklin 4AC-150’s feat: “The remarkable performance of the Franklin engine, using standard 70 octane automobile gasoline and ordinary 14 mm automobile spark plugs, proved the ability of this compact 50 hp unit to do a smooth, economical job under all conditions of flight. Flying more than 7,000 miles on 287 gallons of gas, its hourly consumption was less than 2-3/4 gallons per hour. Oil consumption averaged 0.018 quarts per hour. All this while subject to the severe strain of hauling nearly 60 5-gallon cans of gas aboard, along with 25 additional contacts for food and supplies. Quoting from a note dropped by pilot Phoenix after passing the 100-hour mark — ‘I’ve flown behind a lot of them, but the all-around performance of this little Franklin engine on this long flight proves to us that when it comes to dependability and smoothness — we’ll take Franklin.’” Following the record-setting flight, the airplane was apparently stored in a hanger for about a year before someone converted it back to a regular J-3 Cub. The September 1, 1939, issue of the Malone Evening Telegram reported that Herman Perry escaped uninjured when he crashed the Cub (then dubbed Li’l Brewin’) from a low altitude. The Cub skidded along telephone wires and snapped “two telephone poles off before it plummeted down in the field, nose-first.”
Aircooled Motors Company ad touting the endurance record.
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PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAPHNE HUNT
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SPECS Piper J-3C-40 Cub
ATC No. 660 Eligible to be flown by a sport pilot. WINGSPAN:
35 feet, 3 inches
LENGTH:
22 feet, 3 inches
HEIGHT:
6 feet, 6 inches
EMPTY WEIGHT:
596 pounds
GROSS WEIGHT:
1,000 pounds
USEFUL LOAD:
404 pounds
SEATS:
1 pilot, 1 passenger
ENGINE:
40-hp Continental A40-4 (Franklin 4AC-150A)
FUEL:
9 gallons
OIL:
4 quarts
MAX SPEED:
87 mph
CRUISING SPEED:
72 mph
STALLING SPEED:
32 mph
RATE OF CLIMB:
425 fpm
SERVICE CEILING:
10,000 feet
CRUISING RANGE:
210 miles
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Seven Decades Later
Bob bought the Miss Dairylea project from the estate of prewar Cub guru Ed Kastner, up in the Finger Lakes area of New York in 2009. “When Ed bought it back around 1975, it was deregistered, so he contacted the FAA and got it reinstated with its original N-number,” Bob said. “I have all the logs, including the first log showing the original entry for the record flight. I basically got boxes and boxes of parts, a 1946 fuselage, and a bunch of tail feathers — there was no engine and no propeller. The original fuselage had been wrecked four times. Then I found a Cub project for sale, and it had a prewar fuselage, which was just right for this project.” NC20261 (serial No. 2061) was a sports model and the 61st J-3 built; it was completed on January 21, 1938. It started life with a 40-hp Continental and was a Piper salesman’s demonstrator for about six months before it was modified for the endurance flight. Interestingly, there was a Movietone Newsreel filmed about the flight, which Bob’s son, Kenny, tracked down through diligent research, and they were able to obtain a copy of it. That and historical photographs were the “go-bys” Bob used for authenticity. The whole project was quite the “head scratcher” puzzle, making Bob’s tenacity and consistently relentless attention to even the smallest of details quite impressive.
Miss Dairylea has new old-stock Royal Airplane smooth tires and an Air Associates tailwheel.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAPHNE HUNT
TOP: Bob even replicated the overspray paint job on the lower side of the baggage lid.
TOP: Note the cabane from the tie struts to the fuselage, and the wing fairing pieces attached to the fuselage just ahead of where the wings will bolt on. BOTTOM: Close-up view of the spliced elevator and rudder cables being installed.
Early Cub Features One of the most surprising elements of the restoration was discovering the features that distinguished the early (mostly prewar) Cubs from the later Cubs. The 1938 fuselage differs from later Cubs in numerous ways; it has an upright cabane extending from the center of the landing gear tie struts up to the fuselage, the cabin area has a cathedral ceiling, and they had metal stringers that went down the sides and center toward the tail. The very early Cubs had an aluminum baggage lid, and Bob procured one that Clyde Smith Jr. (aka “The Cub Doctor”) had fabricated per an original lid. Notably, only the top of the lid was originally painted by Piper, with just a bit of overspray on the bottom side, and Bob replicated that. The early Cubs had three-hinge control surfaces as opposed to the later two-hinge surfaces, and Bob was able to swap a two-hinge rudder for a three-hinge rudder from Clyde. “The leading edge of the horizontal stabilizers where the liner tube goes across are 3/4 inch, and the later airplanes were increased to 1 inch when they started adding more horsepower,” Bob said. “Mark Baxter of Corvallis, Oregon, hand-wove the control cable splices, and he said the five-tuck splice was used by most everybody except for Piper, who used the Roebling roll splice, so that’s what he made. There’s a difference in the splice itself and the wrapping around the splice.”
