Va Vol 48 no 6 Nov Dec 2020

NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2020

WIPAIR BEECH TEACHER’S PET CESSNA AVOIDING RISK

Mighty VOYAGER

Preproduction, computer-generated image shown. Available late 2020. Always consult the owner’s manual before off-road driving, know your terrain and trail difficulty, and use appropriate safety gear.

PREVIOUSLY TREACHEROUS TERRAINS, RENDERED AGREEABLE

T H E

A L L - N E W

B R O N C O

R E S E R V E

N O W

S P O R T

Message From the President

November/December 2020

SUSAN DUSENBURY, VAA PRESIDENT

STAFF Publisher: Jack J. Pelton, EAA CEO and Chairman of the Board

A Job Well Done!

Vice President of Publications, Marketing, and Membership: Jim Busha / jbusha@eaa.org Senior Copy Editor: Colleen Walsh Copy Editors: Tom Breuer, Jennifer Knaack Proofreader: Meghan Plummer Graphic Designer: Cordell Walker

THIS PAST JULY, Vintage Aircraft

Association Director Steve Nesse retired from the position of VAA secretary. Steve has captured the title of our longest serving officer by serving a whopping 29 years as secretary of the Vintage Aircraft Association.

Steve began this longtime relationship with Vintage in the spring of 1987 serving as an adviser to the organization under then Antique Classic Division President R.J. “Doby” Lickteig. In 1989 Steve was elected to serve on the Antique Classic board of directors, and in 1991 he was elected to the position of secretary where he remained until July 2020. Steve had taken over the position of secretary from George York, who had made the decision to retire from the position in order to restore an antique airplane with his son, Stan. (As an aside, the name change of the Antique Classic Division of EAA to the current EAA Vintage Aircraft Association came about as a result of the creation of the Contemporary class of aircraft, which was included with the Antique and Classic categories. This was in February 1999.)

Steve has captured the title of our longest serving officer by serving a whopping 29 years as secretary of the Vintage Aircraft Association.

In 2003 then Antique Classic President Butch Joyce approached Steve about serving as chairman of the Vintage Tall Pines Café to replace retiring Chairman John Berendt. John had served as the first chairman of the Tall Pines Café before retiring from that position for personal reasons. Butch was a people person who recognized talent when he saw it, and in Steve he recognized the rare combination of skill set and winsome personality that was necessary for the position of the Tall Pines Café chairman. Steve began his tenure as chairman of the café in 2003 in a tent with wood chips for flooring, which as you can imagine was a less than perfect environment. Steve knew what was needed for a successful café/ restaurant, and as I like to say, “Steve has never been shy in his pursuit of improvements for the Tall Pines Café!”

Steve gathered together a capable volunteer workforce, and soon thereafter they built a full kitchen followed by a permanent building with a cement floor. In 2020 the café’s picnic tables were replaced with commercial-grade tables and chairs. The interior has been painted, and two new cement walkways have been constructed to replace the single gravel pathway from Wittman Road to the café. Once we as volunteers can get back on the field, a new flagpole and landscaping will be installed to complete the look. Two new sliding door cooler/refrigerators are being purchased as I write this to accommodate light takeout lunches and new breakfast menu items at the Tall Pines Café.

ADVERTISING Advertising Manager: Sue Anderson / sanderson@eaa.org

CONTACT US Mailing Address: VAA, PO Box 3086, Oshkosh, WI 54903 Website: www.eaavintage.org Email: vintageaircraft@eaa.org Phone: 800-564-6322 Visit www.eaavintage.org for the latest in information and news.

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

EAA membership, Vintage Airplane magazine, and one-year membership in the EAA Vintage Aircraft Association are available for $55 per year (Sport Aviation magazine not included). (Add $7 for International Postage.)

Foreign Memberships Please submit your remittance with a check or draft drawn on a United States bank payable in United States dollars. Add required foreign postage amount for each membership.

Membership Service P.O. Box 3086, Oshkosh, WI 54903-3086 Monday–Friday, 8 AM—6 PM CST Join/Renew 800-564-6322 membership@eaa.org EAA AirVenture Oshkosh www.EAA.org/AirVenture

CONTINUED ON PAGE 64

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF EAA ARCHIVES

888-322-4636

www.vintageaircraft.org

1

Contents FE AT UR E S

10 Downwind Operations Avoid the risk

By Harry Ballance

16 The Littlest Stinson The Patterson family 10A Voyager

By Budd Davisson

26 The Beech Came Back A classic twin rejoins the family

By Hal Bryan

38 ‘No, It’s NOT a Twin Beech!’

Lockheed Electra Junior versus Beechcraft Model 18

By Budd Davisson

50 Coming Full Circle From small beginnings to passing the torch to the next generation

By Christina Basken

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November/December 2020

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CONNOR MADISON

November/December 2020 / Vol. 48, No. 6

COLUM NS 01

Message From the President

By Susan Dusenbury

04

Friends of the Red Barn

06

How To? Remove a Broken Stud

By Robert G. Lock

08

Good Old Days

60

The Vintage Mechanic Fuel and Oil Systems

By Robert G. Lock

64

Flymart

COV ER S

Front Lyle Jasma captures the Stinson 10A Voyager near Oshkosh.

Back The WipAir Beech overflies the Minnesota countryside on a late fall day.

Photography by Connor Madison

QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS? Send your thoughts to the Vintage editor at jbusha@eaa.org.

For missing or replacement magazines, or any other membership-related questions, please call EAA Member Services at 800-JOIN-EAA (564-6322).

www.vintageaircraft.org 3

Friends of the

RED BARN 2020-2021

DEAR FRIENDS,

For one week every year a temporary city of about 50,000 people is created in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, on the grounds of Wittman Regional Airport. We call the temporary city EAA AirVenture Oshkosh. During this one week, EAA and our communities, including the Vintage Aircraft Association, host more than 500,000 pilots and aviation enthusiasts along with their families and friends.

With the support of the very capable VAA officers, directors, and more than 600 volunteers, the Vintage Aircraft Association annually welcomes more than 1,100 vintage showplanes throughout the week of AirVenture on our nearly 1.3-mile flightline. We continue to work to bring an array of valuable services and interesting programs to the VAA membership and to all of our Vintage Village visitors during this magical week. Across Wittman Road and in front of our flagship building, the VAA Red Barn, we will feature some really interesting airplanes, including the beautiful past Vintage Grand Champions, an array of fun and affordable aircraft, and some exciting rare and seldom-seen aircraft. In Vintage Village proper we have a hospitality service, a bookstore, a general store (the Red Barn Store), youth programs, educational forums, and much more.

As you can imagine, creating the infrastructure to support these displays, as well as the programs offered during the week, is both time-consuming and costly, but they are made possible thanks to donations from our wonderful members.

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As your president, I am inviting you on behalf of the Vintage Aircraft Association to join our association’s once-a-year fundraising campaign — Friends of the Red Barn (FORB).

The services and programs that we provide for our members and guests during AirVenture are made possible through our FORB fundraising efforts.

A donation from you — no matter how large or small — supports the dream of aviation for aviators and aviation enthusiasts of all ages and levels of involvement. We invite you to join us in supporting this dream through the Friends of the Red Barn.

I thank you in advance for your continued support of the Vintage Aircraft Association as we move this premier organization forward on behalf of our membership and the vintage aircraft movement.

If you have already made a 2020-2021 FORB contribution, thank you for your dedication and support of the vintage aircraft movement.

I look forward to seeing you all in Vintage Village at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh beginning July 26, 2021!

