Va vol 46 no 6 nov dec 2018

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

GENTLE AVIATION GIANT — RON ALEXANDER THE GREAT WALDO PEPPER

A TRIP DOWN

MEMORY LANE WALKING THE VINTAGE LINE

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Message from the President

November/December 2018

SUSAN DUSENBURY, VAA PRESIDENT

Vintage volunteers make the job look easy HAVE ANY OF YOU ever wondered about those really straight and evenly

spaced aircraft parking lines that the Vintage Aircraft Association flightline volunteers marshal you onto when you finally reach your parking spot at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh? These lines are referred to as burn lines and are spaced 70 feet apart for wingtip-to-wingtip parking. Those burn lines do not just miraculously appear every year at AirVenture time. They are put in place by Vintage volunteer Jim Hornby, aka Santa, who serves as the VAA grounds chairman. Jim is a retired engineer/supervisor who has volunteered at the Vintage area for 33 years. Jim logs nearly 600 volunteer hours per year, and that’s just preparing the Vintage area grounds for AirVenture.

This number of volunteer hours does not include the post-AirVenture grounds cleanup and fix-up. Jim is usually assisted by VAA special aircraft parking chairman and good friend Dennis Lange, aka Sparky. Dennis recently retired from his job as electrician crew leader. He has been a Vintage volunteer for 43 years. This past year Dennis logged 1,314 hours of volunteer time for VAA. And, again, those are just the logged hours!

Installing burn lines in the Vintage parking area begins in late June when Santa and Sparky head out on the field to locate the vinyl-like “milkboard” marker plates that were previously installed by Vintage volunteers.

These are called “milkboard” plates because the material is in common use by the dairy farmers in Wisconsin! Finding marker plates is always a challenge in the tall grass but our team starts early and is able to locate and then repair or replace any damaged ones in time to spray the burn lines. At times they are assisted by other VAA grounds volunteers and by EAA employee Nate Lee. Nate works under EAA’s director of facilities — the very capable Steve Taylor. In total, 118 burn lines with cones are put in place every year. Remember, the Vintage showplane area is 1.46 miles long!

Once the burn lines are in place, Jim and crew install the numbered green marker cones. These cones serve the parking committee as they marshal airplanes into the Vintage area. More importantly, though, these numbered green cones serve to identify locations in the Vintage area for our fire and rescue squads. Hazard areas are marked with orange cones. As an aside, Vintage owns and maintains these cones and the trailer used to haul and store them. This trailer also doubles as a stage for some of our events at AirVenture. After it has been decorated no one would ever guess that our stage is actually a hard-working cone storage trailer!

Post AirVenture, the grounds are returned to pre-AirVenture field conditions before the AirVenture NOTAM expires at noon on the Monday after the convention. This includes the removal of all cones and signage plus the removal and transport of all temporary “operation shacks” and picnic tables, which are placed in storage in either the Vintage Hangar or Tall Pines Café. At this time all marker plates are re-inspected and replaced if broken. Items left by departing aircraft are picked up and donated to a local charity. This usually amounts to a few bag chairs and some coolers.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 64

STAFF Publisher: Jack J. Pelton, EAA CEO and Chairman of the Board Editor: Jim Busha / jbusha@eaa.org Vintage Aircraft Association Executive Administrator: Jan Johnson / jjohnson@eaa.org / 920-426-6110 Senior Copy Editor: Colleen Walsh Assistant Copy Editor: Katie Holliday-Greenley Proofreader: Jennifer Knaack Graphic Designer: Cordell Walker

ADVERTISING Vice President of Marketing and Business Development: Dave Chaimson / dchaimson@eaa.org Advertising Manager: Sue Anderson / sanderson@eaa.org Mailing Address: VAA, PO Box 3086, Oshkosh, WI 54903 Website: www.vintageaircraft.org Email: vintageaircraft@eaa.org

Visit www.vintageaircraft.org for the latest in information and news and for the electronic newsletter: VINTAGE AIRMAIL

Current EAA members may join the Vintage Aircraft Association and receive VINTAGE AIRPLANE magazine for an additional $45/year.

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 PO Box 3086, Oshkosh, WI 54903-3086 Monday–Friday, 8:00 AM—6:00 PM CST Join/Renew 800-564-6322 membership@eaa.org EAA AirVenture Oshkosh www.eaa.org/airventure 888-322-4636

www.vintageaircraft.org

1

Contents F E AT U R E S

12

Ron Alexander, Sharing the Passion Commitment is the key to success

By Sparky Barnes Sargent

20

Aerial Experiment Association An association for people interested in experimental aircraft

By Hal Bryan

26

Cruising the Line Sparky’s 2018 AirVenture notebook

By Sparky Barnes Sargent

52

Waldo Pepper’s Great Planes

By Mark Carlson

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).

2

November/December 2018

November/December 2018 / Vol. 46, No. 6

C OL U M N S Message From the President

01

By Susan Dusenbury

04

Friends of the Red Barn

05

Volunteers of the Year

08

How To? Select Aircraft-Grade Spruce

By Robert G. Lock

10

Good Old Days

60

The Vintage Mechanic Precover Inspections

By Robert G. Lock

64

VAA New Members

C OV E R S Front A Spartan Executive taxis into the Vintage area during AirVenture 2018.

Photo by Will Campbell

Back The 2018 VAA Hall of Fame recipient, Ron Alexander.

Illustration by Cordell Walker

Ron Alexander

1/12/1942 - 11/17/2016

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JASON TONEY

www.vintageaircraft.org 3

Friends of the

RED BARN

2018

Thank you, donors!

WE THANK OUR FRIENDS OF THE RED BARN SUPPORTERS FOR THEIR GENEROUS INVESTMENT IN THE FUTURE OF VAA.

DIAMOND PLUS LEVEL

PLATINUM LEVEL

SILVER LEVEL

BRONZE LEVEL

LOYAL SUPPORTER

Jerry Brown

Chris Gardner

William Marcy

Lowell Baker

DONOR LEVEL

Robert Charles

Jim Hannemann

Criss Lamoncha

Hobart Bates

Charles Burtch

Charles W. Harris Foundation

International Cessna 120-

David Allen

Marilyn Bhend

Ken Cook

Ed Cooper

140 Association

Gary Brossett

Steve Buss

Bruce Denney

Robert Duris

NavionX

George Chaffey

Dion Carr

Duane Dunwoody

John Hofmann

Jan Wolfe

John Cronin

Geoffrey Clark

Michael Gardonio

Earl Nicholas

AC Hutson

Sydney Cohen

Bruce Gustafson

Wes Schmid

International Cessna 195 Club

Bob Crowder

Walter Kahn

Michael Shepard

Robert McBride

Dan Dodds

Charles Pearcy

Scott Stueckradt

Larry Nelson

Herbert Delker

Richard Shelton

Swift Museum Foundation

Lewis Shaw

Robert Epting

Ron Steinberger

Dwayne Trovillion

Richard Heller Lee Hussey Archie James

GOLD LEVEL

John-Michael Lee

Jonathan Apfelbaum

James Lockwood

Ron Apfelbaum

Tom Lymburn

Gary Brossett

Brian McNutt

James Gorman DIAMOND LEVEL

Ron McRoy

A Hugo

BRONZE PLUS LEVEL

Anthem Dollars for Doers (Paul Kyle)

Mark Kolesar

Lloyd Austin

David Moffett

Donald Lange

Joseph Leverone

Grant Cook

National Aeronca Association

Ken Mercer

Richard Packer

Timothy Nathan

Amy Crozier

Jim Nelson

William Scott

William Pancake

Roger Florkiewicz

OX5 Aviation Pioneers

Ronald Tarrson

Terry Ross

Ken Hoffman

Ronald Price

Leonard Weiser

James Zazas

David Smith

Timothy Popp

David Stoddard

Gregory Rands

U.S. Venture, Inc.

Matthew Roberts

Robert Wagner

Robert Siegfried Joseph Smokovitz Carl Tortorige Daniel Wood

4  November/December 2018

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CONNOR MADISON, STEVE MOYER

Volunteers of the Year BAMBI MILLER

SUSAN JAMES

ONE OF BAMBI MILLER’S earliest memories is watching her father going off to work by boarding a plane to fly into the Canadian bush to study caribou for a month at a time.

That was when her fascination with flying started.

When she was 4, she got her first flight, in a de Havilland Beaver on floats. She threw up but loved the flight and the sensation of flying all the same, and determined she wanted to learn to fly someday.

Her parents were American wildlife biologists employed by the Canadian Wildlife Service. Most of her childhood was spent in northern Manitoba and Ontario. In high school her family moved to Idaho, where she graduated.

She eventually settled in Lee, New Hampshire, where she raised her son and worked in land conservation and in special needs adult programs.

One of her four brothers flew for the Air Force and got her going on flying lessons through his friends at the Hampton, New Hampshire, airport. He said he would not let her fly with anyone who would not spin with her.

Denise Hammel became her flight instructor, and he told her, “You were meant to flight.” She soloed the day John Kennedy Jr. died.

I HAVE HAD AN interest in aviation since my teenage years. I first attended EAA AirVenture Oshkosh with my husband, Archie, who is a longtime Vintage volunteer.

Flying into Oshkosh on my first trip was absolutely amazing! The first few years, I enjoyed the air shows, forums, displays, and of course – those beautiful airplanes. Very quickly, I discovered the fun of volunteering, and meeting people from every corner of our country and world. With a simple question, “What brings you to Oshkosh?” I was mesmerized by each unique story.

My volunteer experiences have been varied. I have helped with spring work weekends, maintenance, type clubs, membership, and currently work with Earl Nicholas and Alex Gluhuskin in Computer Ops. My days are filled with assembling welcome packets, making the Vintage volunteer nametags, entering volunteer information in the database, and helping out where needed. I am grateful for the guidance and mentoring I have received from Earl, Alex, and so many others along the way.

Volunteering with Vintage has introduced me to some truly amazing and talented individuals. These people have become friends, brought joy to my life, and have become my “Oshkosh family.” We have fun together, and accomplish much to support EAA and the mission of Vintage Aircraft Association.

www.vintageaircraft.org

5

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6 November/December 2018

Bambi’s appreciation for vintage aircraft came from volunteer work at the Owls Head Transportation Museum in Maine, where a close-knit group repaired and flew the many aircraft there. Darren Banfield was the curator there at the time and she helped him set up a new maintenance shop for golden age aircraft at Hampton Airfield. She also volunteered at the Greater Rochester International Airport and helped with fabric work and metal bending for the Sikorsky S-39, owned by Dick Jackson.

Bambi got to fly in many of the wonderful golden age planes, including a Lockheed Electra, Wacos, Stearmans, Swifts, Fleets, Rearwin Sportsters, and of course the wonderful Cubs. She enjoyed the maintenance and rebuilding of the beautiful birds.

Dan McCue, a fellow pilot flying out of Skyhaven Airport, introduced Bambi to the thrill of aerobatics in a Yak and an L-39. She also got to fly with David Martin in a Sukhoi. It’s amazing what those planes of metal, cloth, and wood can do in the right hands and knowledge.

Darren Banfield was killed in an aviation accident and it hit Bambi and everyone else who knew him very hard. As an homage to him, she decided to volunteer at AirVenture, to be around other people who loved flying and vintage aircraft and shared a passion for flying.

Wandering around the grounds days early with backpack in hand, she was happened upon by Tony’s Taxi, who found a home for her with the Oshkosh Irregulars in Paul’s Woods. That group has become one of her Oshkosh families.

That first year she volunteered to park planes in Vintage. She didn’t know how to ride a scooter, so they taught her. When she wasn’t working she dove into the seminars being offered and wound up volunteering there as well. That has become her routine for the past 15 years, to be part of a wonderfully diverse group of people who come together to share the hard work and fun of keeping planes and people safe, to make sure everyone has a special year. Every year is a privilege.

Most of Bambi’s flying has been in her Cessna 150.

She counts herself fortunate to have been able to fly in a wide range of aircraft, from a Piper Cub to an L-39 Albatros and EAA’s B-17. She has strong ties to half a dozen airports and flying communities on the East Coast, but none are as special to her as her family at OSH.

How To? ROBERT G. LOCK

Select Aircraft-Grade Spruce

BY ROBERT G. LOCK

HARVEST A SPRUCE TREE, saw it into the very best timber cuts, cure and kiln-dry, and then select the finest-edge grain/quarter-sawed wood, and you have aircraft-grade lumber. It’s just that simple. But let’s look into the details of what it takes to produce aircraft-grade spruce. Many mechanics may think that specifics for aircraft wood come from FAA AC43.13-1B, and that is partly true. However, every piece of data concerning aircraft wood structures comes from ANC Bulletin 19 dated December 20, 1943.

Specifications for wood have not changed over the years; however, bonding methods have.

First it is important to understand what happens to wood when it is air- and kiln-dried. It shrinks as moisture is removed, and certain types of cuts will warp dramatically. Just go to your

8 November/December 2018

local lumber supplier and look for plain sawed lumber, and you will see how it cups as it dries.

When trees are cut, much of their weight is water — free water will be removed by air-drying, and imbibed water will be removed by kiln-drying.

Spruce gives the highest strength-to-weight ratio of all the woods and is considered the standard for aircraft construction. All cut logs will have radial cracks known as checks. Checks are cracks across the annual rings. Harvested logs are kept wet to protect against internal cracking. Aircraft wood with these defects is rejected and not used.