Since the early Cubs didn’t have the muffler mounted horizontally behind the engine, there was room for a foot well on the firewall, thereby providing more leg room. On postwar Cubs, when the standard exhaust system went into use, the foot well was necessarily omitted. Bob bought a new firewall, fabricated a foot well, and installed it — yet another detail to make Miss Dairylea authentic. “The other main difference is these very early wings are non-Frise wings, meaning the ailerons are hinged at the top, not the bottom like the 1940 and later Cubs. When this type of aileron is used, you have to dope a piece of fabric over the gap at the top of the finished aileron after it’s installed on the wing,” Bob said, “and I had to figure out how to make and shape the aluminum fuselage wing fairing pieces, which attach to the fuselage just ahead of where the wings bolt on.” As far as the landing gear, Bob was fortunate to find a set of new old-stock smooth tires made by Royal Airplane Co. “The tail wheel is an original Air Associates tail wheel, and the head of the bolt that holds it to the spring says Air Associates,” Bob said. “And I have a drawing for the steering mechanism — they used shock cords, so I did the same thing, although it took me forever to make them the right length.” www.eaavintage.org 47
Power and Prop Rather amazingly, Bob was able to locate a Franklin 4AC-150A in excellent condition. “It’s exactly the same as the endurance flight motor, and was zero-time since major overhaul. It came with the cowling, mount, and brand new Dawley up-exhaust with bayonet tips and cast aluminum manifolds,” Bob said. “Dairylea was such an early plane and the Franklin hadn’t been approved yet, so they didn’t have an exhaust for this combination of engine and airplane. They took corrugated pipe and made the exhaust right off the manifold and tied it together on the fuselage cabane. This engine is 60 hp and Miss Dairylea’s engine was 50 hp, but they are identical motors — the only modification I made was the addition of the carb air box, which allows the use of a filter. This engine would originally have had an air box that faced straight down with no filter.” Bob also found an appropriate Sensenich propeller for the Franklin, and had Sensenich recondition it. “It looks great,” Bob said, “because the old wood has an orange patina and doesn’t look like new wood. Sensenich applied the Sensenich Brothers decals on it, and they did a beautiful job.”
Windshield Though at first glance it seemed simple enough, re-creating the windshield with its sliding panel proved to be a formidable challenge. Bob had a Form 337 with a sketch that showed what the pieces looked like, so that was a help. “My friend, Dan Fogle, made two of the aluminum channels to mount in the windshield, and LP Aero had a prewar windshield mold. I used Lexan for the sliding part of the windshield that goes up against the fairing that I made,” Bob said, “but it was just a nightmare, and I spent a couple of weeks just trying to figure out how it all would work. I was ready to give up and just had to step away from it to get my sanity back!”
Wings The wings are built up of new spruce spars, new leading edges, and Bob fixed all the ribs that needed repair. “The ailerons were in tough shape, and Dan straightened them out for me and I covered them,” he said. “Then I started doing little stuff, and cleaning up the tail feathers and covering those. I was just working on the project when I could, because I had customers’ airplanes to do as well.”
Concessions
TOP: Close-up of the Franklin engine. MIDDLE: A handle at the lower portion of the windshield center section facilitates opening. BOTTOM: Wings rest in their cradle stands, awaiting the next phase of restoration.
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There were, of course, a few concessions Bob made in order for NX20261 to be more practical in today’s environment — such as using a tail wheel as opposed to the original tail skid. “I restored the plane exactly as it was for the record flight, with a few exceptions,” Bob said. “I decided that even though Miss Dairylea didn’t have brakes, I’d install brakes on her — but just for the back seat, and the seat-cushion skirt hides the pedals.” The endurance pilots had removed the factory-installed rear seat and made a canvas sling that could be used either as a seat or a makeshift cot (along with a section of thin plywood supported by the upper longeron). Bob elected not to replicate that, since it would render the rear seat unsuitable for pilots accustomed to comfort.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAPHNE HUNT
Another departure from the record-flight configuration was the decision not to fabricate and install the 24-gallon belly tank and associated wobble pump, since that would result in increased drag and weight that would considerably degrade the Cub’s performance.
Finishing Touches A consummate painter, Bob enjoys using the Graco high-volume, low-pressure painting equipment. “It really cuts the spray going in the air by 60 percent,” he said. “I’ve found that it’s best to use the triple-stage turbine to spray. I used the Randolph dope coatings and Ceconite fabric on this airplane.” Yet again, Bob’s attention to detail shines through, not only in his craftsmanship par excellence, but his finishing touches for Miss Dairylea’s livery. All of the lettering is painted, and the bear cub logo is a factory-style decal. It was a bit of a challenge to determine the correct colors based on historical images, but he finally surmised that Pontiac Red was a plausible match, contrasting well with the Cub Yellow. “I used spray masks from AeroGraphics in Colorado, and I bought the ‘figure eight’ stencil from Aircraft Spruce; you can make every letter and number from this one stencil. It took about four hours to lay out the N-number, and then I sprayed just about three quick coats of dope, then removed all the fine-line tapes and masking paper,” Bob said, “There’s a lot of hand painting on the airplane, but I sprayed the block letters spelling Miss Dairylea on the fuselage and wings with a stencil, and I had a pinstriper, Glenn Yuengling, hand-paint the Franklin logo script and the words ‘powered by,’ and he also shadowed the painted Miss Dairylea.”
Crown Jewel
Miss Dairylea may just well be the crown jewel of the nearly three-dozen airplanes Bob has restored. “Seven airplanes I’ve restored have won awards at Sentimental Journey,” he said, “and at AirVenture 2017, the Flitfire Cub (NC37916) I finished restoring won the Antique Reserve Grand Champion Silver Lindy. I think this airplane is better; I went to a great deal of detail to make Miss Dairylea authentic.” Bob’s highest reward is, simply stated, saving an airplane and preserving its history. “I’m a builder; I loved flying, but I love building more than anything else. So my thing is, I do it not because I love to do it, but I love to save an airplane from the junkyard. If I hadn’t restored a customer’s Tango Cub, I don’t think anybody would have done it. Tango Cubs were Super Cubs special-ordered by the Civil Air Patrol and Air Force Auxiliary in 1953 — they have toe brakes and no flaps, and registration numbers ending in T,” Bob said. “I have done several planes like that, where if I hadn’t grabbed it and run with it, it would have been too late. That’s where I get my thrills, putting an airplane back in the air!” When Miss Dairylea made her first flight after restoration in August 2020, it was the first time she’d flown since 1951. “I have to admit, I teared up,” Bob said, “because I saved another one!”