SUSAN DUSENBURY, PRESIDENT VINTAGE AIRCRAFT ASSOCIATION

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ED HICKS, CONNOR MADISON

C A L L F O R V I N TA G E A I R CR A F T A S S O CI AT I O N

Nominate your favorite vintage aviator for the EAA Vintage Aircraft Association Hall of Fame. A great honor could be bestowed upon that man or woman working next to you on your airplane, sitting next to you in the chapter meeting, or walking next to you at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh. Think about the people in your circle of aviation friends: the mechanic, historian, photographer, or pilot who has shared innumerable tips with you and with many others. They could be the next VAA Hall of Fame inductee — but only if they are nominated.

The person you nominate can be a citizen of any country and may be living or deceased; his or her involvement in vintage aviation must have occurred between 1950 and

the present day. His or her contribution can be in the areas of flying, design, mechanical or aerodynamic developments, administration, writing, some other vital and relevant field, or any combination of fields that support aviation. The person you nominate must be or have been a member of the Vintage Aircraft Association or the Antique/Classic Division of EAA, and preference is given to those whose actions have contributed to the VAA in some way, perhaps as a volunteer, a restorer who shares his expertise with others, a writer, a photographer, or a pilot sharing stories, preserving aviation history, and encouraging new pilots and enthusiasts.

To nominate someone is easy. It just takes a little time and a little reminiscing on your part.

•Think of a person; think of his or her contributions to vintage aviation.

•Write those contributions in the various categories of the nomination form.

•Write a simple letter highlighting these attributes and contributions. Make copies of newspaper or magazine articles that may substantiate your view.

•If at all possible, have another individual (or more) complete a form or write a letter about this person, confirming why the person is a good candidate for induction.

We would like to take this opportunity to mention that if you have nominated someone for the VAA Hall of Fame, nominations for the honor are kept on file for three years, after which the nomination must be resubmitted.

Mail nominating materials to: VAA Hall of Fame, c/o Amy Lemke VAA PO Box 3086 Oshkosh, WI 54903 Email: alemke@eaa.org

Find the nomination form at www.VintageAircraft.org, or call the VAA office for a copy (920-426-6110), or on your own sheet of paper, simply include the following information: •Date submitted.

•Name of person nominated.

•Address and phone number of nominee.

•Email address of nominee.

•Date of birth of nominee. If deceased, date of death.

•Name and relationship of nominee’s closest living relative.

•Address and phone of nominee’s closest living relative.

•VAA and EAA number, if known. (Nominee must have been or be a VAA member.)

•Time span (dates) of the nominee’s contributions to vintage aviation.

(Must be between 1950 to present day.)

•Area(s) of contributions to aviation.

•Describe the event(s) or nature of activities the nominee has undertaken in aviation to be worthy of induction into the VAA Hall of Fame.

•Describe achievements the nominee has made in other related fields in aviation.

•Has the nominee already been honored for his or her involvement in aviation and/or the contribution you are stating in this petition? If yes, please explain the nature of the honor and/or award the nominee has received.

•Any additional supporting information.

•Submitter’s address and phone number, plus email address.

•Include any supporting material with your petition.

How To? ROBERT G. LOCK

REMOVE A BROKEN STUD

Figure 2

BY ROBERT G. LOCK

A BROKEN STUD CAN RUIN THE DAY, but perhaps a couple pointers might aid in solving the problem before it happens — or if it does happen, what is involved in removing the broken end. First, the common location for stud breakage centers on the exhaust system. Brass nuts are the proper means to fasten the exhaust system components to a cylinder, so before you pull extra hard on that breaker bar, try this.

When maintaining Pratt & Whitney R-985 engines on Stearman crop dusters, I devised a way to remove stubborn brass nuts that had seized on a stud by taking a small gas torch and carefully heating the nut on opposite sides until it melted. That way I got the nut off without breaking the stud, and after removing the exhaust section I carefully used a thread chaser to clean rusted and deformed threads on the stud. However, if a stud does break, what is the best way to get it out?

First, a drilling fixture must be made to accurately center drill bits on the stud, placing the bit in the exact center of the stud. Studs are made of heat-treated nickel steel and are very hard and difficult to drill, so if you try to remove by trying to hit the center, you will probably wind up damaging the aluminum cylinder head. I cut a steel plate that would fit over the exhaust port and drilled it to fit over the studs of another cylinder.

Then I cut a 1/4-inch bushing and brazed it to the plate so a 1/4-inch drill bit would fit, and the plate was installed on the affected cylinder and the center of the broken stud was drilled out.

Figure 3

Figure 1

The plate was removed and an “easy out” was driven into the hole, then an attempt was made to extract the stud. If needed, the bushing can be drilled to a larger inside diameter to use a larger diameter drill bit (Figure 2).

I used a 1/4-inch drive socket that would fit over the easy out and began to extract the broken stud; with a little coaxing it came out (Figure 3).

As luck would have it, the stud came out leaving the threaded portion of the cylinder pretty well intact. On occasion a mechanic gets lucky and things turn out as planned.

6 November/December 2020

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF EAA ARCHIVES

In Figure 4, note that the hole had been previously modified with a threaded insert called a Heli-Coil.

Installation of a Heli-Coil requires a special tap for a coarse threaded stud, so the threaded portion was cleaned and a new insert driven. Then a new stud was driven, and the job of stud removal and replacement was finished. In figure 4 is my special fixture for correctly removing the broken stud.

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7

Good Old Days

From the pages of what was ...

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

8 November/December 2020

www.vintageaircraft.org 9

Centerline: Stay on it.

10 November/December 2020

AVOID THE RISK

BY HARRY BALLANCE

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIN BRUEGGEN

www.vintageaircraft.org 11

irplanes always take off and land into the wind, right? Well, maybe; most of the time, anyway. For a nano-moment let’s review what makes an airplane fly. Bernoulli’s principle says that in an area of high velocity there is an associated low pressure. Accordingly, if two air molecules split at the leading edge of most airfoils, the one traversing the top surface of the wing must travel at a higher velocity than the one at the bottom if it’s to meet the one at the bottom at the trailing edge. Therefore, the area of the top surface of the wing is subjected to a lower pressure than the area of the lower surface. That is what makes the wing fly.

If the wing speeds up, more air flows over it and more lift is created.

So what makes the wing fly is the velocity of the air flowing over the wing. This air can be set in motion in several ways, most commonly through propulsion. An airplane rolling downhill creates the same effect, as does one being towed, such as in a sailplane. Accordingly, it would make perfect sense, in a “no wind” situation, to select a runway that has a downhill slope. If one were taking off into a headwind of, say, 10 knots, and the rotational speed were perhaps 50 knots, the ground roll would be diminished by a factor of however long it took to accelerate the additional 10 knots. In any event, the 50 knots through the air would be commensurate with 40 knots over the ground, since the air is already moving over the ground at 10 knots. Conversely, if one were taking off with a 10-knot tailwind, it would be tantamount to an increased ground roll to obtain the additional 10 knots needed to fly, and the part of the airplane that rolls along the ground would be doing 60 miles an hour.

There is a tradeoff, however. You can find charts that compare runway slope with tailwind components. Every takeoff I made over a 46-year stint flying transport aircraft was a result of calculating runway slope, wind components, gross weight, temperature, field elevation, terrain, runway length, and the like. That is to say, for every degree of downslope advantage, there is a corresponding number that emphasizes the disadvantage of taking off or landing with a tailwind. Some airports are simply “one way in, one way out” affairs, due to the proximity of mountains and/or trees. Kodiak and Aspen fall into this category. If the tailwind exceeds either 10 knots or the performance capability of the airplane, one simply does not fly.