In the sketch removed from ANC-19, the cut shown in the lower left portion of the log is quarter-sawed, while the cut on the top is plainsawed. Notice how the shrinkage is even in the quarter-sawed wood while it is uneven in the plain-sawed wood. Quarter-sawed wood gives a very good edge grain of 90 to 45 degrees to the wide face. In the sketch, the edge grain is 90 degrees. As you might imagine, quarter-sawed wood is the most expensive to produce, as the following sketch shows. Not shown in this sketch are the heartwood and sapwood. Heartwood is the center portion of the log and for spruce is a pinkish color. Sapwood is the part of the log that is alive and growing and is whitish-yellow in color. That is the portion of the log we want to use. Cuts made tangential to the growth rings are called plain-sawed and are shown to the right of the log, and cuts made radially to the growth rings are called quarter-sawed and are shown to the left of the log.

Growth rings called annual rings equal one year of growth of the tree. That is why folks can tell about how old a tree is — by counting the annual rings. For aircraft-grade spruce, eight to 10 annual rings per inch is minimum; however, in really good wood you can count 20 or more rings per inch. Spruce has a nice straight grain, but grain slope is limited to 1 inch in 15 inches length. This means, if you draw a box on the wood 1 inch by 15 inches, the grain should enter and exit within the box. Grain slope must be considered both on the wide face of the board and on the edges. In figure A there is no grain slope whatsoever, while the other sketches all have some type of grain

slope. Grain slope is important because the greater the slope, the weaker the wood in bending moments.

After the wood is cut, it is air-dried. This reduces the moisture content to about 25 to 35 percent, and the wood will not dry below that amount.

Now it must be placed in an oven called a kiln and heated to remove more moisture. Moisture content of aircraft-grade wood is 8 to 12 percent, although most marine spruce will have a moisture content slightly higher—around 15 percent.

Finally, wood structure is made up of long cells, almost like a straw in a milkshake. The sketch shown here is of softwood. Note that there are dense fibers representing summerwood when the tree grows slowly and springwood when the tree grows rapidly. The annual ring is represented by both spring and summerwood. Here, one can see in detail what the end cut of spruce looks like and why it is so important to completely seal the end grain of a wing spar. The tube-like grain structure drinks in varnish like a sponge, so brush on several coats until the grain is bright and shiny.

Below is a pile of aircraft spar stock. I am selecting from my old favorite supplier, Spar Lumber Company in San Pedro, California. This photo was taken some 40 years ago when they would let me go into the yard and select my own rough-cut spruce. Rough-cut spruce is “as sawn” from the mill and comes in odd dimensions — for instance a board that will mill 3/4 inch by 6 inches by 20 feet will measure 7/8 inch to 1 inch thick by 6-1/2 inches wide and slightly over 20 feet long. When planed, it will give the exact dimensions required. The boards in this photograph were 1 inch by 6 inches by 16 feet by 18 feet. I bought them when I was restoring Aeronca Champs, Chiefs, and Taylorcrafts.

All spars to those ships were about the same dimensions.

This was beautiful rough-cut spruce direct from the mill.

Today it is difficult to find old-growth Sitka spruce with large dimensions — spar stock that will measure 2 inches or above in thickness by 8 inches or above in width and 20 feet in length.

Back then it was common.

www.vintageaircraft.org

9

Good Old Days

From the pages of what was ...

Take a quick look through history by enjoying images pulled from publications past.

10  November/December 2018

www.vintageaircraft.org 

11

12  

November/December 2018

Ron Alexander,

COMMITMENT IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS

BY SPARKY BARNES SARGENT

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JIM BUSHA

www.vintageaircraft.org 

13

A

s defined by Merriam-Webster, a lodestar is one that serves as an inspiration, model, or guide.

The late Ron Alexander (EAA 71350, Vintage 572) of Griffin, Georgia, epitomized these qualities. He was a unique visionary who deeply touched and influenced immeasurable lives in myriad ways; he was an inspirational champion for the world of aviation. Ron is the EAA Vintage Aircraft Association’s 2018 Hall of Fame inductee.

One quotation, attributed to Carl W. Buehner, that comes to mind seems apropos when attempting to describe Ron: “They may forget what you said — but they will never forget how you made them feel.” Ron possessed a pleasant and innate ability to make a lot of people feel good about themselves, and about a wide-ranging spectrum of aviation endeavors in which they were involved.

THE EARLY YEARS

Ron proclaimed during one of our interviews that he couldn’t “imagine life without flying.” When he was a cadet in the Civil Air Patrol at age 14, he took a ride in a C-119 Flying Boxcar and knew he wanted to be a pilot — despite his family’s lack of interest in aviation.

Ron started what would become a lifetime aviation career at 16, flying an Aeronca Champ near his home in Bloomington, Indiana, and earning his flight instructor certificate at 17.

“I can remember when I started learning how to fly in Indiana, how I used to watch a Lake Central Airlines DC-3 taxiing in there — I looked up at that thing and I thought, can you believe that somebody can fly that airplane?” Ron shared, recalling those early days. “What a life that guy must have! I mean, I was just in awe!”

MILITARY SERVICE

Ron taught ROTC cadets during college and graduated from Indiana University as a distinguished military graduate of the ROTC program. By the time he entered the Air Force in 1964, he had already logged 800 hours. He completed flight training at Reese Air Force Base and was assigned to Military Air Transport Service flying C-130E Hercules aircraft to nearly every continent in the world. In November 1966 Ron was assigned to South Vietnam to fly the de Havilland C-7 Caribou, supporting the Marine Corps and the Army Special Forces. Based in Danang, he earned two Air Medals and the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery in combat, and attained the rank of captain before leaving the Air Force in 1969.

14

November/December 2018

PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL FLYING

Ron was hired by Delta Air Lines (based in Chicago) in 1969, and started out flying DC-9s. In 1974, he moved to a community airstrip in Griffin, Georgia, while continuing to fly for Delta. By the end of his 33-year career, Ron was giving instruction and checkrides in the Boeing 767 and was chief pilot for Delta’s restored DC-3. He retired in 2002 — but that doesn’t mean he stopped working. Far from it — in fact, during his airline career, he became extremely active in general aviation, and his airplane restorations inspired him to envision and create myriad business endeavors — a trend that continued for the rest of his life.

Back in 1974 Ron bought a J-3 Cub for $3,000, and a summer storm got the best of the Cub just as he was relocating to Georgia. “I got real interested in restoring antique airplanes,” he said with a chuckle. “So, I restored the Cub first, and then a Stearman PT-17.”

Ron described the culmination of the PT-17 project in an article titled “Grandfather to a Legend — The Stearman PT-912 Cloudboy” (Vintage Airplane, February 2016), written by Jim Busha. “Deep down inside, I always had this intrigue for old biplanes, although I had never flown one. … So the big day came to fly the PT-17, and there were no other Stearmans around to get checked out in. I decided I would be the test pilot, and I flew it and did fine with it for the first two or three days I logged in it. But boy oh boy, it humbled me big time right after that! The ‘honeymoon’ was over and I gained an immediate respect for the old airplanes, and haven’t had any issues ever since.”

About 15 years later, the PT-17 was destroyed by a tornado, and Ron traded the remains for a Stearman C-3B from his antiquer friend Jim Friedline. In 2005, Ron bought a Stearman Cloudboy from owner/ restorer Gordon Plaskett of King City, California. Ron was especially fond of this biplane. “The most unique and rare airplane I have is my square-tail 1931 Stearman Model 6L Cloudboy, with a Lycoming 225,” he told me in 2009. “It was designed as a military trainer, and they only made 10 of those airplanes, which were later called YPT-9s. My particular airplane was called an XPT-912, and it was the test airplane for the YPT-9s.”

ENTREPRENEUR

“Ron Alexander doesn’t believe in leaving a lot of white space in life,” Budd Davisson wrote in an April 2012 Vintage Airplane article (“C3B Stearman — Yet Another Ron Alexander Project”). “If there is spare time available, put it to use. … He could easily be selected as the poster boy for the ‘get ’er done’ generation. … For several decades, Ron has had a pretty high profile in sport aviation. So high that it’s easy for the

casual observer to pigeonhole him as ‘one of the high rollers’ and look no deeper. He didn’t develop that kind of profile by accident, and if someone feels driven to pigeonhole him (which is hard to do), it should be as one of aviation’s serious achievers and entrepreneurs. He plays hard (which is most visible), but he works even harder and has a natural flair for entrepreneurialism: He sees a need and builds a business around it. A lot of businesses, actually. … It can never be said that Ron Alexander doesn’t think big.”

In the same article, Ron shared a little about how he got started in business aviation. “The airplane that really got me started on the business side of aviation was the PT-17 Stearman project,” he said. “It was an uncut duster from the Shreveport, Louisiana, area, and I was determined to finish it quickly [in two years]. So, if I wasn’t in an airliner cockpit, I was out in my workshop. I averaged 12-14 hours a day on the project, alongside my wife and children, every day that I wasn’t flying.

I really loved the work, and it was chosen as the Best PT-17 at Galesburg that year. So, I felt good about that.”

Back in 1979, Ron founded his first business to fill a void he discovered when trying to locate fabric covering materials and parts for his Stearman project. Ron told Budd, “Although there were sources out there, they just weren’t convenient, and one thing led to another, and I wound up buying a Stits distributorship. And since I was suddenly in the business of selling aircraft-covering materials — when I wasn’t flying for the airlines, that is — I found I was going to need to both form a company and come up with a catalog. The business was Alexander Aeroplane Company, and we put the first catalog together on my kitchen table.”

In 1991, Ron was looking for new ways to market his business. “[I] thought it would be a good marketing move to have a distinctive aircraft of our own to take to fly-ins, so we www.vintageaircraft.org 15

bought a $50,000 1940 DC-3 that was sitting at Tamiami, Florida,” he said.

“Myself and several employees put about six months’ worth of elbow grease into restoring the airplane, including painting Alexander Aeroplane on the side.” Ron changed the registration number to N28AA (AA for Alexander Aeroplane), and continued using the DC-3A for training and promotional work well into 2016.

In 1992, Ron bought Stits and owned it outright for a few years. He later merged the company with PolyFiber and Ceconite, and also became a distributor for Randolph aircraft dope.

Alexander Aeroplane successfully evolved from its humble beginnings, and Ron sold the company to Aircraft Spruce and Specialty Company in 1996.

Ron also started a technical center in Griffin, Georgia. “When I owned Alexander Aeroplane, I discovered that the best way to sell products was to teach people how to use them. Most of my salespeople had come to us from outside of aviation, so we had to train

every one of them on how to use the stuff they were selling. I felt that they had to be more than order takers,” he said. “For a company to be successful in this field, they had to be able to answer the tough questions. A good percentage of our customers had never worked on an airplane before and were naturally looking to us for advice.

So, as part of building our customer service, I had to formalize training for the salespeople. From there it was a simple and logical move to make that same kind of training available to our customers. So we started a workshop program, formally teaching people how to do fabric covering, composite and sheet metal work, welding, and so forth. Ultimately it became the SportAir Workshops, and I sold it to EAA, which I think was a good move for all concerned. The EAA’s charter is based on education, and ours was selling aircraft products. … The SportAir Workshops concept works better in an educational environment.”

Always thinking ahead, and with an eye to the future of aircraft building

and materials, Ron also founded a composite repair services company, Atlanta Aerospace Composites, in 2002.

CHALLENGES AND RISKS

When I talked with Ron in 2009, I asked if he ever felt overwhelmed (partly because I was overwhelmed just trying to make mental notes of the evolution of his myriad endeavors).

Ron laughed gently and replied, “Most of the time! I guess my ‘thing in life,’ if I have to have ‘a thing,’ is to start something, and then once I get it up and running, let somebody else have it.”

He reflected for a moment and then continued. “Sometimes it’s not all successful! I enjoy taking risks; it’s partly the challenge, and it’s also because I enjoy creating something from nothing,” he said. “What makes it possible is the people who work for me. I hire my people based entirely on their attitudes — not their résumés at all. I want to know them, spend some time with them, and I want them to have good positive attitudes. We do

“I enjoy taking risks; it’s partly the challenge, and it’s also because I enjoy creating something from nothing.”

— RON ALEXANDER 16

November/December 2018

build every single business based on customer service.”

Ron contributed many technical articles to EAA publications, in which he sometimes included philosophical insights gleaned from his own experiences. In his November 1999 Aircraft Building column, Ron wrote, “As it is with most worthwhile endeavors in life, commitment is the key to success.

Your commitment to building an airplane should be a conscious decision based on diligent research and pragmatic analysis.” Ron didn’t just pen those words — he lived them in regards to many of his endeavors throughout his life.

CANDLER FIELD MUSEUM

In 2004 Ron embarked on his grandest, virtually all-encompassing aviation endeavor when he founded the Candler Field Museum at Peach State Aerodrome near Williamson, Georgia. Since Atlanta was his home base, he had decided that preserving its rich local history would be an ideal project. Ron carefully researched the history of Candler Field and found photographs of it that were taken in the early 1930s. With those images in mind, he started looking for an existing airport that could physically accommodate a variety of hangars and buildings.

His attention was drawn to Peach State Airport, now Alexander Memorial Airport, which had been around since 1966. “[I] finally discovered that the 100 acres adjacent to Peach State was for sale at a fairly reasonable price,” Ron said. “So I decided to purchase the entire package and develop a portion of it as Peach State Airpark to help pay for the runway. We didn’t have an architect put it together; I just visualized it in my mind, and then we started working to make that vision reality.”

The Aerodrome fulfills the role of a gathering place for the general aviation community at large and the regional community as well. The familiar sight and sound of N28AA,

now known as the Candler Field Express, is still present there, thanks to the DC-3A’s current owner, James Sells, Vintage 724242.

Today, the 3,000-foot grass runway, Candler Field Museum, and Peach State Airpark are collectively known as Peach State Aerodrome (GA2, Alexander Memorial Airport). The Aerodrome is home to Barnstormer’s Grill, and numerous events and activities are held there throughout the year (visit www.PeachStateAero.com).