TOP: Note the Franklin engine’s bayonet exhaust and the cabane from the tie struts to the fuselage. MIDDLE: Note the bungees and the Air Associates tailwheel. BOTTOM: Another one saved — record-setter Miss Dairylea!
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Anything But Average A TIMELESS RESTORATION OF A CESSNA 150
BY CHRISTINA BASKEN
50 September/October 2021
Dennis Ozment is by no means your average guy. In fact, his introduction to aviation was as a flight surgeon operating out of Hueys. “When I was in medical school, I decided to join the Army National Guard, and during my senior year of medical school, I was able to go through the flight surgeon school with the Army at Fort Rucker,” Dennis said. “I was a flight surgeon in the Army for about eight years or so, and during that time, we were flying the Huey helicopters, and so I was able to fly those at that time. All that’s changed now, but back then flight surgeons were actually flying helicopters.”
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JIM BUSHA
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hen Dennis left the military, he knew he wanted to continue flying, but he didn’t have any interest in continuing with helicopters, so he instead pursued his fixed-wing certificate at his local FBO in Quincy, Illinois. Ten years ago, Dennis decided he’d try his hand at his first restoration project, when he came across a Cessna 172, N5000A, in Texas. Around the time that Dennis found and started working on the 172, he got to know the fellow who ran the airplane paint shop at his local FBO, Rodney Halfpap. “Dennis came to visit me one day, and he said, ‘Hey, Rodney, I found the very first 172 ever built.’ He goes, ‘What do you think? Are you interested in helping to restore the airplane and go through it?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, that sounds cool.’ So, that’s how we got started,” Rodney said. Dennis and Rodney made quite the team. In 2017, they finished the restoration of the 172 and won Grand Champion at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh.
After finishing the 172, Dennis was eager to continue to work on airplanes and improve his restoration skills. He wasn’t necessarily looking for another project, but a certain 150 caught his eye as he was browsing the Barnstormers website. “It had 1,800 hours on it. Engine had never been overhauled. Basically it was a farm owner’s airplane for many years,” Dennis explained. “Just basically almost like a time capsule, but it was at 1,800 hours, so it was time to overhaul the engine and basically go through the whole airplane. And that was really what I was looking for. I really liked the green and white paint scheme that it had. The price was right, and so I decided that was going to be our next project. I bought it from a fellow out in New Jersey and had it ferried in here.” Rodney didn’t care what kind of airplane it was; he was already game to try another restoration project with Dennis.
Dennis paid careful attention to the interior to make everything as authentic as possible. Air Mod in Ohio restored the seats back to original condition. Dennis also painted the lettering on the inside panels to make it look like it did when it first came from the factory.
52 September/October 2021
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JIM BUSHA
DENNIS OZMENT “If you backed up 10 years from now and said, ‘Hey, you’re going to restore a Cessna 150 to original factory specifications,’ I would have told you that was crazy, because I was looking at Staggerwings and Stearmans and things like that, but it just caught my eye as soon as I saw it. You don’t think of the 150 as something that a person’s going to take on as a restoration project, and yet they show up in Oshkosh and they see this pristine 150 and people flock around it just to see if it’s really as nice close up as it looks from a distance. I think people are really taken aback and surprised by the amount of care that was taken to bring the airplane back to its original condition. People have a connection to the airplane because that’s the first airplane they flew. It’s not necessarily about that airplane; it’s about their experience with that airplane. People remember their first solo.”
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Various Cessna 150 type examples
150 HISTORY AFTER AN EIGHT-YEAR ABSENCE from the trainer market, Cessna made a return in 1959 with the Model 150. The allmetal design featured tricycle landing gear, “para-lift” flaps, and a new empennage design, and it could be purchased with or without wheel fairings. The 150 could be purchased in three versions, increasing in price and options: a Standard at $6,995, a Trainer at $7,940, and a Commuter at $8,545.
1960
At a price increase of $200, the 150 series now came stock with a heated pitot tube, and a stall warning horn to permit use as an instrument trainer.
1961
The Model 150A was produced with the main changes being a larger rear cabin window and a redesigned main landing gear, which moved the wheels 2 inches aft, shifting the CG farther forward. Other changes were a reduction of empty weight by 12 pounds, and a Y-configured instrument panel. The relocated main landing gear placed more weight on the nose wheel, ensuring that the nose strut would be partially compressed in all taxi operations.
1962
The 150B was introduced, featuring a redesigned wingtip fairing with an enclosed light and a pointed fiberglass propeller spinner. In addition, the overall length was increased by 1 inch, and the top speed was increased to 127 mph and cruise speed to 125 mph with the addition of a new McCauley propeller.
1963
The 150C was introduced with a new instrument panel to improve lighting and to reduce glare for nighttime flying. Additionally, wheel fairings were redesigned to be interchangeable with other single-engine Cessnas, and small bucket seats for kids were now an install option.