What brought this to mind was a recent fly-in I attended. A day after I arrived I was watching the controllers handle a large amount of traffic on two runways, and they were doing a masterful job — except for the fact that they were using parallel runways that were subject to significant quartering tailwinds. I suspect that most of the controllers had not flown many tailwheel airplanes, or were insufficiently familiar with them to know their rollout characteristics. If so, in the interest of safety, perhaps they should have “turned the airport around” and started landing into the wind.

Windsock, a little-used tool with today’s modern airplanes. Fly into the little end.

12 November/December 2020

There is also a culture, at a nearby airport, of taking off downhill and landing uphill, regardless of the wind, because it means less of a distance to taxi to the restaurant.

It is an unsafe habit to develop, and one that places other pilots who are trying to do the right thing by operating into the wind in a potential head-on collision scenario. Most of these pilots are probably acting in this manner because they do not have to consider the same rollout requirements characteristic of a taildragger and are not familiar with them.

Tailwheel airplanes operate in a decidedly different manner than nosewheel airplanes. The airplane wing does not know if it is subject to a headwind or tailwind. All it knows is air flowing over and underneath it. Then the wing stops flying and the tail is no longer flying either. The airplane is being pushed along by the tailwind. The airplane is totally at the mercy of the tailwind, and directional control is difficult at best. Sometimes this results in a runway excursion, ground loop, or nose-over — all of which are totally unnecessary. Different taildraggers have a different degree of difficulty in handling tailwind rollouts. A Cub, for instance, is relatively benign when compared to a Stearman.

In any case, it is a risk to be avoided. Why take the chance of subjecting oneself and one’s airplane to a disaster? For any sailors who may be reading this, a rollout with a tailwind is somewhat analogous to flying a spinnaker. It only works when the wind is directly behind you, and in an airplane any directional variations cause a commensurate variation in one’s direction of travel.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JIM BUSHA, SPENCER THORNTON, PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF EAA ARCHIVES

There is also a culture, at a nearby airport, of taking off downhill and landing uphill, regardless of the wind, because it means less of a distance to taxi to the restaurant.

It is an unsafe habit to develop, and one that places other pilots who are trying to do the right thing by operating into the wind in a potential head-on collision scenario.

Cessna 195: This one will really bite you with a quartering tailwind.

www.vintageaircraft.org

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Someone is not doing something correctly in this scenario.

But wait, there’s more. One hot summer day many moons ago I was sitting in the “king” seat of an Embraer Legacy at Macau. We were planning our takeoff to Darwin, Australia, which required a heavy fuel load and meant a heavy airplane for takeoff. The runway was very long, but the ATC people were using the departure end that held a 10-knot tailwind. The runway was plenty long enough for the proposed departure, even considering the 10-knot tailwind, the higher V-speeds imposed by the heavy weight, and the high temperature.

I told the co-pilot that we could not accept the runway in question due to the tailwind. He was somewhat skeptical of my decision due to the runway length, etc. And he did not like to make waves with ATC. I replied that it was not the runway length that was significant but the 20-knot difference in the groundspeed required to obtain the requisite rotational speed of something like 150 knots. That would mean a difference in the tire speed, over very hot pavement, of 20 knots, which would generate a significant heat buildup in the tires.

This could possibly result in a blowout at a very high speed. I’ve seen it happen. There was also the further potential consequence of foreign object damage from the blown tire being ingested into the engine on that particular side, thereby exacerbating our potential blown-tire problem. ATC graciously gave us the desired runway.

14 November/December 2020

One last little bit of food for thought. Let us assume that one is operating a light airplane with a stall speed of 40 mph. If one were to take off, even though the runway sloped downhill, and even with a 10-mph tailwind, you would attain groundspeed — but not airspeed — faster while rolling downhill. Okay, big whoop, you are off the ground. Just suppose that the engine were to quit (and they do) about 100 feet or so (pick any number) in the air. One’s only viable option would be to land within about a 30-degree cone of the runway heading. If you were in the flatlands of West Texas, it only means that you would touch down at stall speed about 20 mph faster than if you were taking off into the wind. Now let’s add some trees, trailer parks, etc. to the departure end of the runway. You would stall into the trees some 20 mph faster — 50 mph rather than 30 mph — than if you had done the proper thing and taken off into the wind. Same thing with a go-around or a balked landing. Do you really want to cavalierly give away a 20-mph safety margin? I don’t.

The bottom line — regardless of what airplane you are flying — is to take off and land into the wind unless extremely compelling circumstances force you to do otherwise. Safety trumps convenience every time.

HARRY BALLANCE operates out of Peach State (Alexander Memorial) Airport south of Atlanta. He flew for a major airline for 35 years and as a corporate pilot for 11 years after that. He is a CFI and ATP with 14 different airplane ratings, from a DC-3 to a B-777.

He is a recipient of the FAA Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award. He owns and flies a T-34, a J-3 Cub, and a Stearman. Along with a host of friends, he is restoring a 1934 Stinson SR-5. He is also an active tailwheel instructor.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ED HICKS

CLICK HERE

TO SEE A VIDEO ON THE PATTERSON FAMILY 10A VOYAGER

Beginning life as the 105, the 10A arrived when Stinson installed bigger engines and made minor modifications, as seen in the Patterson family’s airplane.

16 November/December 2020

THE PATTERSON FAMILY 10A VOYAGER

BY BUDD DAVISSON

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LYLE JANSMA

www.vintageaircraft.org

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think the 10A is one of the last undiscovered gems of the vintage airplane market.

You can still get really good project airplanes for $7,500-$10,000, and they are wonderful flying airplanes. The ailerons are, like every other Stinson, slick and light. It could use more power, but then, what older airplane doesn’t?”

This was a quote from John Patterson (63), but it just as easily could have come from his father, John Sr. (93), or his son, Daniel (27). It was Dan who had the airplane at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2019.

John Jr. said, “Dad was always interested in aviation, and his first experience was a somewhat less than successful flight in his homemade glider off the roof of the family dairy barn. I have the article from the local newspaper with a headline that reads, ‘Local aviator, age 12, has concussion.’”

John, the middle Patterson, now a urologist/surgeon and an AME in Frankfort, Kentucky, said, “I was still in high school and tired of building models that didn’t fly. Dad had owned a number of airplanes, but he wasn’t a restorer. He was an organic chemistry professor at the University of Kentucky. In the 1950s, he and his brother, a Presbyterian minister, raced stock cars, so he did have a mechanical background. However, he was skeptical about a plane with a wood spar and fabric covering. So, it took some arm-twisting on my part to get him to take a biplane project seriously, but we started looking for airplanes. We looked at a few and settled on a Waco ASO, a ‘straight wing.’ This was in the late ’60s, and the airplane was a crop duster and had been sitting outside in a field for a number of years. It was a flying airplane and the seller flew it around the pattern for us, but its general appearance didn’t inspire confidence. Plus, Dad and I had never flown anything even remotely similar to it. So, it came home to Lexington on a trailer. Our garage became our shop, and we had to lengthen the garage 10 feet to get the airplane fuselage in it. The car sat outside.

Looking back, John Jr. said it was a great learning experience.

The wide stance given by Stinson’s signature wide gear and hydraulic shock absorber system makes for easy, no-bounce landings.

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November/December 2020

Such an opulent panel, which is original, isn’t expected in such a small, vintage airplane.

The faux wood grain overlay was done by an automotive specialist.