Soon after Ron opened the museum, he invited EAA Chapter 468 to move to Peach State. Additionally, the Candler Field Flying Club and Candler Field Museum Youth Aviation Program (CFMYAP) are integral to the Aerodrome.

CFMYAP

During EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2016, Ron described CFMYAP’s main goal: “[Getting] young people interested in aviation, and letting them have hands-on experiences with flying and aircraft restoration and maintenance, and be around people who have success stories in aviation so that they can ask them questions,” he said. “I know when I was a kid, I would have given anything if I could have talked to an airline pilot — that would have been something! Back in those days, we

didn’t have those opportunities. Our initial thought was, ‘Okay, how do we go about doing this?’ And I was absolutely adamant that we not give anything away; they earn it. … All of us who are involved in this program feel very passionately that we want to give something back to aviation because we’ve all had great careers in aviation.”

Ron recalled his own pathway into aviation. “You know I’ve got a real passion for this,” he said. “I mean, I was so fortunate when I was young to have people keep me out of trouble and keep me going down the right path and giving me opportunities to fly.

Indiana University had a Twin Beech, and when I was 17 years old, they threw me in that thing as co-pilot.

Then they got a DC-3, and I actually flew it once or twice. I was thinking, golly, this is great! And then I was flying in the Air Force, and I thought, people are actually paying me to fly — they’re paying me to do something that I would pay them to do!”

As one way of “paying it forward,” Ron thoroughly enjoyed taking several of the CFMYAP youth on the DC-3 once in a while. “We have a young lady that I’m teaching how to fly right now, and she and her friend were here at AirVenture 2015,” he said with a happy grin. “We had a couple of empty seats on the 3, so they rode back down to www.vintageaircraft.org 17

Atlanta with us. We put my student up in the seat for 20 or 30 minutes, so her first logbook entry was in a DC-3! People would die for that, you know, and it just tickles me to do things like that!”

SHARING THE PASSION

First and foremost, Ron’s primary passion was, in a word, flying. With a contagious smile, he proclaimed, “It’s my life!

You know, I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t fly. To me, there’s nothing better than taking one of these biplanes out and flying it in the evening or early morning — I mean, that’s the greatest thing in the world! I clear my mind by doing that. Flying is very important, and I love these old airplanes. To me, the 1920s and ’30s were a fascinating time, and I enjoy studying it and learning more about it — and doing things to help re-create it.”

The CFMYAP, which Ron co-founded with Jim Hoak in 2013, continues today as a thriving, tangible extension of that passion. “The first stage is starting a kid out in a tailwheel airplane, and we feel like it’s extremely important to do that because we are not training pilots; we are training aviators, and there’s a huge difference,” Ron said. “The whole aviation community needs to go back to that. We want the students to feel it in their rear end when they skid around a turn — we don’t want them to rely on any instruments at all. As a matter of fact, before we solo them we cover the airspeed indicator up so they have to feel the airplane. We also go up and do spins; we don’t let anyone solo unless they have experienced spins.”

Fortunately, Ron’s vision for the far-reaching continuum of the CFMYAP is being propelled into the future by the capable hands of a cadre of volunteers.

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THRIVING LEGACY

I have never heard a disparaging word about Ron, and I shared that observation with him one day as we stood in the shade of his beloved DC-3.

I could tell that I caught him off guard, because he just smiled and shook his head in his familiar humble manner, admitting in a tone of surprise that he was pleased to know that — as though he wasn’t aware of, or hadn’t ever stopped to ponder the high esteem with which he was regarded in the aviation community.

Ron was born on January 12, 1942. During his lifetime, he logged 25,200 flight hours in numerous airplanes. The types he flew include C-45, DC-3, C-130, C-7, J-3, PT-17, Taylorcraft, DC-9, B-727, B-737, B-767, and CV 880. Tragically, Ron and a passenger died in the crash of Ron’s 1917 Curtiss JN-4 Jenny at Candler Field on November 17, 2016.

Ron’s contributions to aviation ranged from professional and personal flying, instructing, and entrepreneurship to developing methods to facilitate aircraft repairs and restorations. Ron was a staunch supporter of EAA and VAA, and contributed numerous technical articles to EAA Sport Aviation (at least 88 can be found in EAA’s online archive) and Vintage Airplane. Additionally, Ron served on the EAA Vintage Aircraft Association board of directors.

Ron’s sudden departure from our aviation community left an enormous void. Rich Davidson’s “Gone West” tribute eloquently

personified Ron’s character. “The greatest thing in [Ron’s] life may have been his zest for living, positive impact on people, his kindness to others, or the number of people who called him ‘friend,’” Rich wrote. “He was the good you could count on, that reassuring voice on the other end of the line. … Ron was a man who believed in living. Somewhere along the way, aviation, and much of the world, decided safety was better than freedom; security was better than living. The day that memo was released Ron was out flying some old plane. He never got it.”

Ron was a courteous and gracious gentleman with an effervescent spirit who joyfully and tirelessly poured his energy and talents into many facets of aviation. The passion he so freely shared lives on within those who were fortunate to know him. Bearing in mind Ron’s own words, that “commitment is the key to success,” there are many today who are committed to keeping Ron’s tremendous legacy thriving. Ronald Ray “Ron” Alexander will be inducted into the EAA Vintage Aircraft Association Hall of Fame in November 2018.

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(From left) Frederick “Casey” Baldwin, John A.D. McCurdy, Glenn Curtiss, Alexander Graham Bell, Lt. Thomas Selfridge, and Aero Club observer Augustus Post, pictured with the White Wing and Selfridge’s dog, Jack.

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BRYA

BY HAL

N

www.vintageaircraft.org 

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n the last century, a group of men who were really interested in aviation got together and formed an association focused on experimental aircraft. The group was founded by a man with a knack for leadership, and a seemingly limitless curiosity, a man whose name remains well-known to this day. You know his name, but if this trite little trap is working, you’re thinking of Paul Poberezny, and not the man who invented the telephone.

That man’s name is Alexander Graham Bell, and the group he put together was the Aerial Experiment Association, known by its anagrammatically familiar initials, AEA. Bell, who was born in Scotland and immigrated to Canada in his early 20s, was a tinkerer his entire life. In 1863, when he was 16, he and his older brother built a talking mechanical head that could say the word “mama,” thanks to a fake larynx and bellows that stood in for lungs. About a dozen years later, he was issued the first U.S. patent for the telephone, winning a photo finish race against a competitor and, in the process, changing the world forever.

Among his wide-ranging interests, Bell held a longtime fascination with aviation. In 1893, nearly 10 years before the Wright brothers’ success at Kitty Hawk, he made that fascination clear in an interview with McClure’s Magazine.

“I have not the shadow of a doubt that the problem of aerial navigation will be solved within 10 years,” he said. “That means an entire revolution in the world’s methods of transportation and of making war.”

He began spending time with people like Samuel Pierpont Langley, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and Octave Chanute, both of whom were actively tinkering with flying machines, which spurred his interest. Working from his home in Nova Scotia, Bell

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experimented with a series of steam-powered model helicopters before focusing his attention on kites of all shapes and sizes.

In December of 1903, shortly after Bell’s friend Langley tested his full-size flying machine in the second of two failed attempts, the Wrights flew their Flyer, cementing their place in aviation history. Bell was intrigued but skeptical, given the general lack of publicity around the Wrights. In fact, it wasn’t until two years later, in December of 1905, when Bell was finally convinced they’d actually flown, thanks to an eyewitness account from Chanute. It was tidily ironic that, in 1910, Bell was asked to present the Wrights with the Smithsonian’s Samuel P. Langley Medal for Aerodromics. His skepticism was long gone by then as he declared that the brothers were “eminently deserving of the highest honor.”

In 1907, at the urging of — and with considerable funding from — his wife, Mabel, Bell formalized his aviation interests and founded AEA along with two of his associates, John A.D. McCurdy and Frederick “Casey” Baldwin.

McCurdy and Baldwin were recent graduates who’d studied engineering at the University of Toronto. Also joining the group was the legendary Glenn Curtiss, a motorcycle designer turned aviation pioneer, and Lt. Thomas Selfridge, one of the U.S. Army’s first three dirigible pilots, who came after Bell wrote President Theodore Roosevelt a letter specifically requesting him.

Bell described AEA as a “cooperative scientific association, not for gain but for the love of the art and doing what we can do to help one another.” When it was founded on September 30, 1907, its official oneyear mission was described as “carrying on experiments relating to aerial locomotion with the special object of constructing a successful aerodrome.” Over the next year and a half, they did just that.

AEA’s first flying machine was a massive and complex tetrahedral kite dubbed Cygnet I, which, when towed behind a steamer, lifted Selfridge up to more than 150 feet before the wind died down. A crew member failed to cut the towrope when he was supposed to, so the kite was destroyed as it was dragged through the water and Selfridge narrowly escaped his first aircraft crash.

After building another kite, AEA moved on to a biplane glider, similar to what to the Wrights were flying in 1902-03. The group divided their time between Baddeck, Nova Scotia, and Hammondsport, New York, Curtiss’ home base.

The idea behind AEA was that each member would design an aircraft, and the team would work together to build them in succession.

Selfridge was first up with his Red Wing, named for the leftover kite silk that they used to cover the wings.

Red Wing was a pusher biplane, powered by a 40-hp Curtiss engine, featuring a small canard elevator in front and a fairly conventional-looking rudder and horizontal stabilizer at the tail. Baldwin flew Red Wing’s first flight on March 12, 1908, off the frozen Keuka Lake in New York,

Alexander Graham Bell

The first powered, controlled flight in Canada was made by John McCurdy in the AEA Silver Dart.

covering a total distance of 318 feet, making history as the first public airplane flight demonstration in North America. Five days later, Baldwin flew the airplane again, but a gusty crosswind led to it dragging a wing on the ice and crashing.

Baldwin wasn’t hurt, but the airplane was damaged beyond repair.

Next up was Baldwin’s design, covered in cotton muslin and known as White Wing. While Red Wing relied on the pilot shifting his weight for roll control, Baldwin’s airplane employed what Bell called “movable wing tips,” what we’d call ailerons. In addition, it had wheeled landing gear, not the simple skids of the previous airplane. Baldwin flew White Wing for the first time in May of 1908, followed by Selfridge and then Curtiss, who flew a distance of more than 1,000 feet, a group record at that point. McCurdy flew it next and last; just like its predecessor, White Wing fell victim to a gusty crosswind and was destroyed, though McCurdy walked away.

About this time, Scientific American magazine was offering a trophy and $25,000 in cash — nearly $700,000 today — to any pilot who could make a public flight of a least 1 kilometer. The magazine tried to entice the Wrights to compete, but they were still keeping their aircraft

close to the vest. That said, anyone wandering around Huffman Prairie in Ohio as far back as October of 1905 could have watched Wilbur Wright fly a staggering 40 times that distance (in circles), if they’d known to look. While the Wrights were still using skids and a catapult assisted launch, and the Scientific American group specified an unaided launch from level ground, it’s almost certain that they could have won the cup had they been interested.

Luckily for AEA, and Glenn Curtiss in particular, they weren’t. It was Curtiss’ turn to design the next AEA airplane, and his June Bug, which continued to build on the lessons of the first two aircraft, made its first flight in June of 1908. A few weeks later, on July 4, Curtiss flew June Bug a distance of more than 5,000 feet, easily winning the first Scientific American Trophy. June Bug continued to fly, making more than 100 successful flights before Curtiss put it on floats and renamed it Loon. It was unsuccessful as a floatplane and sank in January of 1909 during a takeoff attempt.

Along with the trophy and the prize money, Curtiss and AEA also won the attention of the Wright brothers, who alleged that the June Bug infringed on their patent

for a three-axis control system, eventually starting a series of legal battles that would continue for years. In September of 1908, the Wrights began making public flights of their own, with Wilbur wowing European crowds in France and Orville doing demos for the Army at Fort Myer, Virginia. Based on his experience with AEA, Selfridge was on the board to determine whether or not the Army would give the Wrights a contract. The Wrights weren’t wild about this, given their competitive relationship with AEA. In a letter to Wilbur, Orville wrote of his thoughts on Selfridge.

“I don’t trust him an inch,” he wrote. “He is intensely interested in the subject, and plans to meet me often at dinners, etc. where he can try to pump me.”

As fate would have it, Selfridge would never have a chance to spy on the Wrights for AEA, if he’d ever had that intention to begin with. On September 17, 1908, he and Orville took off on a demo flight and, a short while later, one of the Flyer’s propellers splintered, severing a control cable, and the airplane crashed into the parade ground and flipped onto its back. Orville was seriously injured but eventually recovered, but Selfridge died a few hours later, the first passenger to die in a powered airplane crash.

Selfridge’s death hit AEA hard, but they decided to keep at it, and extended their charter for an additional six months. Their next project was McMurdy’s design, which would come to be known, thanks to some silver balloon material they bought from Goodyear, as the Silver Dart. Evolving as it did from the previous AEA designs, it was a biplane with a rear rudder and twin canard elevators, tricycle landing gear, and this time powered by a water-cooled 35-hp Curtiss engine in a pusher configuration.

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The impossibly complex Cygnet II only made a few flights and never got out of ground effect.

Silver Dart was test flown a few times in Hammondsport and then shipped to Baddeck. On February 23, 1909, with McMurdy at the controls, it became the first powered heavier-than-air aircraft to fly in Canada. The Dart flew extensively after that, until it was destroyed in a landing accident during a military demonstration several months later.

Most people consider the Silver Dart to be AEA’s final design, but that’s not quite true.

The team had been working on another “aerodrome,” an updated and powered tetrahedral kite called Cygnet II. It was tested briefly, and unsuccessfully, before lending its engine to the Dart.