1964
The biggest change yet for the 150 series came in 1964 when omni-vision was introduced in the Model 150D. In order to achieve this, the rear fuselage decking was reduced to provide wraparound 360-degree vision. To support additional avionics, gross weight was increased 100 pounds, with 40 pounds of this as additional useful load. The base price of the Commuter increased to $9,495.
54 September/October 2021
PHOTOGRAPHY BY LEWIS BERGHOFF, JOHN DIBBS, JACK FLEETWOOD, LYLE JANSMA, CONNOR MADISON
1965
Minor design refinements and the annual paint scheme were the only changes for the 1965 Model 150E. As a result, the base price of the Commuter was lower than previous years, at $9,425.
1966
Improvements to the Model 150F consisted of a swept vertical tail, larger and wider cabin doors with bigger windows, increased baggage space by 50 percent, lengthened propeller spinner, pneumatic reed stall warning, electrically operated wing flaps, and 6.00-6 wheels and brakes. The 150F models retained the performance of the 150E, and customer acceptance was through the roof. With such success, Cessna’s French affiliate, Reims Aviation, started to gear up for the production of the F150F to be delivered. In total, 2,933 Model 150Fs were produced in America, and 67 were produced as Model F150Fs by Reims Aviation. Production reached an astounding 3,000 per year in the 1966 model year.
1967
The 150F prototype had been modified, put on floats, and renumbered as the first 150G prototype of 1967. Modifications included a new instrument panel and cowl deck, a widened fuselage to provide additional room in the area of the doors, and foot and leg room were also increased by deepening the floorboard aft of the rudder pedals. To reduce vibration, the cowling had been isolated from the airframe by eight shock mounts on brackets.
1968
The dimensions and performance of the 1968 Model 150H were exactly the same as the previous 150G, although the Model H included the availability of a Brittain wing leveler, a pneumatically operated twoaxis automatic control system. During this year, Cessna delivered its 10,000th 150, a Model H. For the 150H, domestic production was 2,110 units, and French production was 170 units. 1966 through 1968 marked the golden years of Cessna 150 production.
1969
Primary changes to the 150J were an all-new instrument panel, additional leg room, and redesigned wheel fairings.
1970
The 150K and the A150K Aerobat models were introduced. The 1970 Model 150K saw further redesign of the 150J instrument panel, conical-camber wingtips for the Commuter, redesigned seats for additional leg room, a molded headliner replacing fabric, and optional skylight windows. The 150K Commuter was priced at $11,450. The A150K was the first Cessna specifically built for limited aerobatics. Priced at $10,495, the airframe structure was strengthened to meet CAR Part 3. Features of the A150K included capability of +6g/-3g flight loads, quick-release cabin doors, shoulder harnesses, g-meter, and overhead skylights. Additionally, the Aerobat also came in a special paint scheme and was approved for barrel and aileron rolls, single snaps, loops, Immelmanns, Cuban-eights, spins, and vertical reversements.
1971-1974
Both the 1971 150L and A150L Aerobat saw a reduced height of 7-1/2 inches from the previous model, due to a switch from spring steel landing gear to a tubular steel assembly, which saved 18 pounds and provided for a smoother ride on the ground and absorbed landing shocks better. The
landing light on both models was also moved to the nose cap, and a longer dorsal fin was incorporated for improved stability. In 1974, the 150L was produced in four versions — Standard, Trainer, Commuter, and Aerobat — all featuring modifications to the interior, wheel fairings, and exterior styling. The 1974 Model A150L Aerobat saw a higher top speed, cruise speed, and service ceiling than previous models. The new Clark Y airfoil propeller provided a speed increase of 4 mph, and a service ceiling up from 1,350 feet to 14,000 feet.
1975-1977
During these years, Cessna continued to refine the 150 series in the Model 150M. In 1975, the 150M saw an increased vertical stabilizer/rudder area. Minor interior changes and redesigned wheel fairings occurred on the 1976 150M, in addition to optional vertically adjustable seats, airspeed indicator readout in knots, and circuit breakers to replace conventional fuses. 1977 marked the end of Model 150 production after 22,769 Standard, Trainer, and Commuter models — and 1,070 Aerobat versions — had been produced.
“People have a connection to the airplane because that’s the first airplane they flew. It’s not necessarily about that airplane; it’s about their experience with that airplane. People remember their first solo.” — Dennis Ozment
THE RESTORATION The restoration of the 150 started as a frame-up restoration: taking the wings off and the windows out, stripping the entire plane down, and performing a detailed inspection before putting it all back together. “What was probably the most difficult part of it with this one was that once we started tearing into everything, we noticed that there was a fairly large patch on the belly immediately behind the firewall,” Dennis said. “And really in hindsight, it looks like somewhere in the early 1980s, there was some sort of nose wheel collapse issue. We don’t know exactly what happened, but the damage is consistent with a nose wheel collapsing and buckling the belly of the airplane and damaging the firewall. When you look at the logbooks, there’s a gap of a couple of years right there for the annual inspection; the only thing that’s commented on is that the engine mount was replaced.” Dennis said nothing else about the nose wheel collapse was mentioned. This created a challenge for them, because they had to track down an original firewall and three original belly skins, which, luckily, they were able to do. “KREN out in Arizona had an original firewall that I was able to purchase, and then Preferred Air Parts in Ohio had the three belly skins that I needed,”
56 September/October 2021
Dennis said. “And so that meant drilling out about, I would guess, somewhere between 400 and 500 rivets and removing the firewall, replacing the belly skins, and of course riveting all that stuff back together.” Dennis said he could have purchased a stainless steel firewall from Cessna, but it wouldn’t have been original. “The original firewall is made out of metal that was purchased from the Coleman cooler factory,” Dennis said. “Back in the day when Coleman was making steel coolers, they had aluminized steel, so Cessna bought a bunch of surplus aluminized steel from Coleman coolers to make their firewalls with. As far as I can tell, that was the only firewall in the country available that was original.” The goal was to make this 150 look like it had just come off the assembly line. “I had Dennis Walker, out in Ohio at Air Mod, redo the seats for me back to original, just the way they would have come from the factory,” Dennis said. “The wiring, we did one interesting thing with the wiring. The original wiring cables had labels on them. They were specific to that cable. And there’s a fellow, Michael Denman with Pinpoint Harnesses, he was able to actually reproduce those cables with the correct lettering on them. When you hold the old cable with the new cable up next to each other, they look identical, and that was the sort of thing I was wanting to do with this restoration.”