“We didn’t know how to weld, cover a fabric airplane, fabricate metal cowling or sheet metal, or paint a project,” he said. “However, we were EAA members and began viewing the organization as sort of an educational haven for us. So, we went to Oshkosh and attended every applicable forum we could find. EAA enabled us to do that, plus, every year when we would get bogged down in the restoration and start to slow down, after the convention we would be invigorated in getting the plane finished. Five years later, in 1975, we had the ASO in the air and are still flying it today. It was a very educational period for both of us, and we’ve had a lot of opportunity to apply what we’ve learned to other airplanes and life in general.”

It didn’t take long before the ASO not only expanded the Pattersons’ skills envelope, but also gave them a reputation. Steve and Susanne Oliver, well-known air sow pilots, hired them to build a Pitts S-2SE (single-place, big-engine factory kit) for Steve and later covered his Stearman. John Sr. also agreed to restore Susanne’s family Piper J-3, and in return John Jr. would be able to fly it and get tailwheel time. After John Jr. put in 200-plus hours of flying time in the J-3, Steve decided he would sell it, so they looked for a replacement.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JACK FLEETWOOD

Upholstery by Mom: Now the grandmother, Mrs. Patterson has done the interiors in all of their airplanes.

“We found the Stinson in Anderson, Indiana, and trucked it home,” John Jr. said. “A gentleman had started the restoration on it in the 1970s, so he had totally disassembled it. It had gone through a number of owners who intended to restore it, but it just kept languishing with nothing being done. It was hard to tell what was missing because it was totally apart and surrounded by boxes of small parts.”

Once they got the aircraft pieces home, they spread them out on the hangar floor to try to see what they had and what they didn’t.

“With the 10A, not only did we not know what was missing, but essentially it was a jigsaw puzzle, and quite a number of the parts we did have were obviously in terrible condition, specifically the sheet metal,” John Jr said.

“One of the bad things about the basic design is that the different sheet metal parts of the cowling were bolted directly to the engine, so they were constantly moving around and vibrating. There were cracks everywhere and patches upon patches. We designed a separate mounting system for the cowling that fastened it to the firewall, as is done in modern airplanes, which isolates it from engine vibrations. Dad did all the sheet metal work and got experience with the English wheel.

www.vintageaircraft.org

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Daniel Patterson, the third Patterson Stinson generation, and his wife Tori love the airplane for its comfort.

“Fortunately, all of the parts for the landing gear were there because the landing gear design is typical Stinson,” he said. “Essentially each gear leg is a rigid, upside-down ‘L,’ pivoted at the corner on the longeron. The legs themselves are heavy-wall, tapered tubing, which must have been expensive to make back in the day. The L’s come together in the middle of the fuselage, where they’re attached to a pair of short stroke hydraulic shock absorbers.

These absorb energy going in both directions.

“In total, Stinson built right at 1,000 105s and 10s, officially designated as Voyager, but they are rarely restored because of the 90-hp Franklin engine and the all-wood horizontal tail,” John Jr. said. “These two things combine to make most people look at restoring more common, easier-to-work-on airplanes. By the time we got to the Stinson, we had done a lot of woodwork, so we were not only comfortable with making repairs, but we knew how to inspect the tail.

Fortunately, this one was in good shape, so we didn’t have to open it up. As it happens, they are fairly simple units and easy to rebuild, but that kind of work spooks a lot of people.

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November/December 2020

“The original brakes were Dodge automotive units and were bulky and heavy. Fortunately, Univair has an STC for putting Clevelands on Stinson 108s, and we were able to utilize that for our 10A. We saved 10 pounds on the conversion and utilized Terry Bowden from Denton, Texas, as the Vintage DER for approval on the 10A. “The design of the 10A started out as a Stinson 105 with a 75-hp Continental, then became a 10 with a Continental A-80. When it got the 90-hp Franklin, it was designated the 10A. Our Franklin was more or less okay, but it felt as if it had a little too much end play on the crank, so we sent it to Bill Snavely, who was a Franklin specialist, for a complete overhaul.

“Finding windshields for a 10A can be problematic,” John Jr. said, “and ours was pretty cloudy. It had no crazing or cracks, but age had clouded it. We didn’t have much hope for it, but just to see what would happen, we got on it with a buffer and fine polishing compound, and it came out looking like new! We would never have guessed that. The side windows and their frames had to be replaced. The frames are very thin wood and required more than a little work.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JACK FLEETWOOD

The interior was totally gutted when they got the airplane, with not even shreds of material to give them a hint of what it originally looked like. However, even when doing major interiors, as in a subsequent restoration of a cabin Waco, they had a secret weapon.

They have Interiors by Mom. “My mother could run an upholstery business. She is that good,” John Jr. said. “She did the entire interior in every airplane we’ve done. There’s not a lot of information around for Stinson 10As, but we did have a black-andwhite sales brochure with a couple of decent photos of the interior.

We sourced the materials from AirTex and came up with a design that was as close to the photos as possible and Mom created it.”

Stinsons of the period are well known for the details included in their designs.

“JUST RECENTLY, I’VE STARTED FLYING THE ASO, WHICH MEANS COMING BACK FULL CIRCLE TO THE AIRPLANE THAT DAD AND GRANDDAD RESTORED TOGETHER. IT’S A TOTALLY DIFFERENT KIND OF FLYING, AND I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT.” — DAN PATTERSON www.vintageaircraft.org

21

When an airplane is as old as this one (1942) and has had dozens of owners, it’s hardly a surprise that the instrument panel had suffered the same indignities that the rest of the airplane had. However, Stinson 10As originally sported a wood-grained overlay on the panel. That’s not an easy thing to replicate today by anyone who isn’t an expert in that technique. Fortunately, the vintage auto community has its share of experts capable of applying the faux wood finish that is so typical of the era of the airplane’s birth. So, the overlay went to Woodgrain by Estes, which is known for its faux woodwork.

According to John Jr. the wings were in pretty good shape and showed little or no damage.

“The ribs are unique-shaped, stamped aluminum units, and the wood spars were okay, if a little weird,” he said. “They are laminated and made of fairly short sections that are joined end-to-end with fine finger joints. The joints all look solid so we don’t worry about them, but it’s still unusual to see vertical joints midspan in a spar. It might have had something to do with an effort to conserve materials during World War II.

The rudder pedal casting detail is another Stinson trademark.

INTERESTED IN STINSONS? For in-depth information, contact the International Stinson Club.

22 November/December 2020

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JACK FLEETWOOD, LYLE JANSMA

“Our Stinson was a little unusual in that it came out of the factory with 20-gallon tanks in each wing, which at 7-8 gph gives us significant range.

Most of the ‘Baby Stinsons’ only had one 20-gallon tank. Also, we had Grimes ST-250 retractable landing lights in each wing, something usually seen only in the more expensive planes of the era.”

After the restoration was complete, the Pattersons flew the airplane for several years and 450 hours with the Franklin engine, but they weren’t wildly happy with it.

“Although it is theoretically a 90-hp engine, I did a little deep research and found that, yes, it was certified as 90 hp but that was at 2800 rpm, not 2500 rpm, which is the rpm redline,” John Jr. said. “I don’t know how much horsepower it was actually putting out, but it wasn’t enough.

Excessive end play in the crank showed up again at annual, and with difficulty obtaining parts, especially main bearings for the small Franklin, we went looking for a dependable alternative.

“I THINK IF PEOPLE WERE TO LOOK AT THE STINSON CLOSELY, THEY’D REALIZE HOW MUCH BETTER DESIGNED IT IS THAN MOST OTHER AIRCRAFT OF THE PERIOD. ALSO, THEY’D SEE THE MUCH HIGHER QUALITY OF CRAFTSMANSHIP.” — JOHN PATTERSON JR.