Once the Dart had proven successful, the group revisited the Cygnet II and installed a larger 70-hp Gnome engine. It flew, but only barely, reaching altitudes of a foot or two and remaining in ground effect. To look at it, it’s hard to believe it accomplished even this much, as it looks more like an over-engineered bridge than an airplane.

On March 31, 1909, the charter expired and AEA ceased to exist.

The surviving members, less Curtiss who’d already moved on to start the company that would permanently establish his role in aviation history, gathered at Bell’s massive Beinn Bhreagh estate to watch the clock run out. Writing later, Bell said, “The

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AEA is now a thing of the past. It has made its mark upon the history of aviation and its work will live.” He was right. The aircraft of AEA popularized concepts like ailerons and tricycle landing gear and, more importantly, the concept of aviation itself, having made a number of public flights while the Wrights worked effectively in secret.

Baldwin stayed close with Bell, working with him on a number of innovative projects, mostly involving high-speed watercraft. He eventually served as director for what would become famous as Bell Labs, and died at age 66 in 1948. McCurdy went on to start the first aviation school in Canada, and was the manager of Canada’s first airport. He was heavily involved in aircraft production during both world wars, and eventually served as Nova Scotia’s lieutenant John McCurdy

governor. McCurdy died in 1961 at the age of 74.

Over the years, Bell would continue to explore, to wrap his hands and mind around a wide array of interests, experimenting with everything from photography to desalinization, rudimentary fiber optics, metal detectors, air conditioning, sheep husbandry, and composting toilets. Toward the end of his life, he was involved in the eugenics movement, driven by his fears that deaf people — like his own mother — would exclusively intermarry and create “a defective race of human beings.” While horrific in hindsight, these weren’t necessarily uncommon views at the time. Within a couple of decades after Bell’s death, ideas like these had mercifully morphed from de rigueur to deeply disturbing, at least in most of the world.

Bell died on August 2, 1922, when Paul Poberezny was just 11 months old. About 30 years later another association of experimental aircraft pilots, craftsmen, and enthusiasts was founded, this one with no expiration date.

Hal Bryan, EAA Lifetime 638979, is senior editor for EAA digital and print content and publications, co-author of two books, and a lifelong pilot and aviation geek. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at halbryan or email him at hbryan@eaa.org.

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Howard DGA-15Ps on the flightline.

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SPARKY’S 2018 AIRVENTURE NOTEBOOK STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY SPARKY BARNES SARGENT

www.vintageaircraft.org

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h, EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2018! It was a particularly pleasant “homecoming for a week” with sunny skies and moderate temperatures.

Friendly pilots and a wonderful array of flying machines — from the exquisitely restored to the everyday flyers — made cruising the flightline a wholesome treat. The post-show official tally was 2,979 total showplanes, which included 1,094 vintage airplanes and 75 seaplanes. Special showings on the flightline included Cessna 170s (more than 80 all told, with about 45 parked in one group); a group of Travel Airs from the American Barnstormers Tour; 11 Beechcraft Staggerwings; seven Howard DGA-15Ps; and 19 Swifts. To top it off, there were some gems at the EAA Seaplane Base — several 1950s Piaggio Royal Gulls and a 1939 Cessna Airmaster.

Special 2018 events included the presentation of the FAA Technician of the Year Award to Bill Pancake, Vintage Aircraft Association Hall of Fame member, award-winning airplane restorer, and loyal Vintage supporter; and the dedication of the Charles W. Harris Memorial Park behind the Vintage Hangar as a tribute to the late Charlie Harris who was a founding member of VAA’s predecessor, the Antique/Classic Division, and a VAA Hall of Fame member.

Jim, Vintage 9586, and Mary LeFevre hosted tram tours through the Vintage fields, and Dave, Vintage 31851, and Maxwell, Vintage 721898, Wenglarz gave metal shaping demonstrations. Once again, Ray Johnson, Vintage 5728, was busy facilitating and presiding over the daily Vintage in Review sessions at the Rose Plaza Interview Circle. The program kicked off with the Ladies for Liberty singing 1940s tunes, and daily engine runs featured the 1915 OX-5 by David Hedgecock, Vintage 4027, and Don Voland, Vintage 725978, of the OX-5 Pioneer Group and the new production Gnome Monosoupape 100hp rotary engine by Classic Aero Machining Service.

It was especially refreshing this year to have the opportunity to talk with several young pilots who are in their 20s. Their passion for flying vintage airplanes radiates in a most contagious manner, and their personal ambition and drive to achieve their aviation goals is impressive. And then there are pilots who seem to be eternally young at heart; they provide a unique blend of inspiration as well. So c’mon, let’s go cruise the flightline!

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Lynn Dawson and her 1957

Cessna 172.

CESSNA 172

Lynn Dawson is based at Culpepper, Virginia, and has owned her 1957 Cessna 172 (N7928B) since 2001.

“When I met my now-husband, Steve Roth, he had a 172, and we flew all over Florida. I decided to learn how to fly, and about the time I started taking lessons, he sold his 172 and bought a Swift,” Lynn said. “So, I bought my own 172, which turned out to be a good choice because then it was my plane, not his. It had been restored, but the panel was the typical old mishmash of instruments. After I’d owned that for a few years, I saw this one posted for sale at Easton, Maryland, and it had a beautiful panel. They wanted about $4,000 more than I’d paid for my old 172, so I pulled the ad off the board and called every half-hour until someone answered. I told them, ‘I’m coming tomorrow with a check and a mechanic.’ When we got there, the lady said they’d dropped the price by a $1,000! Steve checked it out as my mechanic, and I bought it.”

Lynn sold the first 172 to her older sister, who had also become inspired to fly. Lynn has logged quite a bit of cross-country time hauling camping gear in the 172 to fly-ins such as SUN ’n FUN International Fly-In & Expo and Triple Tree, while Steve, Vintage 14504, flies his Swift. This was Lynn’s second visit to Oshkosh, and her first time flying in.

“I’m familiar with major show procedures, and I watched videos to make sure I knew what the landmarks looked like so it seemed straightforward to me,” Lynn said. “We flew in on Friday when there wasn’t a mass gaggle, so it was good!”

She has a special place in her heart for the older 172s. “The panels are low, so the visibility out the front is much better than in later models. I do wish more of these old 172s were being restored and loved; they can be just as beautiful as any other vintage airplane,” Lynn reflected. “The ‘spam can’ gets a bad reputation, but it’s super affordable to fly. I did have it painted, and the goal was to bring it back to a near-original scheme. I selected the colors from a 2- by 2-inch card, and when it was at the paint shop at Hagerstown, Maryland, I told the painter that when he opened up the paint, if the colors don’t match, don’t paint. I could afford new paint, but I couldn’t afford to repaint — and I couldn’t be more pleased with the way it turned out!” N7928B received the Contemporary Outstanding Cessna 170/172/175/177 - Outstanding in Type Award this year.

TAYLORCRAFT BC-12D

Scott McFadden, Vintage 726528, a Canadian who currently makes his home in Thunder Bay, Ontario, flew to AirVenture in his beautifully restored 1946 Taylorcraft BC-12D (CF-CLR). “I bought the airplane over the telephone in 1984, sight unseen, with the purpose of restoring it,” Scott said. “It actually turned out to be in much better condition than I thought it was, so I put it back together when I got it home and flew it on wheels and skis until 1989. Then I took the airplane apart — and I mean really apart — because I knew I was going to

store it and move it. Home then was Montreal, Quebec, and with kids and traveling and career changes, I didn’t get much of a chance to work on the airplane until 2013. I retired in September 2014, and I’ve been working on it every day, with the exception of a couple of fishing vacations, since then. So it’s been an odyssey!”

Locating parts was one of Scott’s chief hurdles to overcome with the project. “Parts are hard to come by, and those parts that are out there are not necessarily very good, so I did end up fabricating many of the more difficult parts, such as the upper and lower cowlings, the shroud around the air filter, and the shroud for the exhaust. I spent several months working on the wheelpants; I bought them online, and they’re original aluminum. But they were full of Bondo, and after removing the Bondo, they were full of cracks. It took weeks of tap-tap-tapping with my nylon hammer to get them straight. It just takes dogged perseverance,” Scott said with a laugh. “I get comments about my skills, but my response is always the same — it’s not necessarily skill, it’s just that I keep doing things over and over again until I get an acceptable result!”

When it came time for paint, Scott knew he didn’t want a custom mix, so he used the closest off-the-shelf colors that he felt were period appropriate. “The paint scheme came from one of these artist renderings on a one-page ad for a Taylorcraft, but they were black and white sketches, so I chose Randolph White, Boston Maroon, and Pontiac Red,” he said. “I used the Poly Fiber process with a topcoat of Ranthane, which was added to the Poly Fiber STC. I flew into Oshkosh every year for the last seven years in my 172, and I spent a lot of time right here walking up and down and talking to guys and gals who had done restorations. The consensus seemed to be that Ranthane was a little bit easier to work with than Aero-Thane, and certainly the quality of the finish was what attracted me to speak to the owners.”

It wasn’t only the quality finish that Scott achieved with his Taylorcraft; it was also the detailed quality of his workmanship throughout the restoration (visit www.c-fclr. blogspot.com to read more) that resulted in CF-CLR receiving the Classic Outstanding Taylorcraft - Small Plaque Award.

STINSON VOYAGER

Scott McFadden and his 1946 Taylorcraft BC-12D.

Twenty-three-year-old Shalyn Applegate Marchetti of Queen City, Missouri, went for her first airplane ride when she was 3 weeks old in her parents’ Cessna 170 and has been around aviation ever since. “Dad was watching me while my mom was teaching school, and we’d either hang out in the hangar, or he’d take me flying — I absolutely loved it! My first solo was in 2013 — a Piper J-3 Cub — and since then I’ve flown 23 different types of aircraft, including a Super Decathlon, my dad’s Cabin Waco, Piper Vagabond, Taylorcraft, clipped wing Cub, Super Cub, and I had the brief pleasure of getting some dual in a Grumman www.vintageaircraft.org 29

Applegate Marchetti, d his daughter, Shalyn Harve Applegate an Voyager 108-1. with his 1947 Stinson

Goose. I just transitioned to this 1947 Stinson Voyager 108-1 (N8841K) this summer, and I love it,” Shalyn said.

“I try to find the good in every single airplane I fly, but the Stinson’s Franklin engine has so much power, she’s an absolute sweetheart to fly. It’s excellent for going places, and I love it for that.”

Shalyn also flies an Embraer 145 for Piedmont Airlines. “Piedmont has a formal flow-through with American Airlines, and right now the flow time from day one of starting with Piedmont is five years, and then I’ll be with American. Piedmont is what I do for work; flying vintage airplanes is what I do for fun. This is where my heart lies; I love these planes, and the people that you meet in the vintage aviation community are all just incredible. I don’t even remember my first time at Oshkosh because I was only 2!” she said. To those who are interested in flying, Shalyn said, “If you’re thinking about flying, schedule that introduction flight. I had a student once who was born the same year as my J-3 Cub, and he was like, ‘I wouldn’t fly anything that old!’ I was like, ‘Buddy, it’s safe, I promise.’ The vintage airplanes are just fantastic to fly. Some people say the sky is the limit; but my favorite quote is, ‘For pilots, the sky is home.’ Dream big!”

PIPER SUPER CUB

Although Scott McKinley’s grandparents and father fly, his interest in aviation wasn’t piqued until he was in his late teens and visited Addison Pemberton’s hangar in Spokane, Washington. “Addison was working on his Grumman Goose and asked if I wanted to help out, so

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that’s how I got into the restoration and the antique side of things. I also try to make it to as many fly-ins as I can. I soloed at 17 in a Super Cub, and now I’m 21 and coming up on almost 1,000 hours,” Scott said.

“I’m going to electrical engineering school, and I haven’t decided if I want to do that and support my addictive hobby or fly for a living — so I flight instruct a little bit and recently started getting into ferrying jobs.”

It was a noteworthy ferrying job that indirectly led Scott to AirVenture this year. “I got a call a couple of weeks ago from a guy who said, ‘We need a Super Cub moved,’ and I said, ‘Sure, that sounds good.’ I’d done that before, flying a couple of hundred miles in just an afternoon. Then he said, ‘It’s going from Sulphur Springs, just east of Dallas, to Anchorage.’ That was on Monday,” Scott said. “I told him I’d be ready to go on Thursday — so that gave me time to pack and get survival gear and get all the logistics figured out. I had actually planned on taking summer classes just to get ahead on credits, but I thought this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so I got online and dropped the classes and made the trip happen!

“The trip to Anchorage was awesome,” Scott said. “I made it to Ponca City, Oklahoma, the first day, and the next day to Hays and Kimball,

Scott McKinley with his friend’s Piper Super

Cub.

Nebraska, and on up to Sheridan, Wyoming. The next day was just stellar weather again, and I flew to Laurel and Cutbank, Montana, and then called Border Patrol and did the border crossing deal. Then I flew on to Leathbridge and landed to clear customs with Canada, and made two more stops. I flew 12 hours that day and picked up the Alaska Highway at Dawson Creek and spent the night at Fort St. John. The next night I stayed in Whitehorse. It was really exciting, and there were a lot of unknowns flying in the Yukon, so I hugged the road because I wanted populated options if I went down. I logged 41 hours in four and a half days of flying and about 3,800 miles. After I got to Anchorage last week, the owner got me a ticket to Minneapolis. From there, I rode with Vaughn Lovley in his cabin Waco up to Wausau for the Hatz biplane fly-in, where I met my friend Trent Davis, and then we flew his dad’s Super Cub from Wausau into Oshkosh.”