All in the details: Pinpoint Harnesses reproduced the old cable labels so the new ones would match.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JIM BUSHA
They weren’t messing around either; they made sure every little detail was to perfection. “When it came to the interior with this particular airplane, the way the panels laid out, it’s a stamped piece of plastic that has white lettering on it,” Dennis said. “I came up with a way of being able to paint the plastic, and then going back with model airplane paint and fill in the letters to make it just the way it looked when it came from the factory.” Dennis said there are three key items necessary to bring any aircraft back to original specs. “I’ve kind of figured out basically if you take the original parts manual, and then you take the repair manual, and then the original factory brochures or the color factory brochures — if you have those three things, you can really put an airplane right back to the way it’s supposed to be,” Dennis said. “A lot of it is pretty much trying to find sources of parts; you just have to search.” Rodney said sometimes you just get lucky while tracking things down. “On the heart of the Cessna aircraft they have what’s called a winter’s kit,” Rodney explained. “On this particular airplane, the winter kit fits in the top and it blocks off the air over the cylinder, so in the wintertime you don’t get
super-cool cylinders. And we were actually able to come up with a factory-original, never-been-used winter kit for this airplane. In fact, the guy that we got it from had two of them, and one had been in service previously, but this one was still brand new. So, we got lucky and were able to purchase that.” And other times during a restoration, you find that you aren’t so lucky. Replacing the crankshaft.
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SPECS Aircraft Make and Model: 1968 Cessna 150H CERTIFICATION: Standard
LENGTH: 23 feet, 11 inches WINGSPAN: 33 feet, 2 inches HEIGHT: 8 feet, 6 inches
MAXIMUM GROSS WEIGHT: 1,600 pounds EMPTY WEIGHT: 1,065 pounds FUEL CAPACITY: 26 gallons SEATS: 2
POWERPLANT MAKE & MODEL: Continental O-200 HORSEPOWER: 100 PROPELLER: Fixed-pitch McCauley CRUISE SPEED/FUEL CONSUMPTION: 5.6 gph POWER LOADING: 16 pounds/hp WING LOADING: 10.2 pounds/square foot
EQUIPPED FOR: VFR
VNE: 141 knots VSO: 43 knots VX: 61 knots VY: 67 knots PRICE: $28,000
FOR MORE INFORMATION: Cessna 150-152 Club
58 September/October 2021
“When we sent the crankshafting in, the crankshaft didn’t pass specs, even though the engine had not been overhauled; there was corrosion around the propeller flange that didn’t pass,” Dennis said. “So instead of just overhauling the crank, I ended up having to buy a new crank at $4,500, which was just one of those unfortunate unexpected expenses.” To no surprise at all, the paint scheme is 100 percent to original factory specs, right down to the N-number. “The N-number in that particular font that Cessna used back in ’68 is no longer available in a commercial setting, where you have your maskings made to paint the N-number back on,” Rodney said. “So, Dennis actually cut all of the N-number maskings out by hand. What he did was he transferred, before the paint was stripped off the airplane, he transferred the N-numbers from the aircraft onto tracing paper, and then laid it all out on masking paper, and then hand-cut each one of the letters. That was a very meticulous thing he did and did extremely well. I mean, if you look at the letters, they’re just spot-on.” Right before AirVenture 2019, Dennis and Rodney finished the aircraft in a little over 1,000 hours, with just enough time to break in the engine before flying into KOSH. “Once we finally got it there, it was just kind of a huge relief, but then just to be at Oshkosh … Oshkosh is what I look forward to 51 weeks out of the year. I’m always thinking about Oshkosh,” Dennis said. Rodney said the response to the 150 was tremendous, but even more than that, it was surprising. “There were actually people that walked up to me, and Dennis would either be there representing the airplane or I would be there representing the airplane, but I had numerous people walk up to me and actually thank us for restoring the airplane back to the factory original,” Rodney said. “And as we were talking, I’d say, ‘Well, what are you flying today?’ And one would say, ‘Well, I fly a Piper Archer,’ ‘I fly a Beech Bonanza,’ or whatever it might be, ‘But I learned to fly in a 150.’ So, it brought them back to their roots.” Hard work certainly pays off. Dennis and Rodney came home from AirVenture that year with a Grand Champion Gold Lindy award. Rodney said the key in restoring any airplane is to check, check, and double-check your work. “We always check one another’s work,” Rodney said. “I’ve always asked for other people to look at my work that I’ve done and vice versa. They’ll do the same, ask me to look at their work. And that way it just gives you more of a confidence factor that you’ve done it right, and you’re assured that someone else has checked it out. That’s how we went through the entire process on both airplanes.”