TOP SPEED:

120 mph

CRUISE SPEED:

105 mph

LANDING SPEED:

47 mph

TAKEOFF ROLL:

550 feet

RATE OF CLIMB AT GROSS:

500 feet/minute

RANGE AT 65 PERCENT ESTIMATED:

330 miles with 20-gallon tank

EMPTY WEIGHT:

1,025 pounds

GROSS WEIGHT:

1,680 pounds

USEFUL LOAD:

655 pounds

FUEL CAPACITY:

20 gallons/40 gallons (option)

WINGSPAN:

34 feet

WING AREA:

155 square feet

LENGTH:

21 feet, 8 inches

CABIN WIDTH:

39 inches

ENGINE:

Lycoming O-235-C1

HORSEPOWER:

115

PROP:

Sensenich M76AM-2

www.vintageaircraft.org 23

The venturi was probably painted when it came out of the factory, but who can put paint over brass?

“There is an STC to put a 115-hp Lycoming O-235-C1 in it that was developed by James Schulze of Denton, Texas, and is now held by his daughter,” he said. “Using that, we put the Lycoming in around 2008.

It required moving the battery from under the front seat to behind the baggage area, which is also a legal position for a third passenger sitting crosswise. With the Lycoming, the engine is 6 inches forward, so a new cowling utilizing the existing nose bowl and lower cowl had to be fabricated. But with that motor, it is much more willing to carry three people than with the Franklin. Also, I figure my grandkids were probably going to be learning to fly in it, so I wanted it to have adequate power, dependable powerplant, a starter, generator, etc.”

John Jr. is the middle of the three Patterson generations, so the Voyager was already a flying airplane by the time John’s son, Daniel, became part of the family flying conflab. Now 27 years old and a chemical engineering graduate, he started out in the refractory industry (ceramic linings for high-temperature applications like steelmaking).

He is now involved in casting aluminum wheels for automotive OEMs. He got his private pilot certificate in nosewheels while still in college and transitioned to the Stinson shortly after.

All three generations of Pattersons flying the airplane comment on how slick the controls are, another factor that sets all Stinsons apart from their peer group.

24

November/December 2020

“It was hard to find a tailwheel instructor,” Dan said, “but I finally transitioned to the Stinson and have probably 400 hours in it, including several trips to AirVenture. It is an absolutely wonderful airplane to fly. So much different and more enjoyable in many ways than Dad’s Mooney or the Wacos. The ailerons are super light, and it just feels terrific. It’s also more forgiving to land than the biplanes.

“Just recently, I’ve started flying the ASO,” he said, “which means coming back full circle to the airplane that Dad and Granddad restored together.

It’s a totally different kind of flying, and I absolutely love it. Also, I think I have Dad talked into letting us work together to re-restore the airplane.

They finished it in 1973 or so, which is a long time.

Forty-seven years! I want to work at making it more authentic.”

As far as the little Stinson Voyager goes, John Jr. wants the last word.

“I think if people were to look at the Stinson closely, they’d realize how much better designed it is than most other aircraft of the period. Also, they’d see the much higher quality of craftsmanship. Compared to something like a Taylorcraft or Cub, the Stinson is a luxury model. For instance, every single bolt in the control system rides in a bearing. There are no bushings. The result is friction-free, slick controls. The landing gear absorbs shock and feeds none of it back, which makes it much easier to land and cuts bounces almost to zero. Wing slots improve slow flight handling characteristics. That all makes for a little airplane that handles much more like a big airplane than a little one. The Patterson family has gone through a lot of airplanes over the years, but this one is a keeper.”

We got the message, John. Thanks.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JACK FLEETWOOD

PLEASE JOIN US THE VINTAGE AIRCRAFT ASSOCIATION will be commemorating this milestone 100th (+1) anniversary of the Stinsons and the founding of the Stinson Aircraft Corporation at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2021. Plans are being developed for many special events, and I invite all Stinson owners and enthusiasts to join us in celebrating the iconic Stinson aircraft!

T

he

A CLASSIC TWIN REJOINS THE FAMILY

BY HAL BRYAN

26 November/December 2020

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CONNOR MADISON

Bob “Wip” Wiplinger and one of his favorite family heirlooms — a 1944 Beech C18S.

www.vintageaircraft.org 27

“ o … I got on this kick where I’m buying my dad’s planes back,” said Bob “Wip” Wiplinger, EAA 38668/VAA 728007, the owner and founder of Wipaire Inc. One of those airplanes is N6047V, a 1944 Beechcraft C-45F, or, in civilian parlance, a C18S, factory serial No. 8151, registered as N6047V and known to the U.S. Army Air Forces as 44-47743. During the war, it was assigned to the 112th Army Air Forces Base Unit at Westover Field (now Westover Air Reserve Base), a training base in Chicopee, Massachusetts. The original bill of sale shows that it sold for $4,751.51, still a relative bargain at about $45,000 when adjusted for inflation.

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November/December 2020

Wip with his dad, Ben, and the Beech that was bought back.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CONNOR MADISON

Wip’s dad, Ben Wiplinger, was 12 years old when Charles Lindbergh made his history-changing flight from New York to Paris in 1927. From that point on, aviation was it. When he was 17, he built a Pietenpol Air Camper. Then he studied engineering at the University of Minnesota and worked for a while at Douglas Aircraft in California. He then returned to St. Paul, Minnesota, to work as a mechanic. When war broke out, Ben served as a maintenance officer in the U.S. Army Air Forces. In November 1943, he got his diploma from the Ford Motor Company Airplane School at Willow Run, Michigan, for having “satisfactorily completed the course of familiarization with the Liberator bomber as prescribed for the Army Air Forces personnel in first and second echelon airplane and engine maintenance.”

Ben stayed stateside during World War II, working on airplanes at posts in New Mexico, California, Nevada, and Louisiana. Wip was born in September 1945, two weeks after V-J Day. Ever resourceful, when it was time to take Wip home and the young family didn’t have a bassinet, Ben improvised.

“They brought me home in a plywood box,” Wip said. “And I still have that box here today.”

The airplane spent several years as a teaching school at the Teterboro School of Aeronautics in New Jersey.

LAUNCHING A BUSINESS AFTER HE MUSTERED out sometime in 1946, Ben started and ran a body shop business for a couple of years. In 1948, he returned to his aviation roots and started an FBO called Wiplinger Aircraft Service. He started out doing maintenance work on Beech 18s and DC-3s and the like, and then got a contract to modify a war-surplus Lockheed Lodestar to serve as a corporate transport for the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co., better known now as 3M. For the next several years, corporate conversions became Ben’s specialty.

“He did a lot of modifications to these Lodestars,” Wip said. “He did things like putting a radar nose on, a sloped birdproof windshield, picture windows in the back, retractable tail wheels, clipped wingtips, clipped tail … a lot of mods, and turned them into an executive airplane.”

Wip remembers those days vividly.

“I was a little guy, probably about 5 years old, 6 years old, and I’d come to the airport with my dad every day, and I’d ride my tricycle around in this hangar,” he said. “And I grew up doing that.”

www.vintageaircraft.org

29

F I N D I NG F L OAT S IN 1951, Ben bought a brand-new Piper Super Cub and put it on a set of Edo floats.

“He used to keep it in the lake behind our house, and I used to fly around with him in that Super Cub,” Wip said.

A few years later, Ben sold the Super Cub, but it wasn’t out of the family for good.

“I eventually bought that Super Cub back from the guy my dad sold it to, who owned it for like 50 years,” Wip said. “I bought that back in the late ’90s … and I still have it today, and I fly it. It’s my plane.”