WACO UPF-7

Steve Zoerlein, Vintage 724075, of St. Charles, Illinois, grew up as a military brat whose father introduced him to flying gliders and acquiring basic stick and rudder skills at the age of 14. He soloed a Schweizer 2-33, transitioned to powered airplanes, and now flies a 787 for American Airlines — but his heart is still with the vintage airplanes. Steve was clearly a happy camper this year; his firstever personal restoration of his 1941 Waco UPF-7 (NC32091) received the World War II Military Trainer/Liaison Aircraft Champion - Bronze Lindy. “I got this project five years ago from John Shue in Pennsylvania. It had been in an accident back in the late ’70s, and John got it and started its

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November/December 2018

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CONNOR MADISON

www.vintageaircraft.org 

33

that’s what so many of these people at Oshkosh do — they put airplanes back in the air that haven’t flown in a long time. I’ve been here before, but this is my first time bringing my own airplane here. It’s been an enjoyable process, and I have a very supportive wife, Patti, who let me do this — now I get to go on a cruise with her next month!”

BEECH STAGGERWING

Steve Zoerlein and his 1941 Waco UPF-7.

restoration but then it got hung in the rafters. So I bought it and have had John and his son, Scott, help me along the way with other friends in the Waco community. It’s been very valuable to have the Shues help me out because they do nothing but restore UPF-7s back to mint condition,” Steve said. “I restored it at my house, and a friend helped get me started in the covering by helping me cover the center section, and then I did the wings. I used the Poly Fiber system with a Ranthane topcoat, with an HVLP gravity feed painting system. The colors are a custom blend; I wanted it to be just a little bit different. I sent the engine to Radial Engines Ltd. in Oklahoma, and I was there during the week that they rebuilt it.”

Steve made the first flight at Poplar Grove Airport last September, but just prior to doing so, he went down to Marathon Key in Florida, where a friend gave him five hours of dual in a UPF-7. “I had flown the UPF years ago, but not recently, so he re-showed me how to land an airplane. I have about 85 hours on the airplane now,” Steve said with a smile. “I’ve flown it to different fly-ins, and I’ve hopped rides for Boy Scouts. I’ve even hopped rides for a California baseball team that was in the Midwest for a tournament — and to see these 10-year-olds’ faces when you lift off and you’re above cornfields was really fun! Being from a metropolitan area of southern California, they just couldn’t believe their eyes. That’s the kind of thing you like doing — trying to inspire some of these younger kids to do this. It’s such a joy to put this airplane back in the air again, and

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November/December 2018

Gary Moreau of Jacksonville, Florida, bought his 1940 Beech D17S Staggerwing (NC20779) from Rare Aircraft in Minnesota two years ago. “I always really liked Staggerwings, and I saw this one for sale in Trade-APlane. About six days later, I was bringing it home. The first guy who owned it also owned seven oil companies; the second guy was DuPont; and then World War II broke out and it went into war service. Afterward, Lloyd Cizek spent 17 years restoring it, and then he had a heart attack and lost his medical. Lloyd kept the plane for 18 more years, and then two years after he passed away, the family put it up for sale. I happened to be the lucky recipient, so I’m a caretaker of it now. I had no background in tailwheel airplanes until I bought this,” Gary said chuckling. “We flew a Cub for about four hours, and then I flew for about an hour in a Citabria before getting into the Staggerwing. I love it; it’s a wonderful airplane and is great to fly. It’s tricky on the ground — you’ve got your hands full! We flew it from Jacksonville out west to southern California, on up to the San Francisco area, and then over to Idaho Falls for

Gary Morea u

and his 1940

Beech D17S

Staggerwin g.

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the Round Engine Roundup and back to Jacksonville — that was two weeks ago — and now we’re here at AirVenture. My sons, Corey and Andy, also enjoy the airplane, and we’re just having a great time with it.”

NC20779 bears the simple name Lais on its cowling, and Gary’s explanation was that it was named that way when he bought it. Then, with a broad smile, he opened the cabin door and a small placard was revealed, elucidating the meaning behind the name: “Lais — a woman of ancient Corinth who was known for her great beauty and fine lines. She also had a reputation for being somewhat fast.” It’s a delightfully apt name for this lovely Staggerwing, which is, by and large, the product of Lloyd’s long-term labor of love.

HOWARD DGA-15P

Trish Volker has owned her Howard DGA-15P for seven years and is based at Niagara Falls, New York. NC67722 was one of seven Howards on the field this year. For several years now, she and her pilot husband, Rick, have been flying to the pre-Oshkosh Howard gathering at Siren, Wisconsin, and then joining the Howards flying en masse to AirVenture.

Rick Atkins of Placerville, California, restored this Howard years ago. NC67722 was born July 4, 1942, and was impressed into U.S. Navy service as

d, Rick, an ith her husban Trish Volker w

36

November/December 2018

d her Howard

DGA-15P.

a model GH-1. “When this one came out of military service into private hands, it sold in 1946 for $3,000 — if only!”

Trish said. “We’ve made this one ADS-B compliant and have also installed a nine-cylinder monitor on the Pratt & Whitney R-985 engine.”

When asked what her attraction to the Howard was, Trish was literally caught speechless, but her glow of happiness spoke volumes. “Rick is more of a warbirds aficionado, and I just fell in love with the row of Howards in the Vintage area. It was Mike Vaughan’s Howard that I just stood in front of for two years and drooled over — which I’m sure was not appealing!” Trish said with a laugh.

“When my dad died I had a little bit of money, so I could do the responsible thing and put it in a savings account — or buy a plane! That decision was really easy for me, so I bought the plane. I have no regrets at all because every time I’m in this Howard, there is some feature that makes me think, ‘This is the perfect plane.’ Do I have respect for it? In spades! I’m at the stage now where I’m quite comfortable with everything until I get it on the ground; but from the time you land until you put it away, it’s an independent couple of thousand pounds, and I respect that.”

TAYLORCRAFT BC-12D

Although Lon, Vintage 29231, and Barb Dienst of Poplar Grove, Illinois, just recently acquired this 1946 Taylorcraft BC-12D (NC96440), their association with the airplane goes back a long way. “We dug it out of an old barn in 1985; it had been blown over in a windstorm back in the 1950s.

Don Claude, a real good friend of mine who’s 92 years old now, did the majority of the restoration, and I did some of it. We restored it in my garage, and it has Stits Poly Fiber with Aero-Thane on it. It still has a 65-hp Continental,” Lon said. “The first year it was at Oshkosh was 1990, and for seven years in a row this airplane won an award. It’s in the custom category because it has later model wheelpants and a custom paint scheme. It was also featured in the February 1994 issue of Vintage Airplane. Don has gotten good use out of it up until a few months ago, and for the last several years he wouldn’t take anybody for an airplane ride that was not a pilot themselves. I think he put almost 1,800 hours on it since restoration; he wrote detailed accounts of his cross-country adventures for the Vintage Aero newsletter (a local group in Northern Illinois). Don flew it to the West Coast a couple of times and the East Coast a couple of times from Illinois, and he flew it to a lot of the Taylorcraft reunions at Alliance, Ohio. In the mid-1990s, the original Taylorcraft test pilot (Reese Edwards) who flew it when it first came out of the factory was at the reunion, so Don took him up and let him fly it and made him sign the logbook again. That was June 14, 1996 — 50 years to the very day that Reese made the test flight!”

When it came time to sell the treasured Taylorcraft, Don wanted it to go to an especially good home. “We have other airplanes and a hangar that the Taylorcraft can go in so

Barb and Lon Dienst with their 1946 Taylorcraft BC-12D.

finally I said, ‘Don, you might as well just sell it to us,’” Lon said. “And he was just tickled pink that we would buy it and take care of it.”

As for Barb, she has fond memories of Citabria flying with Lon and being at Oshkosh. “We’ve been coming here for the last 40-some years — we’ve only missed two years out of that when Lon was crop dusting,” she said. “I’ve walked around here pregnant and pushing strollers through the years, and I enjoy meeting a lot of people here. It’s a big family reunion — with many people you only see here!”

CESSNA 170

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Cessna 170, and there were upwards of 80 on the field. Among them was Bill Felten of Sandpoint, Idaho, who was camping with his two sons alongside his 1948 Cessna 170 (N3989V). “I’ve known I wanted to fly since maybe before I could walk, but when I was growing up I never knew how to access it. Around 1980, an older guy gave me a ride in a Tri-Pacer one day, and that kind of got me started. I soloed in 1981 in a Cessna 172 and was attracted to the 170 because I like the tailwheel attitude and the story that goes with it — that you have to be more of a pilot to fly one. I figured if the old guys could do it, then I can do it,” Bill said grinning. “And then of course I have to prove that I really can!”

Bill transitioned to the 170 with a top-notch instructor, and felt comfortable with the airplane in about four hours. “It’s an easy airplane to fly safely,” he said. “It’s much more difficult to fly it gracefully. It takes a little while to stop making demands of it, and listen to what it’s telling you — then you can find a groove. Predominately I make three-point landings at a stall; lately I’ve been bouncing — we call those pogo stick landings!”

N3989V has been a family member since Bill bought it 30 years ago. “The 170 is kind of like a good family car; it pretty much does everything you ask of it. About 12 years ago we stripped it down it, polished it out, and made it turquoise with black trim,” he said. “It has a six-cylinder, 145-hp Continental C-145, and on the trip coming out here, we averaged just over 8 gph, and our cruising speed was 105 to 110 mph. The wings were originally fabric-covered, and they were metalized in the 1950s, and a dorsal fin was added. I upgraded the radios, but otherwise the panel is pretty much state of the art 1948.

“I would be crushed if I had to part with the airplane,” Bill said reflecting upon his time aloft. “It’s taught me a lot more than just flying. You always think, ‘How would I react when things really go to pot and things are really on the line?’ Of course everybody imagines that they would react heroically; well, here you get to find out! So I’ve learned about myself and a lot about psychology — about getting all wound up and feeling that it’s absolutely essential to be some place, and later on thinking, if I can get down on the ground in one piece, why was I so worried about getting there?

There’s a spiritual element to flying; I feel immensely privileged when I fly. I’ve flown through strands of gossamer from baby spiders hatching out, all backlit from the sun. They would shoot a string 50 or 60 feet long, and it’s like a forest of sparkly strands — how could you imagine something like that? Flying is an affliction and an addiction. That’s one of the really great things about being here at Oshkosh — you’re among your own kind; not one of them thinks I’m crazy. You can talk to anybody about anything here; it’s a real brotherhood.”

Bill Felton with his

1948 Cessna 170.

www.vintageaircraft.org 37

CESSNA 195A

Scot Prescott flew his 1951 Cessna 195A (N1069D) from Alburgh, Vermont, to AirVenture this year. His desire to own a 195 first arose when he was just 4 years old. “A family friend of ours had one back then, and I’ve wanted one ever since. I’ve had this one for six years now, and I love it! It’s comfy, it flies good, it’s relatively fast, and has a lot of room,” Scot said. “It’ll cruise at 150 mph, at 16 gph — so it’s not very economical.

I bought it as a flying project, and maintenance wise, I’ve had the engine off, tail off, gear off, and prop off. I also put a whole new panel in it. I’m an A&P and IA, and have my own restoration shop, ScootAir.” Vicki Fender accompanied Scot to Oshkosh for her very first time at the show, which she called “amazing.” She soloed at 16 in a Tomahawk, and is now a 767 captain (as is Scot).

Both she and Scot were inspired by their fathers to get into aviation. “I’m in sensory overload, and will definitely come back again,” Vicki said. “I’m not a camper either, but this year I’m taking on the whole adventure, camping and all.”

Scot Prescott

38

his 1951 cki Fender, with and friend, Vi

November/December 2018

Cessna 195A.

Alex Kenney w ith his grandf ather’s 1946 Pi pe

r PA-12 Super

PIPER PA-12 SUPER CRUISER

Cruiser.

Twenty-year-old Alex Kenney of Searcy, Arkansas, made his first solo flight to Oshkosh this year in his grandfather’s 1946 Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser. “I’ve been here as a younger kid with my grandpa flying, but I wasn’t allowed to come back until I could fly myself. I’ve had my [certificate] for a couple of years now and have a little over 200 hours,” Alex said. “I flew in on Saturday and just barely made it in before they shut the airport down to IFR only. They were turning people around, and it was hectic on the way in; I was happy that I did it, and it was a nice landing, too! I was a little nervous, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.”

Alex’s grandfather, Windle Henry, has long been associated with N92754. “My grandfather has been flying it for the last 30 years or so. Before he owned it, a glider pilot at the local airport taught my grandfather how to fly, just so he could tow him in his glider. A few years later a tornado completely demolished this airplane, and my grandfather bought it as a project in 1998,” Alex said. “My family restored it and made all new sheet metal and fairings. My Uncle Jerry is a machinist by trade, and he’s really good at sheet metal work and Fiberglas. The wheelpants are a Younkin design, and we scaled them to fit the lines of the airplane. This airplane also has the STC for a 150-hp Lycoming O-320 and the larger Super Cub tail surfaces.

The airframe was covered with Poly Fiber and finished with Aero-Thane in the original Super Cruiser paint scheme, and the project was finished in 2003.”

Alex not only enjoys flying this PA-12, he also takes pride in lavishing loving care on N92754. “This is my favorite airplane in the whole world!” he said with a beaming smile. “I

learned to fly in her, and named her Brandy. She doesn’t sit outside very long; this is the one time of year I’m okay with leaving her out for a week. I spend a lot of time making sure I keep it in good shape.”