Cruising around Wisconsin.
“Once we finally got it there, it was just kind of a huge relief, but then just to be at Oshkosh … Oshkosh is what I look forward to 51 weeks out of the year. I’m always thinking about Oshkosh.” — Dennis Ozment
Opening New Doors Into Aviation
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PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTINA BASKEN
www.eaavintage.org 59
The Vintage Mechanic ROBERT G. LOCK
Continental W-670 Main Bearing Failures, Part 2 BY ROBERT G. LOCK
SINCE THE FIRST INSTALLMENT in a previous issue on the sub-
ject of rear main bearing failures in Continental W-670 aircraft engines, I am reminded of another such incident in a Boeing Stearman here in central Florida. The bearing began to fail at approximately 380 hours after engine major overhaul, at about the same operating time my bearing failed. The logbook showed the engine had been overhauled by a very reputable facility in 1994, and both front and rear bearings had been replaced with new parts. So here we go again with the same old problem, which, if not caught early, can have catastrophic results for both pilot and airplane. This particular airplane had a Sensenich wood prop installed; therefore, it would be my conclusion that bearing failures can occur on engines with either wood or metal props, just as Al Holloway had stated to me.
60 September/October 2021
Unlike other small, seven-cylinder radial engines such as Wright, Lycoming, and Warner, the Continental W-670 was manufactured in huge numbers for aircraft, boats, and tanks. Many airplanes continue to fly using this powerplant. It is obvious that the rear main ball bearing is the weak link in this particular type of engine. When Continental modified the W-670-6A or -6N to the -23 in order to accommodate a constant-speed propeller, engineers boosted the horsepower to 240 and installed a roller bearing in the rear main position. Again it is obvious that they knew the ball bearing would not hold up with the Hamilton Standard 2B20 prop, and the higher compression ratio placed more stress demands on the crankshaft. With a constant-speed prop, the engine drives a governor, which may also place additional stress on the crankshaft. To understand what must be done to the front and rear main ball bearings during overhaul, one must consult the W-670 overhaul manual. The overhaul manual calls for only an inspection of the bearing, not for mandatory replacement at the overhaul cycle. If the engine logbook doesn’t specifically state that the bearings were replaced with new parts, you must assume used bearings were installed at overhaul with an unknown total time on them. Again it becomes obvious to me that the condition of these highly stressed main bearings is a judgment call by the overhauling facility or the individual mechanic. Therefore total operating hours on these bearings is unknown, yet it is these bearings that are the cause of several failures of Continental W-670 aircraft engines. Some failures are found during the beginning stage as the cage that holds the steel balls in place begins to disintegrate. Continued operation of the engine beyond this stage will eventually lead to complete failure of the rear main bearing and damage to the crankshaft, necessitating an immediate emergency landing of the airplane in terrain that may not be too hospitable for such an event. In the event the bearing completely fails, the crankshaft rear main is free to move wherever loads will take it. Think of what this movement would do to the master rod, link rods, and moving parts in the accessory section. Remember the old saying: “Flying is many hours of boredom separated by a few moments of stark terror!” I have a friend in Lodi, California, who has lot of experience overhauling and operating Continental W-670 engines. His name is Peter Precissi, and for many years, the family owned and operated the largest fleet of Travel Air 4000 dusters in the United States. The airplanes carried sulfur dust applied to wine grapes to prevent mold. Peter told me they overhauled engines every 600 hours’ time-in-service, they had experienced several failures of the rear main bearing, and the part was the weakest part of the Continental engine. He also indicated that they began installing roller bearings to combat this problem. Keep in mind that the Precissi Travel Airs were operated under CAR Part 8 (now FAR Part 137), and modifications were somewhat easier to accomplish when an aircraft was certified in the restricted category than on an airplane certified in the standard category. The blue and yellow Precissi Travel Airs prowled the air around Sacramento for decades until recently when they were retired. All are now in the hands of private owners who will restore them to their stock condition, except for one airplane that has been donated to the California Agriculture Museum in Tulare, California. There, in all its glory, is the airplane flown by Peter’s uncle Joe for many years.
FIGURE 1 shows a typical front and rear ball bearing as used in the Continental W-670 radial engine. These bearings are the only support for the crankshaft, which produces only 15 hp less than the Wright R-760 bearings shown in Figure 2. On the left is the thrust, and on the right is the rear main ball bearing. The bearing contains an inner and outer race separated by hardened steel balls. To keep the rotating balls separated, there is a cage assembly, and it is this portion of the bearing assembly that apparently fails first. When the bearing in my Continental failed, large pieces of cage metal fell directly into the oil sump and therefore bypassed the main oil screen. The screen in my engine was completely devoid of any sign of metallic failure inside the engine. I was informed that the main oil screen in the most recent bearing failure showed traces of metal. Therefore, it is most important to use a magnet and insert it into the oil sump after the oil has been drained. I have also fashioned a hook out of 3/32-inch-diameter welding rod to fish out fragments. If any metal is found in the engine oil sump, the airplane should not be flown, as it is most likely the start of rear main bearing failure. My Travel Air 4000, NR3670 serial No. 288, with a Precissi overhauled engine and prop.
FIGURE 2 shows the Wright R-760 main bearing arrangement. Note that the Wright has (from left to right) a front thrust ball bearing, a center main roller bearing, and a rear solid main bearing. The crankshaft size for the Wright is SAE 30. That’s rather substantial when compared to the Continental W-670 with its smaller SAE 20-sized crankshaft. Alignment of the three bearings in the Wright is critical; therefore, the rear main bearing must be line-bored to fit the rear main journal in the crankshaft. Replacement of main bearings in a Wright engine is much more difficult than in a Continental. The Wright main bearing arrangement is built like a brick outhouse!