When he sold the Super Cub, Ben bought a brand-new Cessna 180, also on floats, and used it to entertain clients as part of the executive airplane business. Two years later, it was time for another upgrade.

“In 1956, he sold that 180 and bought a brand-new 180 on a set of the first Edo amphibious floats,” Wip said. “We eventually bought a cabin up on the border, and I’d fly up there with him many times in that, and he’d let me fly it.”

Wip said that the retractable landing gear in the amphibs caused them a lot of problems — electric motors don’t like the water very much.

“With having one side gear up, one side gear down too many times, he designed a hydraulic system for those floats to hydraulically raise and lower the landing gear. It was really good just for his own set of floats,” Wip said. The fix for the problematic Edo 2700 landing gear caught on, and Wip said they sold quite a number of those modifications.

Years later, Wip tracked down and bought back that second 180.

“Now I own the thing, and it’s still only got like 1,400 hours, so it’s brand-new and it’s all original,” he said. “It’s got the original glass in it, the original bladder tanks, original engine, the original propeller, everything. … And it’s [a] pristine, unpainted airplane with the aluminum completely perfect yet.”

If you’re getting the sense that a lot of airplanes that leave the Wiplinger family find their way back, you’re not wrong.

Ben bought two more airplanes in 1956, both of them Beech 18s, and gave them the executive makeover treatment. He sold one of them fairly quickly but hung on to N6047V for a while before selling it as well, as he continued to focus on the float business (see sidebar). Not long after that, Wip soloed a J-3 out of a farmer’s field — and, yes, he owns that Cub to this day. Before going on to college to study engineering, he flew with his dad frequently, racking up a lot of time in the Beech 18 and other aircraft in the family fleet until Ben sold it in 1960. Spoiler alert: Wip bought back that airplane, too.

But it took a while.

The Beech passed through a number of owners throughout the next dozen years, including air racing legend Bill Brennand. In 1972, 47V ended up at the Teterboro School of Aeronautics in New Jersey.

Today, the airplane stands tall and proud.

30 November/December 2020

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CONNOR MADISON

Wip’s dad, Wipline founder Ben Wiplinger.

AS BEN’S INTEREST in the floatplane world grew, he decided he wanted to focus on it professionally. He reached out to Edo to see about becoming a dealer for its floats, but the company turned him down.

“And he told Edo that, ‘Well, if you don’t want to make me a dealer, I’m going to make my own floats,’” Wip said. “Which is precisely what he did.”

With the Learjet waiting just over the horizon to take corporate aviation into the jet age, Ben saw the writing on the wall. He sold his corporate conversion business and started Wipline.

“He took the money he got for the business and invested in the first set of Wipline floats, and he brought a brand-new 185 to put them on,” Wip said. “So that put us into the float business.”

In 1974, the family business became a Cessna dealership. However, they wanted to keep it legally detached from Wipline Inc., the float manufacturer, so Wip, having returned to the family business after a stint at Honeywell, formed Wipaire as a separate company.

“And then in 1977 the lawyers found a neat way for Wipaire to buy out Wipline,” Wip said. “My dad was retiring and all that at that time … so then Wipaire took over the manufacturing and the whole thing. And then, after that, the floats were called Wipline floats built by Wipaire.”

Wipaire continued to grow and prosper by designing, manufacturing, and selling floats, as well as doing interiors and maintenance for everything from Cubs to Beavers, Caravans, and Twin Otters. In 2003, it began converting Air Tractors into initial attack water bombers called Fire Bosses that now fight fires around the world. The hangar that Wip used to ride his tricycle in now houses the company’s upholstery shop as well as some spillover maintenance.

Ben left us too soon. He was just 76 years old when he died in 1992, but he certainly lived long enough to see the family business prosper. He most assuredly would be proud to know that the business is now run by the third generation of Wiplingers, with Wip’s son Chuck, EAA 576459, who grew up flying Cubs, 180s, 185s, and a 450 Stearman, at the helm as president and COO. Ben is buried near Wipaire’s home at South St. Paul Municipal Airport (KSGS), also known as Richard E. Fleming Field. His memorial is marked by a Pratt & Whitney radial with his name and dates engraved on one prop blade and the inscription “Ben was just like this engine” on the other. The company honors his memory through the Ben Wiplinger Memorial Seaplane Rating Scholarship that was introduced in 2015.

www.vintageaircraft.org 31

CLICK HERE

TO SEE A FLICKR GALLERY ON THE BEECH 18

32 November/December 2020

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CONNOR MADISON

www.vintageaircraft.org 33

TRACKING IT DOWN

SPECS Aircraft Make and Model: 1944 Beechcraft C-45F/C18S LENGTH:

34 feet, 3 inches

WINGSPAN:

47 feet, 8 inches

HEIGHT:

9 feet, 9 inches

MAXIMUM GROSS WEIGHT:

8,727 pounds

EMPTY WEIGHT:

5,420 pounds

SEATS:

8

POWERPLANT MAKE & MODEL:

Two Pratt & Whitney R-985 nine-cylinder radials

HORSEPOWER:

450 (each)

CRUISE SPEED/FUEL CONSUMPTION:

185 mph/40 gph

VNE:

225 mph

34 November/December 2020

IN THE MID-1990S, Wip couldn’t stand it anymore. He had to find out what happened to the two Beech 18s his dad had owned in the late ’50s.

“When I got onto this kick, buying some stuff back, I went to the FAA and looked up those two N-numbers of those two Beeches,” Wip said.

The one that sold first was written off as destroyed, but Wip found the one that had stayed in the family longer, N6047V, which had been languishing at the school in New Jersey. The airplane served as a training tool, spending most of its time outside for years doing occasional engine runups and gear swings as trees grew up through the fabric control surfaces and the interior rotted away.

“I called those guys up and I says, ‘You’ve got that? You want to sell it or anything?’ And they says, ‘Yeah, it’s sitting out here in the parking lot. We don’t use it anymore … we’ll give it to you for 10 grand,’” Wip said, noting that it had sat in that parking lot for about 15 years.

They sold the airplane to Wip for $10,000. Don Hulse, representing the Teterboro School of Aeronautics, sent a letter on August 29, 1994, accompanying the bill of sale.

“I wish you a lot of luck on this project,” Don wrote, after the usual language about the airplane being sold “as is,” with no warranties. “I would appreciate seeing pictures of the finished product.

After owning this aircraft for over 20 years, I’m happy to see it being returned to flying status.”

Wip went to New Jersey to close the deal and to see if it was possible to fly the airplane home to Minnesota. It definitely wasn’t.

“And when I saw it there, it still had the white paint on it my dad put on it,” he said. “I was a little disheartened and thought to myself, ‘Wow, it’s been a long time, and look at the poor girl.’”

Wip and his crew went back to New Jersey with a truck and drove the airplane back to South St. Paul.

“I had our shop just clean it up, and we blasted the whole airframe with a paint-removing gun we had at the time, and the interiors, all the skins, and the fuselage,” Wip said. “We just cleaned the living hell out of it, so it looked look like a new airplane as far as being clean, but of course it wasn’t.”

They also took the airplane apart.

Wip hired a friend — a retired St. Paul police officer — to disassemble the aircraft.

“He took it apart,” Wip said. “And I guess I left him alone a little too long because he took it so far apart that nobody knew how to put it back together.”

From there, the airplane sat quietly in storage, patiently waiting its turn.

“I sort of lost some interest because I didn’t comprehend all the work it would be putting it back together,” Wip said.

Other projects took priority, and life happens as it does. However, in 2009, the project was put on another truck and sent to a Beech 18 specialist, the late Nick Quint at Blackhawk Aircraft Maintenance in Janesville, Wisconsin.