Alex’s time is well spent: N92754 received the Classic Custom Class B (86-150 hp) - Small Plaque Award. For the long term, Alex wants to make aviation his career. “I’m getting a degree in mechanical and aeronautical engineering so I can work with airplanes, design parts, and maybe design planes,” he said. “I’d like to maybe have a career in that and, at some point, switch over and do corporate aviation. Or move to Alaska and be a bush pilot — that’s a dream! But I can tell you this — I will be flying until I can’t!”

PIPER J-3 CUB

Chuck, Vintage 21556, and Mary Thomas, alternately of Jackson, Michigan, and Houston, Texas, were camping with their 1946 Piper Cub (NC70414) in the South 40.

Virtually newlyweds at 75 years young, they’ve been married only a year. “I am a very happy passenger!” said Mary, who doesn’t fly herself. “Sometimes people can’t imagine how I get in the Cub. We have a friend who has the Widgeon up front, and he told Chuck the true judge of my character would be whether or not I could get in the Cub!” “That does require a little gymnastics some days, especially at our age,” said Chuck, whose adventures in aviation started when he was 10 years old and went for his first flight in a 1937 Fairchild. “I flew with my dad into the 1960s, and he bought a flying Cub in 1961 for $600. In

1986, I flew that Cub (NC6815H) to St. Thomas and the U.S. Virgin Islands. It had a 65-hp Continental and a 12-gallon tank, and I used a handheld radio, a compass and a stopwatch, and lots of charts. When I got down there, I went to a boat shop and had them put a fitting on the fuel cap, and I attached a boat fuel line with a primer pump to the fitting. Then I put two 5-gallon cans of fuel on the front seat; I liked having that coming home! I still own that Cub, but it’s not currently flying. We’ve had NC70414 about 12 years, and we’ve flown as far west as the Grand Canyon. We do put this Cub on floats when we bring it up to Michigan from Texas, and we go to Otsego Lake for a big fly-in in June, which is a great time! It has an 85-hp engine, which helps it immensely, and we have 36 gallons of fuel.”

Both Chuck and Mary have been to Oshkosh numerous times, with Chuck’s first time being in 1980. “It’s just a magnet; it’s a mecca for pilots,” Chuck said. “It’s about seeing many friends, meeting people you don’t know who become your friends — some of them just for an hour or two while you’re visiting, and some that you continue with when you leave here. It’s great to see all this beautiful stuff they do to aircraft; the restorations never cease to amaze me!”

PA-18A-150

Chuck and Mar

y Thomas with

r Cub. their 1946 Pipe

N9460D was manufactured in 1959 as a PA-18A, an A model Super Cub, which means it was easily adapted to being a crop duster.

When Martt Clupper, Vintage 101, of Warsaw, Indiana, first saw this airplane for sale a couple of years ago, he didn’t even know there was such a thing as an A model Super Cub. “It only had 2,000 hours’ total time on it when my half-brother, Marr Olsen, and I found it in Arizona,” he said. “It was all intact and still had the original cotton fabric — it just needed a lot of love,” explains Martt.

“It has a flat-topped fuselage to accommodate a hopper door, and you’d put the hopper in the removable rear seat area. It also has the metal belly panels on it. This airplane spent 500 hours crop dusting. Then in the mid-1960s it left that world and spent most of its time in South Dakota.”

The intent of the restoration was to capture the PA-18A’s vintage feel and look, while adding some utility to it with a number of STCs. “I added the overhead X brace which just strengthens up the entire cabin, an www.vintageaircraft.org 39

BEECH MUSKETEER

PA-18A-150 he with the Piper Martt Clupper

brother, Marr. restored for his

extended baggage area, a larger baggage door, attached the front seat belt fittings to the fuselage, and welded on float fittings. The Wipaire 2,000-pound gross weight upgrade gives you 250 pounds more useful load so it’s a really good return on the effort,” Martt said. “It has an 892-pound useful load now. The original 150-hp Lycoming O-320 had about 100 hours on it since it had been overhauled, and I installed a new firewall and built a new boot cowl. I also made the interior a little nicer than it would have been from the factory.”

Martt covered the airplane with the Stewart Systems process and Ceconite fabric. “The paint I used has a flattener in it, so it looks more like it would have when it came out of the factory.

There’s a lustrous beauty to it, especially when it’s in the sunshine — the Santa Fe Red and Daytona White just come alive,” he said. “Marr soloed in a Citabria 40 years ago and never got his private, so this is his entry back into aviation.

He’s going to resume his training in this airplane and his intention is to own it forever — and his half-brother restored it for him, so why not hang on to it? I’ll fly it out to him in Kelseyville, California, and I’m hoping to take our 92-yearold mother up for a flight when I get there!”

Martt’s detailed restoration of N9460D garnered the Contemporary Class I Single Engine (0-160 hp) Bronze Lindy this year.

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November/December 2018

This 1967 Beech BE-A23A Musketeer (N6928Q) has been flown by three generations of the Prange family of Warrenton, Virginia. “My dad, Eugene Prange, bought the Musketeer toward the end of his Navy career in 1972,” owner Bob Prange, Vintage 725938, explained. “I learned to fly in it a couple of years later while I was in college; I soloed in it and also got my instrument and CFII in it. My brother, Mark, has also flown it.”

Bob flies for Delta Air Lines, a job he’s had for 20 years. “I did not do a lot of little airplane flying along the way; I thought it had been just a steppingstone. But I would fly with my dad in the Musketeer to give him his biennial flight review, and scare the heck out of myself with this little airplane — I was trying to flare at 50 feet and doing all those dumb things that you do when you’re used to bigger planes,” Bob said chuckling. “My dad kept flying it quite a bit back in the ’80s and ’90s, and then he started getting some medical issues so the plane didn’t fly for a few years. My sons asked me, ‘What are we going to do with Grandpa’s old airplane?’ I said, ‘I guess we’ll just sell it; it’s a basket case just sitting in the hangar with the engine run out.’ Then they wanted to know what it would take to get it flying again, and the next thing I knew, I was sending the 165-hp Continental engine away for overhaul. We’ve updated the panel to include a Garmin 530 with WAAS, a Garmin audio panel, transponder, and a Garmin Aera 796. Last year, we had it painted by Lancaster Aero at Smoketown, Pennsylvania.”

Bob’s sons, Andrew and David, both enjoy flying N6928Q. Andrew, 29, loves flying the Musketeer. “David and I both learned on a Garmin G1000 system, but our first flights were in our Musketeer, so we learned on the steam gauges,” Andrew said. “I have my private and instrument, and I need to work on

Bob Prange w ith his sons, An drew and Davi 1967 Beech BE d, and the fam -A23A Muskete ily’s er.

my commercial; I’d like to at least become a flight instructor and see where that takes me.”

David, 26, has his private as well. “I have soloed the Musketeer, and I still need to get my instrument rating. Dad’s a CFII, so I’ll probably do that and take it from there,” he said. “I’d like to see if I can be an airline pilot and follow in his footsteps.”

Bob shared a note of historical interest. “Our type club, Beech Aero Club, recently acquired one of the original Three Musketeers that flew around the country introducing the new line of aircraft to Beech dealers,” he said. “It will be inducted into the Beech Heritage Museum in Tullahoma, Tennessee, this October.”

Carl and Julie Mattso

4 Buccaneer. n with their Lake LA-

LAKE BUCCANEER

Carl Mattson and his wife, Julie, were busy packing their camping gear and tandem bicycle back into their four-place Lake LA-4 Buccaneer one morning, preparing to fly home to Centennial Airport at Denver, Colorado. Carl said he is rather fond of his Lake. “I owned this airplane for five and a half years, but then I sold it 10 years ago to get a Cessna Turbo 210,” Carl said. “I missed the Lake and called the guy up and said, ‘Any time you want to sell the airplane, I’d be interested in having it.’ Three months ago, I bought it back and here we are at Oshkosh with it. This one has a turbocharger; the Lake doesn’t like density altitudes much over 6,000 feet, but with the turbocharger, the service ceiling is 18,000 feet — so we can fly up over the mountains without any problem.”

CESSNA 182 WITH TAILWHEEL CONVERSION

Erik Edgren, Vintage 714505, of Oskaloosa, Iowa, has owned his converted 1957 Cessna 182A (N4012D) for about two years, and this year his son, John, flew the leg into Oshkosh. “My friend, David Lamb, owned this airplane for 25 years and did the conversion, which was a 20-year process. I managed to catch him in a weak moment and bought it from him,” Erik explained with a smile. “It already had the Horton STOL kit, and David added the long-range fuel, an extended baggage compartment, a bigger engine, and a beautiful panel.”

John, 17, was 2 weeks old when he had his first airplane ride. “I grew up flying with Dad and going to air shows, and I was about 12 when Dad started seriously giving me instruction in the same BC-12D Taylorcraft that his father taught him to fly in. I soloed on my 16th birthday, and I took my checkride at 5 a.m. on my 17th birthday, before weather moved in,” John said. “Dad recently let me solo the 180, and I’m working toward my instrument and eventually commercial. I’ve been accepted to go to Iowa State for aerospace engineering, and my goal is to have my CFI before I go so I can instruct while I’m there to build hours and make some money.”

Erik grew up around aviation in rural Iowa, and may have taken his flying opportunities a bit for granted when he was a teen. “Dad taught me to fly in a Taylorcraft, but I dinked around and didn’t get my [certificate] right away. When I was 20, the Taylorcraft was apart, and Dad needed to fly so he was going to rent a spam can at the local airport,” Erik recalled. “I asked him if I could go with, and he said ‘No!’ I said, ‘Why not?’ Because that had been our father-son thing literally my whole life! He said, ‘Anybody so lazy that they haven’t gotten their private pilot’s [certificate] when it was given to them as a 16th birthday present isn’t welcome to be in the same airplane I’m in!’ Two months later, I had my [certificate]!”

Then Erik decided he’d work toward flying for the airlines, adding ratings and building time by working at a variety of flying jobs. But after his father had retired, he returned to Iowa to be a farmer. “While I think I gave up income potential for being an airline pilot, what I gained was quality of life! I got a grass strip, a hangar, and I’m home just about all the time,” Erik said. “I fly comedy/aerobatic shows [Twistin’ It Old School!] in a clipped wing T-craft that has a C-85 with an inverted fuel system, and that’s my side gig. As far I know I’m the only one who does comedy passes inverted.

The neatest thing about the air show business is that some of the air show giants are still flying, and I’m able to fly Erik Edgren and his son, John, with th eir Cessna 182A. shows with them; I get to hang out with my heroes!” www.vintageaircraft.org 41

of Polo, Illinois, , Vintage 22582, dy Greg Heckman ampion Gold Lin tique Grand Ch an OX-5, 35 received the An 57 Cof n ent restoratio for his magnific coln-Page.

Lin 28 19 ed power

by Dion and Mary Daily hand-propping demonstrations were given

Carr.

Pilot J oe 170B fr Rehm fle w Bo om O bR hio cruisin g spe to Wittm unkle’s, Vin a ed of 100 k n Regiona tage 7158 nots.

9 l Airp ort. N 0, 1953 Ces sn 3140A has a a

Dave, Vintage 12040, and Jean ne Allen flew in 1934 Waco YKC, from Colorado NS14137. in their past

42  

November/December 2018

award-winning

l ggio P.136-L2 Roya N222A is a 1954 Pia er Riv of .

Inc an Air Gull registered to Oce Falls, Wisconsin.

This 194 8S hp Fran tinson 108-3 V oyager klin an (N6829 d is ow M) has ned by a 165Wes Mc Culloug h.

This mem oria the dedica l plaque for Charlie H tion of Ch arlie’s Park arris was unveiled during west of th e Vintage Hangar.

The World War I airplanes that were on display during the week drew many admirers.

Mark H ollid the Class ay, Vintage Lif eti ic GC-1B S Outstanding S me 1316, of Lak wift N38 wift - S mall Pla e Elmo, Minne 60K. sota, re que Aw ce ard for his 1948 ived Temco www.vintageaircraft.org 43

Here are eight of the Travel Airs that landed at Wittman Reg ional Airport after completing thei r multistate American Barnstor mers Tour during the weeks prior to Osh kosh. to AirVenture this troit DC-3, returned Airlines Flagship De can eri Am 7 193 the , N17334

summer.

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ts, Minnesota. yn of Vadnais Heigh ll registered to Aerol Gu l ya Ro L1 6P.13 ggio N40022 is a 1956 Pia

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46  

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PT-17 registered to Jay Rud of Ne wark, Illinois.

EAA Seaplane Stinson at the

Base.

4000.

www.vintageaircraft.org 47

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48

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N16M is a 1944 Beech D17S Stagg erwing owned Arvada, Colora

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November/December 2018

by Mark

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BY MARK CARLSON

THE GREAT WALDO PEPPER (1975) is a fictional bio-drama about a barnstormer named Waldo Pepper. A true aviation film, Waldo Pepper takes place in the early 1920s when barnstormers were plying their meager trade among the towns and farms of the Midwest. Waldo, played by the boyishly handsome Robert Redford at the height of his fame, had been in the U.S. Army Air Service during the Great War but was never in combat. But this doesn’t match the daring war hero image he has cultivated. He is struggling to eke out a living flying a battered Standard J-1 around Nebraska to finance a new aerobatic monoplane being constructed by his brother-in-law Ezra Stiles. Waldo encounters another barnstormer who becomes instant competition.

Tall, blond Swedish-born actor Bo Svenson portrays the confident Axel Olsson.

Wanting to get rid of the man he considers an interloper, Waldo works a bit of minor sabotage on Axel’s Jenny, causing the wheels to fall off on takeoff. Waldo then asks the assembled crowd of onlookers to contribute money to see the famous Axel Olsson crash. Axel survives a landing in a pond, but his Jenny requires serious repair.