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FIGURE 3 shows replacement Continental W-670 front and rear main roller bearings. An STC is required to install these bearings, since this modification is an alteration to the original engine type certificate. On the upper left is a rear main bearing, and to its right is a front main replacement roller bearing. The contact surface is much greater on a roller bearing compared to a ball bearing, so bearing failures on the Continental should be eliminated by changing to the roller bearing. The large bearing is a Wright front main roller bearing with its inner race removed to clearly illustrate the appearance of a roller bearing.
FIGURE 4 shows a portion of the Continental rear main ball bearing assembly. I’ve tried to show the bearing cage assembly in some detail. It is this cage assembly that holds the steel balls in place, and fragments of this portion of the bearing will be found in the sump. Fragments may not go to the oil screen because the scavenge pump will not draw them out of the sump; therefore, no fragments will likely be found in the main oil screen. When my bearing failed, fragments up to 1 inch in length were found in the oil sump when the plug was removed.
If fragments of the bearing cage are found in the engine sump, do not operate the engine again!
62 September/October 2021
It is my firm belief that all W-670 engines should have the rear main ball bearing replaced with a supplemental type certified roller bearing as soon as possible, or at least when the engine is due an overhaul. To install this bearing in the engine requires an FAA supplemental type certificate (STC), since it is a modification of the original engine type design. Only holders of an STC should perform this task; don’t allow anybody to install a bearing without an STC approval. An entry in the engine logbook and an FAA Form 337 should accompany the engine when it returns from the overhaul facility. Make sure the FAA Form 337 is filled out completely; then send the original copy to the FAA records branch, and place the second copy in the aircraft records file. Since STC approvals for installations of roller-type rear main bearings are a recent occurrence (within the past 10 years), many engines are in service with original ball-type rear main bearings. If a person is looking to buy an airplane powered by a Continental W-670 engine (other than a W-670-23), check logbooks and paperwork to see if this modification has been accomplished. If no record can be found, then you must assume that the modification has not been accomplished during the last overhaul or engine disassembly. If this is the case, an owner must pay particular attention for any fragments that may appear in the engine oil sump. I always change oil every 25 hours of operation and always drain the oil sump. I have previously described how to check for rear main bearing failures. But it may be worth repeating at this time. The following information represents my opinions based on personal experience. I would encourage other folks in the aviation industry who have additional ideas or information to contact any type club or the Vintage Aircraft Association with their thoughts and opinions. In this way, we can disseminate vital safety information. My experience with rear main bearing failures shows me that: • The rear main ball bearings do not suddenly fail; rather the support cage begins to disintegrate, leaving the unsupported bearing balls still in place between the inner and outer races. As the engine continues operation, the bearing will catastrophically fail, requiring an immediate emergency landing in whatever terrain the airplane is flying over. It has been reported to me that a pending bearing failure will show an increase in the oil temperature with an associated drop in pressure. If the bearing fails completely, there will be no true support on the crankshaft rear main journal and the engine will begin internal disassembly, which will lead to failure of the engine. Heavy vibrations will accompany the failure mode. • It makes no difference what type of prop is installed — Hamilton Standard, McCauley, or wood. If the bearing is going to fail, it’s going to fail! How long it takes the bearing assembly to fail after the cage fails is anybody’s guess. However, let me state that if fragments of the bearing cage are found in the engine sump, do not operate the engine again! • If I were operating a Continental W-670 radial engine (and I have a W-670 engine installed in our Stearman), I would immediately check the records to see if the engine had been previously modified to incorporate a rear main roller bearing in accordance with an STC. If not, I would have the engine torn down and a roller bearing installed. That
will eliminate the problem. If the engine is low time since overhaul, the cylinders can be removed and inspected with associated disassembly of the power section and installation of the new roller bearing. I would think the investment for the installation of a roller bearing would far outweigh the consequences of waiting for the ball bearing to fail. I would be interested in the opinions of others on the subject of Continental W-670 rear main ball bearing failures. The more this is discussed, the better off we’ll all be. Review the photos and their extended captions for a closer look at the bearings. It is my mission, through this column, to identify this potential engine problem with operators of Continental W-670 (R-670) 220-hp radial engines. I would appreciate receiving input from the field regarding any experience with rear main bearing failures. I would guess that most Continental W-670 220-hp radial engines are installed on Travel Air, Waco, and Boeing Stearman aircraft, with other types of aircraft representing a smaller number of engines in use at this time. Remember, if your engine logbook does not show installation of roller bearings and if there is no FAA Form 337 showing this major alteration, then you have to assume that ball bearings are installed.
IN FIGURE 5, you can see the entire Continental W-670 crankshaft/bearing assembly. It shows the front and rear main ball bearings in their correct location. The master rod and link rods have not been installed for this photograph. Between the front main bearing and propeller splines, there is a threaded section. The thrust bearing is located at this position against a spacer. The thrust bearing, spacer, oil slinger ring, and thrust nut are installed after the nose case is assembled.
THE VINTAGE AIRCRAFT ASSOCIATION’S
Red Barn Store Is Now Online From hats and zip-ups, to plush toys and dice cups, VAA has brought the merchandise you love from AirVenture to their online store! Check back often, as stock will be updated soon.