“That’s his game,” Wip said. “That’s what he does is he works on Beech 18s, knows them inside out. So, I made a deal with him to put it back together and make it so it could fly back home. So, we hauled it down there, and over the course of four or five years in their spare time, they’d work on the airplane and got it back together. And that sounds simple, but we did a lot of repairing of parts of it before he got all the parts, and we did a lot of restoring of different parts.”

Wip said he covered all of the control surfaces and did a lot of the repairs on the tail feathers. A lot of the restoration was done in Minnesota, but Nick was mainly an assembler.

In October 2017, 47V returned to Wip the way it was meant to — by flying.

“The day it flew back in, it was quite an event,” he said. “There was an audience here at the airport watching it. They did a high-speed run down the runway and a couple of circles, and when it taxied in, it made quite a spectacle. And I was pretty happy and enthused, although it still didn’t look very good. It was still quite an event.”

The Wiplinger family Beech combines vintage elegance with modern refinements.

www.vintageaircraft.org 35

DOLLING IT UP NOW THAT THE VENERABLE BEECH was an airplane again, Wip and company set about really making it look good. The airplane was painted white, with two-tone metallic blue trim, and the interior was redone with what the company accurately describes as a “sleek-yet-vintage feel.”

“Well, it was upholstered pretty much the way my dad had it upholstered in the ’50s,” Wip said. “The side panels and so on were the same. I’m not sure what the military upholstery looked like. The seats are vintage seats from that period. They came out of [another] old Beech 18. There were no seats in it when I bought it, but Nick had these seats.”

The panel was cleaned and updated with a Garmin 530 and an ADS-B compliant transponder, but for the most part, it still retains a classic look and feel. One thing it doesn’t have is an autopilot.

“I’m an autopilot freak,” Wip said. “I’ve got a Caravan, and I fly back and forth to my cabin on the border, and from the time I get to about 200 feet in the air, the autopilot’s on until I’m on my approach. … Going to an airplane that doesn’t have an autopilot, it’s kind of like, ‘What am I doing here?’

But frankly, the thing is so stable … you don’t have a lot of work to do. But what I tell everybody is there’s so damn many levers and valves and switches in it that you got to keep messing with all the time that it’s hard to sleep in it. … So, it keeps you awake. That’s what I tell everybody.”

Everything about the airplane is as good as, or in many cases better than, it was the day it left the factory.

36 November/December 2020

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CONNOR MADISON

A MAJOR AWARD WIPAIRE’S VICE PRESIDENT of marketing and sales, Clint Clouatre, came to Wip with an idea.

“He says, ‘You know, that’s gotta be at our booth at Oshkosh. That is an attention-getter,’” Wip said. “So, I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Oh really, Clint?’ [But] while we were at Oshkosh, I’m sitting at our booth, and the thing attracted people. Clint knows what he’s talking about, because when he said it’d attract people, it sure did. Because we had people that didn’t give a damn about floats or the rest of our stuff; they all had to come look at that Beech 18. So, it worked out very well.”

Some of the people who came to look at the airplane were judges, and they agreed that it was sure a nice-looking airplane. N6047V won a Bronze Lindy in Class IV (236-plus horsepower) in the Classic category of the Vintage aircraft awards.

“I didn’t really expect an award,” Wip said.

“It was kind of like frosting on the cake for a really good cake. I was delighted.”

The throaty, confident roar of two Pratt & Whitney R-985s is unmistakable and gives the classic transport its signature sound.

FOREVER IN THE FAMILY WIP IS ADAMANT that the Twin Beech, along

with the rest of the fleet, not to mention the business, will stay in the family.

“I never sell anything,” he said. “I just keep buying something, and then I can’t sell it.”

Even if he did, the smart money says that he’d just track it down and buy it back.

So, are there any other family airplanes out there that Wip wants to rescue and bring back to the fold?

“No, not really, because the airplanes I now have were the classic ones that I was so involved with flying with [Dad] and all that,” he said. “There’s a few other airplanes that he had. … I just don’t have much interest in those.”

We’ll see, Wip. We’ll see.

HAL BRYAN, EAA Lifetime 638979/VAA 714005, is managing 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 @halbryan or email him at hbryan@eaa.org.

www.vintageaircraft.org 37

38 November/December 2020

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JIM KOEPNICK

LOCKHEED ELECTRA JUNIOR VERSUS BEECHCRAFT MODEL 18

BY BUDD DAVISSON

www.vintageaircraft.org 39

he life of a Lockheed 12A Electra Junior owner has to be just a little frustrating.

Yes, they own and fly what is arguably one of the most beautiful and legendary airplanes in the world. However, they also have to develop a thicker skin to withstand a cascade of fly-in comments such as, “What a nice-looking Twin Beech!”

Or, “How many Twin Beeches like yours are still flying?” It’s unlikely any 12A owner ever actually gets angry, because they totally understand how easy it is to confuse the two. But, still…

It’s hard to ignore the fact that there is a definite similarity between the two airplanes, and unless parked close together, it is hard to tell them apart. It’s a line here, a dimension there, a difference in the tails and another in the cowlings. The differences are subtle, but to the knowledgeable observer, they are what put the Electra Junior in one age and the Twin Beech in another. The 12A is a very slick representation of art deco design and the age that birthed the concept. By comparison, the Model 18 Beechcraft doesn’t belong to any age and is surprisingly modern for an airplane that first flew in 1937. The Lockheed is an art form, and the Beech is a good-looking, purposeful tool.

40

November/December 2020

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DENNNIS BIELA, CHRISTOPHER MILLER

THE 1930S: AN ERA OF PROGRESS

ABOVE: For decades the Twin Beech was the corporate airplane.

BOTTOM LEFT: A line of 12As at AV: Be still my heart.

BOTTOM RIGHT: Beech 18 flight deck. Compare its visibility to the Lockheed 12A cockpit on Page 48.

It could be argued that the 1930s is the decade in which huge advances were made without being part of an ongoing war. It was a period during which every few months something new was discovered or something new flew for the first time. In 1930, the Ford Tri-Motor was still the standard airliner. By 1940, the DC-3 had been holding the airliner lead for over three years and the DC-4 was only a few years over the horizon. At the beginning of the decade, military aviation still depended on biplane fighters. The Boeing P-12 and Curtiss P-6E started the decade, and the Boeing P-26 popped into view in 1932. It was the last open-cockpit, first monoplane, and last fixed-gear fighter for the U.S. Army Air Corps, respectively. However, by 1940, the P-40, P-38, and B-17 were functioning in squadron service, and Spitfires and Messerschmitts were mixing it up over Britain. It was the dawn of modern aerial combat.

All of the foregoing is another way of saying that in 1930s aviation, a lot happened in very short periods of time. Case in point: The Model 12A Electra Junior first flew on June 27, 1936, and the Twin Beech on January 15, 1937. Not even six months separates those flights, yet they represent different visual and mechanical design concepts.

In August 1935, the Bureau of Air Commerce kick-started the smaller twin market when it issued a request for bids for just such an airplane. The bureau itself would buy a few airplanes for its inspectors to fly around. It theorized that by giving the winner of the competition that much visibility, small airline operators would be encouraged to expand the feeder airline market.

www.vintageaircraft.org

41

The long, lean fuselage, engine-mounted cowlings, and stabilizer protruding help identify the 12A.

TWIN-ENGINE MYTHS

It is often said that the bureau’s competition is what started Beechcraft down the road toward the Model 18 Twin Beech. This, unfortunately, is not a proven fact.