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November/December 2018

In a movie house, Waldo woos Marybeth, a gullible but adventurous woman, and tells her the story of his fateful meeting with the great German ace Ernst Kessler. Waldo tells her his guns jammed during the dogfight. Waldo was about to be shot down by the German, but Kessler, in a gesture more suited to the age of chivalry, salutes Waldo and peels away. Marybeth believes Waldo’s story, but to his chagrin, it turns out she is Axel’s girlfriend. She tells her beau that Waldo had been in combat and met up with Kessler.

Editor’s note: This article is adapted from Flying on Film: A Century of Aviation in the Movies, 1912-2012, written by Mark Carlson and published

by BearManor Media in 2012.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JASON TONEY

www.vintageaircraft.org

53

T

his is an uncomfortable moment for Waldo, as Axel had been in the very aero squadron in which the fateful meeting Waldo described had taken place. “I don’t remember seeing any Waldo Pepper taking off with them,” Axel tells a bewildered Marybeth.

Eventually, Waldo and Axel not only begin working together but also become friends. They join up with Dillhoefer’s Flying Circus but have to prove themselves with a new stunt. The wily Dillhoefer tells Waldo, “You dream up a stunt where people think you’re gonna die.”

The brief era of lone barnstormers is coming to an end: Government safety regulations are limiting what pilots and performers can do in the air. (Spoiler alert!) When Marybeth dies in a failed wing-walking stunt, Waldo and Axel are grounded for a year. Waldo doesn’t take it well and tries to make money to finance Ezra’s plane, a sleek white monoplane designed to achieve the “last great stunt” — the outside loop. Ezra does the stunt himself and crashes before a huge audience. While people look on in morbid fascination Ezra burns to death and Waldo takes a plane aloft to frighten them away with low swoops. He is banned from flying for life.

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November/December 2018

Meanwhile Axel has become a Hollywood stunt man. Waldo meets him and begs for some work. They have heard a movie is being made about the famed Kessler dogfight. Axel isn’t sure about doing stunt flying. He is hoping to get a job with an airline. Waldo snorts, “You really want to get thrown to the lions, huh?”

“It’s a lot better than being creamed by a Fokker,” Axel admits. But he gets a job as a stunt pilot and so does Waldo, going under the name of George Brown. Waldo meets Kessler, aptly portrayed by Bo Brundin, another Swede. The former scourge of the skies is in deep financial debt and is working as the technical advisor for the film. He knew about Ezra’s death and Waldo being banned from flying. They find a mutual bond in being outcasts.

Kessler is based on Ernst Udet, whose 62 victories made him the second-ranking German ace after Manfred von Richthofen. There is some truth in Waldo’s story about the ace allowing a green pilot with jammed guns to escape, but it was France’s second-ranking ace Georges Guynemer allowing none other than the young Udet with jammed guns to live.

During the flying sequences, Waldo flies a Sopwith while Kessler is in a Fokker Dr.I Triplane.

But very soon they are not acting for the camera planes. They begin dogfighting, pitting their skills against one another. Their guns only carry blanks but the pilots ram and tear at one another. The film ends with Waldo knowing his flying career is over, and with it all of the meaning in his life.

The Great Waldo Pepper is one of the best aviation films ever made. Director George Roy Hill did a superb job bringing to the screen an era long gone from the skies. The allure of barnstorming, wing walkers, and early aviation movies are accurately depicted. It’s very easy to believe Waldo Pepper was a real person and that the film is in fact a whimsical biography. The closing credits are a series of old photos pasted in an album, accompanied by Henry Mancini’s piano score, the same technique Hill used in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969.

All the flying scenes in the film were done for real with Frank Tallman, Jim Appleby, Art Scholl, Frank Pine, and others doing the stunts. Hill had to re-create the daring exploits of the barnstormers in old biplanes while ensuring the safety of the pilots.

Wing walking and mid-air transfers, parachute jumps, and crashes were among the stunts performed. Hill was a former Marine aviator and often flew one of the planes while directing. William A. Wellman Jr., son of the famous director of the

groundbreaking Wings in 1927 said, “Hill talked to my father about Waldo Pepper, and I’m sure he got a lot of ideas and inspiration from him.” Filming for the aerial sequences was done in Elgin and other locations in Texas. Several original Curtiss JN-4s, de Havilland 82C Tiger Moths, and Standard J-1s were used for the film as well as a single highly modified de Havilland DHC-1 Chipmunk.

Of all the biplanes in the film the most easily recognized is the Curtiss JN-4, known affectionately as the Jenny. From 1915 to 1918, more than 6,000 were built for the American Air Service as primary trainers. They were docile and fun to fly with a small OX-5 60-hp engine. The Jenny was distinguished by the kingposts on the longer upper wing and the rakish angle of the rudder. During and after the Great War, the Jenny achieved some notable, if unremembered aviation firsts.

It was the first plane to carry the U.S. air mail in 1918, and the Marine Corps used a Jenny to make the first dive-bombing attack on the Haitian rebels in 1919.

Marine Lt. Lawson Sanderson dropped a modified explosive charge in a steep dive,

aiming by means of a rifle barrel affixed to the upper fuselage. The Jenny was damaged in the pullout, but it returned to base and began the 25-year history of dive bombing. The First Aero Squadron used JN-4s on Pershing’s punitive expedition to hunt down Pancho Villa in 1916.

Hundreds of JN-4s were sold as surplus after it went out of service, and scores still fly today or reside in museums. It remains one of the most beloved vintage airplanes in history.

Waldo himself flies a Standard J-1, painted yellow and emblazoned with The Great Waldo Pepper on the fuselage.

While not as well-remembered as the Jenny, the J-1 was another of the Army Air Service trainer workhorses of the Great War era. First flown in 1916, the J-1 was sturdy and relatively easy for trainee pilots to fly. The Hall-Scott A7A four-cylinder engine provided about 100 hp, more than the Curtiss OX-5 on the Jenny.

Only a few J-1s still fly today. They are easily distinguished from the smaller Jenny by the slightly swept-back wings.

After the war, the Air Service sold hundreds of J-1s as surplus, usually at less

than $1,000 each, far below the $6,000 unit cost. Thus, they began appearing over the fields and towns of the American heartland in the hands of former Air Service pilots eager to make a postwar living in the sky. The era of Barnstormers began in about 1920 and continued well into the 1930s, but its golden age was brief. In those days, a pilot could get away with any stunt he wanted, so long as he survived. Most of these so-called daredevil stunts were relatively benign variants of Air Service training maneuvers. Low-level passes, stalls, pulling out of a spin and such were the staples of the barnstormers. As the Civil Aeronautics Board began to crack down on the often-fatal stunts performed by inexperienced — or unlucky — pilots, the carefree days of unregulated barnstorming came to an end. This was the time portrayed in The Great Waldo Pepper.

Redford, Svenson, Brundin, and Hermann were filmed in real aircraft for close-up takes. There is no doubt of the realism as Waldo takes a boy up in his plane. The kid isn’t acting — he’s glowing with joy.

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55

The camera mounts were the grandsons of those designed by Wings pioneer Harry Perry in 1925.

Zona Appleby was present during her husband Jim’s work on Waldo Pepper.

She provided several fascinating anecdotes about the filming. “The Jenny that lost its wheels had small caster wheels on it,” she said. “They permitted Frank Tallman to land the plane. Then they did the crash into the pond with a Tiger Moth.” Careful examination of the footage of the Jenny before it is replaced by the “stunt double” Tiger Moth reveals the small casters on the landing gear spreader bar. After the crash sequence, that particular Moth went in to storage, and wouldn’t fly again for more than 30 years, after it was restored in 2006. It’s now known as Miss Gloria and flies regularly in Guelph, Ontario, with Canada’s well-known Tiger Boys.

The Canadian-built de Havilland 82 Tiger Moth was one of a long line of successful trainers designed by Geoffrey de Havilland in 1931. Robust, it was used by the Royal Air Force and the Royal Canadian Air Force from 1932 to 1959.

Some were used as coastal patrol aircraft around the British Isles after the start of World War II. Frank Tallman flew the de Havilland DH.82C Tiger Moth into the midway tents for Waldo’s crash at the air show. He actually hit the trash barrels before nosing over into the tents.

One of the most gripping sequences occurs when Marybeth (Susan Sarandon) attempts to wing

56

November/December 2018

walk while Axel flies the J-1 down the center of a street at nearly eye level.

The finished shot is not studio effects.

“Frank Tallman was at the J-1’s controls,” Zona said. Several cameras followed the J-1 as it flew down the street at less than 10 feet of altitude.

The J-1’s 43-foot wingspan cleared the buildings on either side with a bare 20 feet to spare. “Jim was in the camera helicopter for that shot.”

Marybeth is too frozen with terror to climb back to the cockpit. Axel begs her to come back as he can’t land with her out on the wing. Jim Appleby appears as a pilot named Ace. When the stunt goes awry, Ace flies the plane carrying Waldo to assist. “I knew she wasn’t worth top billing,” Ace grumbles as he and Waldo climb into the plane.

The rescue was done with long-focus cameras on the camera plane. Redford climbed from the wing of his plane and onto Axel’s J-1.

After telling his friend to put the plane into a shallow glide in order to maintain stable flight with two people on one wing, he goes out to rescue Marybeth. But she makes a desperate leap at Waldo and loses her grip. The next shot only shows Waldo, head down as the audience realizes the girl has fallen to her death.

Veteran wing walker John Kazian worked on Waldo Pepper.

“The plane with Redford on the wing was on a flatbed truck,” he explained. “They filmed it moving

along a cliff road so the view showed the distance to make it appear as if the plane was high in the air.

Redford was in the close shots. I wore a half-mask of Redford’s face below my goggles for the actual aerial shots.” The former stunt man chuckled. “The makeup people took my black hair and made it blonde. I looked like a freak. But my wife married me because she thought I looked like Robert Redford!”

I asked Kazian about wing walking on the Jenny.

He replied with a laugh.

“With airspeed of about 40 mph, it’s easy to hang on even without safety lines. I never had any trouble walking on a Jenny.”

Ezra’s Skystreak was a de Havilland DHC-1 Chipmunk shipped from Australia in 1972. Since it

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had to look like a homemade plane from the 1920s, wire-spoke wheels and kingposts with bracing wire were fitted. The result is very convincing.

“Jim test-flew that plane before Art Scholl arrived to fly the plane in the movie,” Zona commented.

Hill built the suspense to a fever pitch as Ezra attempted the outside loop. The stunt involves starting at high altitude, diving into a loop that is inverted at low altitude, and applying full power while climbing to complete the loop. The camera mounted behind Scholl’s head gave the audience a good feel for the stomach-twisting sensation of pitching down at the ground while inverted. Hill cleverly goads the audience into willing the plane into the final climb. But each attempt ends in failure, and Ezra falls from the sky in a fatal crash. The crash is not seen but only heard as a terrifying crunch.

Jimmy Doolittle was the first to successfully complete an outside loop in 1927 in a Curtiss P-1 Hawk.

In another stunt flying shot where Waldo, hanging under Axel’s plane, is flown into a barn roof, the filmmakers used a dummy. “Johnny Kazian wanted to do that stunt but Jim said, ‘No you’re not,’” Zona said. “Jim didn’t have much confidence in Tallman’s ability to be on target for something like that.”

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November/December 2018

Johnny added his thoughts.

“When Frank lost his leg, he had a stirrup on the rudder pedal to keep his leg from slipping off because he had no feeling in the leg,” he said.

“The stirrup would hold the prosthetic foot in the proper place. I trusted Frank’s flying but Applejack, which is what I called Jim Appleby, didn’t think Frank could get me into the ‘sweet spot.’ I was the guy who grabbed the ladder and hung on, but that was all.”

Hill does a superb job of showing the dangerous world of motion picture stunt flying in the 1920s. When the director of the movie talks to Axel about bailing out of a burning plane, he says, “Make sure the plane is fully on fire before you get out. But don’t open your chute too soon or otherwise you’ll spoil the whole effect.”

Waldo smiles grimly as he says to Axel, “Of course you could not pull your chute at all and that way you’ll be sure to get the right effect.”

In the manner of the old stunt pilots Axel even has to devise and wire his own pyrotechnics. While showing some of the rushes, the director describes a crash, saying, “Actually, Dick was lucky to get out of it alive. As it is he’ll be in the hospital for at least a couple of months.” This is almost certainly a salute to the greatest crash expert of the 1920s, Dick Grace.

Waldo goes outside and looks at the black and yellow Fokker Triplane. Mancini’s music builds on the emotion Waldo must be feeling as he touches the legendary fighter.

The aerial camera operator uses hand gestures to indicate what he wants from the pilots in exactly the way it was done in the silent era before radios were available for communication. The pilots used exaggerated hand and head movements to convey intentions and understanding. There is no verbal dialogue, since that would have been impossible to hear above the engine noise in the 100-knot slipstream.

Academy Award-winning sound editor Peter Berkos and his team worked their audio magic on Waldo Pepper, capturing the specific sounds of the slipstream in bracing wires. “Even if the viewer closes their eyes they can distinguish between the sound of the Fokker and the Sopwith engines,” Berkos said.

In the final “battle” sequences, Ernst and Waldo duel in the skies to find out who is the better pilot.

The duel was filmed at Lake Piru near Santa Paula.

The pilots, according to Zona, were Jim in the Fokker Dr.I and Art Scholl in the Sopwith Camel.

The replicas are very nearly perfect, and it’s easy to accept them as the real thing. But one thing does stand out: The Sopwith’s roundels are British rather than American, as the story would suggest. The “combat” between Waldo and Ernst is one of the best dogfights ever put on film. It is fast-paced but easily comprehensible to the viewer.

The “dogfight” is watched by those on the ground as both unarmed planes try to gain an advantage.