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PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF EAA ARCHIVES
www.eaavintage.org 63
Message From the President SUSAN DUSENBURY, VAA PRESIDENT
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
AirVenture 2021 was probably the most spectacular year in decades for antique airplanes that arrived and parked in the Vintage area. Where else but Oshkosh would you see these airplanes in such high numbers? As one of our longtime members said, “This is the place to be if you want to see the real rare and unique airplanes. The antique rows are full of Grand Champion quality airplanes.” My hat is off to the pilots and owners of all of these vintage aircraft who choose to own and maintain these planes in such fine fashion and then fly them to AirVenture to grace our Vintage flightline. This is no small task. Only someone with dedication, determination, and passion can get this accomplished. You will be reading about these absolutely gorgeous airplanes in the upcoming issues of both Vintage Airplane and EAA Sport Aviation. Stay tuned! On my long (very long and exhausting!) drive home from Oshkosh, I had time to reflect on the happenings of the past week at AirVenture. I was able to identify some areas that will need
tweaking, as well as revisit those areas where all went well. Throughout the week of AirVenture I made a list (that I dictated to Amy for safekeeping!) of areas where improvements are needed. Most are easy fixes. Some are not so easy. Anyway, plans are in the works for AirVenture 2022! During next year’s fly-in convention, we will be celebrating the Bonanza Diamond Jubilee amongst other things. Start making your plans, and we’ll see you there. Blue skies!
Flymart
DIRECTORY OFFICERS PRESIDENT Susan Dusenbury 1374 Brook Cove Rd. Walnut Cove, NC 27052 336-591-3931 sr6sue@aol.com
SECRETARY Dan Wood 75 Walton Place Dr. Newnan, GA 30263 678-458-3459 fly170@gmail.com
VICE PRESIDENT Dan Knutson 106 Tena Marie Circle Lodi, WI 53555 608-354-6101 lodicub@charter.net
TREASURER Paul Kyle 1273 Troy Ct. Mason, OH 45040 262-844-3351 paul_e_kyle@hotmail.com
DIRECTORS Jerry Brown Greenwood, IN 46143 317-627-9428 lbrown4906@aol.com
Ray L. Johnson Marion, IN 765-669-3544 rayjohnson@indy.rr.com
George Daubner Oconomowoc, WI 262-560-1949 gdaubner@eaa.org
Steve Nesse Albert Lea, MN 507-383-2850 stnes2009@live.com
Jon Goldenbaum Riverside, CA 951-203-0190 jon@conaircraft.com
Earl Nicholas Libertyville, IL 847-367-9667 eman46@gmail.com
John Hofmann Columbus, WI 608-239-0903 john@cubclub.org
Joe Norris Oshkosh, WI 920-688-2977 pilotjoe@ntd.net
Tim Popp Sun City, AZ 269-760-1544 tlpopp@frontier.com
ADVISERS COPYRIGHT © 2021 BY T HE E AA VIN TAGE AIRCR AF T A SSOCIAT ION. ALL RIGHT S RESERVED. VINTAGE AIRPLANE (USPS 062-750; ISSN 0091-6943) is published and owned exclusively by the EAA Vintage Aircraft Association of the Experimental Aircraft Association and is published bi-monthly at EAA Aviation Center, 3000 Poberezny Rd., PO Box 3086, Oshkosh, Wisconsin 54903-3086, email: vintageaircraft@eaa.org. Membership to Vintage Aircraft Association, which includes 6 issues of Vintage Airplane magazine, is $45 per year for EAA members and $55 for nonEAA members. Periodicals Postage paid at Oshkosh, Wisconsin 54902 and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Vintage Airplane, PO Box 3086, Oshkosh, WI 54903-3086. CPC #40612608. FOREIGN AND APO ADDRESSES—Please allow at least two months for delivery of VINTAGE AIRPLANE to foreign and APO addresses via surface mail. ADVERTISING — Vintage Aircraft Association does not guarantee or endorse any product offered through the advertising. We invite constructive criticism and welcome any report of inferior merchandise obtained through our advertising so that corrective measures can be taken. EDITORIAL POLICY: Members are encouraged to submit stories and photographs. Policy opinions expressed in articles are solely those of the authors. Responsibility for accuracy in reporting rests entirely with the contributor. No remuneration is made. Material should be sent to: Editor, VINTAGE AIRPLANE, PO Box 3086, Oshkosh, WI 54903-3086. Phone 920-426-4800. EAA® and EAA SPORT AVIATION®, the EAA Logo® and Aeronautica™ are registered trademarks, trademarks, and service marks of the Experimental Aircraft Association, Inc. The use of these trademarks and service marks without the permission of the Experimental Aircraft Association, Inc. is strictly prohibited.
Jesse Clement jesseclement1@gmail.com
Kevin McKenzie kevinamckenzie@yahoo.com
Luke Lachendro avidaviator98@gmail.com
Joel Meanor joelmeanor@gmail.com
Kathy McGurran kmcgurran@aol.com
Charlie Waterhouse charles.e.waterhouse@gmail.com
DIRECTORS EMERITUS David Bennett antiquer@inreach.com
Phil Coulson rcoulson516@cs.com
Robert C. Brauer photopilot@aol.com
Ronald C. Fritz itzfray@gmail.com
Dave Clark davecpd@att.net
Robert D. “Bob” Lumley rlumley1@wi.rr.com
Gene Morris genemorris@charter.net
EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT 64 September/October 2021
Amy Lemke alemke@eaa.org
© 2021 Experimental Aircraft Association, Inc.
THE
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