Ernst uses his Fokker’s propeller to shred the Camel’s rudder. Some of the shots were done in flight while others, particularly the close-up of the rudder being turned into confetti were done with full-scale mockups. “That was done by studio effects,” Zona said.

She related what Jim said about flying a Fokker Triplane. “Jim said it wasn’t an easy plane to fly. It was really hard to taxi because it was so hard to see forward. But it could turn on a dime and give you five cents change,” she said with a laugh.

The Fokker used in Waldo Pepper is now in the collection of Fantasy of Flight in Polk City, Florida, while one of the “hero” Standards has been restored in its film colors by the Historic Aircraft Restoration Museum in Creve Coeur, Missouri.

Mark Carlson is an aviation historian and the author of Flying on Film: A

A Legacy for Aviation Enthusiasts

E A A AV I AT IO N F OU N DAT IO N

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Century of Aviation in the Movies, 1912-2012.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LAURIE GOOSSENS, JASON TONEY

www.vintageaircraft.org 59

The Vintage Mechanic ROBERT G. LOCK

Precover Inspections

BY ROBERT G. LOCK

THE OBJECTIVE OF THIS month’s column is to

give some tips on preparing the aircraft structure for covering. With modern covering materials it is possible for the fabric to last 30 years or more.

Therefore, it is necessary to prepare the structure to last that long. Keep this in mind during restoration. First, the aircraft should have been assembled and rigged at least once prior to covering. Figure 1 shows my Command-Aire assembled for a preliminary weight-and-balance check. Numerous precover checks were made before covering.

Some of my restorations require partial assembly at least twice, followed by a complete assembly. When I restored my Command-Aire there was a question as to exactly where the center of gravity should be located. So I covered everything except the fuselage, assembled the aircraft, put it on the scales (see Figure 2) and weighed it so I could compute the empty-weight center of gravity (CG) location. The calculations showed I should locate the battery in the aft section of the airplane. The finished product had the CG located so the trim handle is in the center of its travel during cruise flight. So pre-assembly is well worth the effort!

Before covering, assemble all the paperwork that will be needed for filling out Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Form 337, weight-and-balance data, and the logbooks.

This is also a good time to check the moment arm measurements of required, optional, and special equipment that may have been installed in the aircraft. This data will be used when computing the weight-and-balance report.

Draft the entries for the logbooks and Form 337 major repair/alteration data.

Having completed the above, it’s now time to do the actual inspection. So here we go!

Here’s my checklist:

Figure 1 FUSELAGE

•

Figure 2

• •

•

60 November/December 2018

All controls subject to movement work properly and can be moved the full range of operation.

Electrical system wiring harness clamped/tied — no chafing. Power on system function check.

Instrument system lines clamped — no chafing. Airspeed indicator works properly (blow gently into pitot line).

Instrument range markings are installed.

Placarding (if any) is properly displayed.

Brakes properly installed; lines clamped.

No chafing of lines.

Figure 3

•

•

•

•

•

Fuel system tank secure; fuel lines clamped — no chafing.

Selector valve operates correctly; placarding installed.

Seat belts installed correctly; belts/buckles conform to TSO-C22. No interference or chafing on structure.

Seat installations for security.

Seat belts (and shoulder harness) in proper location to secure around lower torso of person.

Tail wheel locking/steering mechanism works properly.

No chafing or binding anywhere. Full range of travel.

Tail wheel moves with rudder movement (steerable only).

All wood parts secured for permanent installation.

A difficult task during restoration is to think ahead so problems with assembly do not rear their ugly heads later.

One such problem on my CommandAire was the previously mentioned battery location. Because the ship was never designed to have a battery installed, there was no factory guidance. Where to mount it while avoiding interference with control system components was a concern. So think ahead and ask yourself, “If I put it here, will anything interfere with it?”

WINGS

Brace wires tensioned properly, no chafing, and secured in center. Jam nuts tight; clevis pins safetied. Note: Prior to installation, wings should have already been trammeled.

• •

•

• •

• •

All bolts and nuts tight and safetied.

Control cable/push-pull tubes installed. No chafing on structure. Check for the location of rib lacing cord around internal control components. Check problem lacing areas.

All nail/rivet heads covered with tape. Sharp areas that could chafe fabric are covered with cloth tape, the same material used to tape athlete’s ankles, etc.

Inter rib bracing installed correctly (if used); all ribs straight.

Navigation light assembly and wiring properly installed, wires secured to structure, and no chafe points.

All glue joints secure; structure well sealed with varnish, particularly spar ends.

Wing or center-section fuel tank for proper installation, lines clamped, and no chafing. If possible conduct a leakage test of all lines and fittings from upper wing tanks to fuel strainer.

Wings can present a unique problem in that they must not only bolt together, but the trailing edges must match, along with root ribs and leading edges. In Figure 4 you can see that I constructed one wing completely, with no leading-edge skin installed.

Then I assembled the second wing and bolted it to the completed wing. The wing was trammeled and all ribs and gussets glued in place.

When it reached the same point of completion as the first wing, I separated the two structures; the bolts would almost slide out, requiring a light tap of a plastic mallet.

This is an important step in constructing wings or any other structure that must ultimately bolt together. When the leading-edge plywood was glued in place, care was taken to make sure the wing spars were level and parallel. Failing to do this step might result in a warped wing, which would cause the ship to exhibit poor flying qualities.

Figure 4

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61

The Vintage Mechanic ROBERT G. LOCK

• •

Bellcranks and push-pull tubes move in proper direction.

For cables, single-wrap safety is approved, but double wrap is preferred. Always use .041–inch-diameter safety wire. Either brass or stainless steel is approved.

GENERAL INSPECTION TIPS

1.

With the structure carefully and completely assembled prior to covering, any problems with fit or control interference can be addressed.

Lightly sand all wood surfaces where fabric touches; sand just enough to remove any roughness.

2. Using a wooden straight edge, check all areas where the fabric may touch the structure. When tightened, the fabric sags between the ribs and stringers.

Formers/bracing not properly trimmed could protrude above the ribs or stringers, causing lumps in the fabric after shrinking.

If not already completed, sketch the opening location in the fabric covering for rudder, aileron, and elevator cables; trim cables; and tail wheel steering cables, etc. Mark where the aileron push-pull tubes penetrate the fuselage fabric in line with the aileron torque tube control. And don’t forget the pitot/static lines that penetrate the fuselage covering from the lower wing. Be sure to mark the locations.

FINAL INSPECTION

This stunning photograph by Gilles Auliard was taken during the 2006 American Barnstormers Tour. It shows the finished product in flight over Wisconsin. That’s me in the rear seat, and my brother Steve in the front cockpit. What a great-flying airplane!

EMPENNAGE

•

• • •

If not already completed, check the fit of all components to the fuselage.

Check the trim system for proper operation, correct movement, and range of travel.

All hardware tight and safetied.

Navigation light and wiring properly secured.

CONTROLS

•

All cables and push-pull rods that are installed are properly safetied; cables tensioned correctly.

Note: Tension all cables with the surface clamped in neutral position.

62 November/December 2018

The structure’s inspection should be made by the supervising airframe and powerplant (A&P) mechanic who holds an inspection authorization. Approval for cover should be given and recorded on FAA Form 337. The inspecting mechanic may make an entry, “Inspecting left and right upper and lower wings this date. Okay to cover,” or the entire aircraft may be approved for cover.

This is only a suggested guide for precover inspection of a typical aircraft. Inspection points may vary based on the specific type of aircraft, equipment installed, etc. But the bottom line is to prepare the structure for long-term service and make sure that nothing in the airplane rubs together during the vibrations caused by flight. Correcting this later can be a real pain.

CONCLUSION

I say again, the aircraft structure must be prepared for at least 30 years of service; that is what I always think of before the fabric is applied. Since radial engines tend to run with some vibration, it’s always a good idea to make sure nothing rubs together, because over time it will wear. Either clamp it or pad and tie it together so the parts cannot rub together. The precover inspection should be thorough, and every detail should be inspected.

Good luck to all you restorers, and happy flying!

After a careful precover inspection, the covering can be installed. Here I am at long last applying the first coat of Poly-Brush on the right upper Command-Aire wing panel.

May 1989. Final assembly in the maintenance hangar at SUN ’n FUN International Fly-In & Expo at Lakeland, Florida. The engine installation still was not complete, but the plane was getting close to test-flight time when this photo was snapped.

www.vintageaircraft.org 

63

Message From the President SUSAN DUSENBURY, VAA PRESIDENT

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

THEN, SANTA, SPARKY, NATE, and team begin some landscaping work by filling in depressions in both the Vintage aircraft parking area and in the Vintage Village.

This has already been done post AirVenture 2018, and all of the new ground has been seeded and fertilized. At the time of this writing, all of the Vintage equipment is being cleaned and winterized, which includes removing all of the batteries and placing them on trickle charge at a location off Wittman field to be monitored during the harsh Wisconsin winters. (Vintage owns 23 scooters and two Gators that are used by VAA at the convention.)

Meanwhile, I have received a very thorough debrief from Jim for AirVenture 2018 and for the needs and potential problem areas for AirVenture 2019. It’s impressive. Wow! Santa, Sparky, and team really make my job easy! We are very fortunate indeed to have these two great volunteers and their team in our Vintage family.

Vintage volunteers are the absolute best!

NEW MEMBERS Harold Soehner (Vintage 727630), Winslow, Arizona Karl Goettl (Vintage 727631), Clarkdale, Arizona Scott Malaznik (Vintage 726604), Canyon Country, California Alexander Randolph (Vintage 726613), Los Angeles, California Antoni Deighton (Vintage 726615), Westlake Village, California Jeff Dyberg (Vintage 726625), Irvine, California James Nordstrom (Vintage 726629), Sacramento, California Walter Fedorowicz (Vintage 726623), Aurora, Colorado Brian Wells (Vintage 726610), Killingworth, Connecticut Dean Fuller (Vintage 726602), Lawrenceville, Georgia Larry Jennings (Vintage 726619), Winfield, Iowa Joshua Bonk (Vintage 726607), Frankfort, Illinois Liza Porterfield (Vintage 726617), Chicago, Illinois Gerald Vandevoorde (Vintage 726626), East Moline, Illinois Jeremy Roehm (Vintage 726612), Plainfield, Indiana Josh Clifton (Vintage 726624), Marion, Indiana KAREN SEABERG (Vintage 726606), ATCHISON, Kansas John Aunins (Vintage 726620), Waban, Massachusetts Denzil Charles (Vintage 726616), Bemidji, Minnesota Bernard Stapelfeld (Vintage 726611), Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania Richard Kearney (Vintage 727633), Amity, Pennsylvania Art Snow (Vintage 726601), San Antonio, Texas Bobby Barton (Vintage 726608), Bastrop, Texas Ann Pellegreno (Vintage 726628), Rhome, Texas Andrew Michie (Vintage 726630), Salt Lake City, Utah Bruce Troxell (Vintage 726603), Spotsylvania, Virginia Michael White (Vintage 726618), Chesapeake, Virginia James Callis (Vintage 727632), Roanoke, Virginia William Mnich (Vintage 726605), Bellevue, Washington Aaron Williams (Vintage 726609), Seattle, Washington Jeffrey Lowman (Vintage 726627), Clarksburg, West Virginia Thomas Andrew (Vintage 726621), Milwaukee, Wisconsin Flemming K. Noergaard (Vintage 726600), Praestoe, Denmark

COPYRIGHT © 2018 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.

64 November/December 2018

DIRECTORY OFFICERS President Susan Dusenbury 1374 Brook Cove Road Walnut Cove, NC 27052 336-591-3931 sr6sue@aol.com

Secretary Steve Nesse 2009 Highland Ave. Albert Lea, MN 56007 507-373-1674 stnes2009@live.com

Vice-President Tim Popp 60568 Springhaven Ct. Lawton, MI 49065 269-760-1544 tlpopp@frontier.com

Treasurer Jerry Brown 4605 Hickory Wood Row Greenwood, IN 46143 317-422-9366 lbrown4906@aol.com

DIRECTORS Dave Clark 635 Vestal Lane Plainfield, IN 46168 317-839-4500 davecpd@att.net

Ray L. Johnson 347 South 500 East Marion, IN 46953 765-669-3544 rayjohnson@indy.rr.com

George Daubner N57W34837 Pondview Ln Oconomowoc, WI 53066 262-560-1949 gdaubner@eaa.org

Dan Knutson 106 Tena Marie Circle Lodi, WI 53555 608-354-6101 lodicub@charter.net

Jon Goldenbaum PO Box 190 Warner Springs, CA 92086 951-203-0190 jon@conaircraft.com

Robert D. “Bob” Lumley 1265 South 124th St. Brookfield, WI 53005 262-782-2633 rlumley1@wi.rr.com

John Hofmann 548 W James St Columbus, WI 53925 608-239-0903 john@cubclub.org

Earl Nicholas 219 Woodland Rd Libertyville, IL 60048 847-367-9667 eman46@gmail.com

Joe Norris 264 Old Oregon Rd. Oshkosh, WI 54902 pilotjoe@ntd.net 920-688-2977

ADVISORS Paul Kyle 1273 Troy Ct. Mason, OH 45040

Kevin McKenzie 40550 La Colima Rd Temecula, CA 92591

DIRECTORS EMERITUS David Bennett antiquer@inreach.com

Ronald C. Fritz itzfray@gmail.com

Robert C. Brauer photopilot@aol.com

Gene Morris genemorris@charter.net

Phil Coulson rcoulson516@cs.com

S.H. “Wes” Schmid shschmid@gmail.com

John Turgyan jrturgyan4@aol.com

Š 2016 Experimental Aircraft Association, Inc.

THE

N E W S TA N D A R D

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