In his book Beech 18: A Civil & Military History, Robert Parmerter points out, “Beech files reveal that Ethyl Gasoline Corporation, NY, and Beech Aircraft Company signed a contract dated August 1, 1935, for one twin-engine business aircraft two weeks before the Air Commerce announcement.”

So, Beech was already headed in that direction. In fact, although the bureau competition was ongoing and represented a possible market, Beech conducted intensive marketing interviews and sent hundreds of letters to executives and businesses. It actively solicited potential buyers’ input as to how and what Beech’s design needed to correctly fulfill their needs. By the time Beechcraft was done with its marketing due diligence, it had only 10 months left to produce a flying prototype by the bureau’s do-or-die deadline of July 1, 1936 — clearly a major challenge. It was not only starting from scratch, but also at that point in time, its wildly successful Model 17 Staggerwing was its only product, so aluminum monocoque construction was not in its wheelhouse. It had a steep learning curve ahead. Plus, it was a fraction the size of its main competitor, Lockheed. Reportedly, Lockheed had more engineers and draftsmen than Beechcraft had employees.

42 November/December 2020

At Lockheed, designing a twin to meet the bureau’s specification was a different ballgame. It was already producing its 10-passenger Model 10 Electra for the airlines, so it embarked on building the 12A Electra Junior using the Model 10 as its template but scaled down. It also helped that there was a lot of established aeronautical talent involved.

Names like Lloyd Stearman and Clarence “Kelly” Johnson are on the airplane’s birth certificate.

When the Bureau of Air Commerce’s deadline dawned on July 1, 1936, the Electra Junior was the only airplane at the starting line. The other five competitors didn’t make it, although Beechcraft was close on its heels and comments were already being made about the similarity in appearance.

Today there are tales of Beechcraft personnel measuring the Lockheed 12A and going from there. There is a certain amount of truth in that, but only a little. Ted Wells, Beech’s chief designer and VP, did a video interview in 1988 that explains the facts. According to Robert Parmerter, in the video Wells clearly remembered that the Beech team was curious about the competition. So, when an opportunity arose to get a closer look at the Model 10 Electra, which Lockheed was planning to scale down for the 12A, they jumped at it. In his book, Robert says, “Late in 1935, Wells and Dean Burleigh, Jack Wassal, W.B. Woody, H.W. Earhart and W.R. Blakley drove 100 miles south from Wichita to Bartlesville, OK, to look at Lockheed 10A Electra, NC14901, owned by Continental Oil Drilling Company. They looked it over, went back to Wichita; and rumors have persisted since that they copied the Lockheed design.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JIM BUSHA

Truth is, the aeronautical design specifications that the Bureau of Air Commerce included in its request for bid were very exacting. As such, the laws of physics pretty much determined what the airplanes were going to look like. The designers had free rein with the details, but to do what the government asked, the airplanes couldn’t help but be similar.

Even though the Beech 18 was cheaper, at the time the envisioned feeder airline market never developed for either aircraft. However, the Twin Beech became the king of that market segment in the 1960s.

By 1938-1939, World War II was erupting across the world and was just over the horizon for the United States.

Beechcraft saw the military market overseas and courted France for trainer and bomber variations of the 18, but with little success. Lockheed saw little future in the market for the 12A, and in 1937, less than a year after the Electra Junior’s first flight, the USAAC put forth specifications for a twin-engine “interceptor.” Lockheed saw that as a more lucrative market, threw its engineering hat in the ring, and the P-38 was born.

With Lockheed out of the way, Beechcraft had the light twin-engine market pretty much to itself and the USAAC/ USAAF was its primary market. During WWII, there were 5,186 Twin Beeches built for the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army Air Forces in a wide variety of configurations and designations. Following WWII, the airplane become the darling of the corporate aircraft and commuter markets and remained in production for a total of 32 years, with just under 9,000 being built.

www.vintageaircraft.org 43

ELECTRA JUNIOR VERSUS MODEL 18: GLENN HANCOCK HAS BOTH

In doing research to compare the two aircraft, it didn’t take long to stumble onto Glenn Hancock of Jackson, Georgia. He doesn’t claim to be the expert in all things historic in this discussion, but he does own both a 1936 Lockheed 12A (serial No. 1208) and a 1948 Beechcraft D18S. That definitely makes him the expert when it comes to comparing one to the other.

Glenn says it was his grandfather, who flew for Eastern Airlines, who got him into flying. He had him in the cockpit by the time Glenn was 10. Flash-forward many decades, Glenn’s software company took off, and he found himself going through a series of airplanes for his business. He went through C-310 to Aero Commander, eventually settling on a Twin Beech. He says it makes carrying a handful of people much more doable and is much more comfortable. He’s talking utility here as much as he is the pure joy of sitting between two R-985s and knowing it’s a legitimate part of his role as manager of his company.

44

November/December 2020

RIGHT: Beech 18s served in armed forces around the world with the United States Air Force retiring its Beech 18s in 1963, Navy in 1972, and Army in 1976.

BOTTOM LEFT: Many surplused military Beech 18s were put to work as corporate aircraft.

BOTTOM RIGHT: Seating ranged from six to as many as 11.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTOPHER MILLER, JASON TONEY

“It was my grandfather that got me into flying,” he said, “but it was my friend Joe Shepherd who got me into the Lockheed 12A. I was flying my Beech 18 and liked his 12A but hadn’t thought about actually owning it until Joe lost his medical and made me a deal I couldn’t pass up. Joe had something like 20,000 man-hours and 19 years invested in restoring it, and I think about that every time I start to fire it up. He created a real work of art.”

When talking about the design of the Beech versus the Lockheed, he said, “Lockheed was a huge company with experience in building big airplanes. Beechcraft was a brand-new company, and almost no one in it had a lot of experience with sheet metal, monocoque structures. For that reason, the structures of the two airplanes reflect the experience differences. The Lockheed is much more sophisticated. The main center section spar in the Lockheed, for instance, reflects the different philosophies: The 12A’s spar is a fairly complicated and highly engineered aluminum truss that has a history of being reliable. The Beech has a welded steel tube truss that runs between the two engines and has a history of ADs being directed at it. Some of those ADs were the result of STC’d mods that required drilling holes in the tubes, causing corrosion. In fact, at one point, a percentage of the Beech 18 fleet was threatened with being grounded until it did inspections of the center section spars and/or installed strap reinforcements. Today, all of them have the straps installed but still have to go through regular X-ray requirements to stay airworthy. In comparison, the Lockheed 12A has zero ADs or failures being reported.

“Basically, when you compare the two designs, you can see how Beechcraft was concerned with reducing the parts count and simplifying the structure,” Glenn said. “They, for instance, hung the cowlings on the firewalls, rather than attaching them to the engines. Also, rather than using a fairly complex and expensive screw jack to raise and lower the landing gear, they had a series of cables and pullies. That was simpler to manufacture but not as reliable or as easy to maintain. Beech went out of their way to make an airplane that could be sold at a lower price than the 12A. They were very successful in that area: Back in the day, the Beech 18 sold for less than half what the Lockheed did.”

www.vintageaircraft.org

45

IN-THE-AIR COMPARISON

When comparing the flying characteristics of the two aircraft, Glenn said, “I hesitate to say that one is better than the other. They are, however, different in a lot of areas. Both of them, for instance, with all the applicable mods, have a gross weight of around 9,000 pounds. However, they handle the weight differently. Our home strip is 2,900 feet of grass, and I’ve flown both airplanes out of there at gross any number of times. In the Beech, as I get closer to six or seven folks in the back, I can tell it. As the weight goes up, the airplane definitely lets you know it.

“It’s a different story with the Lockheed,” he said. “I can toss seven in the airplane with their coolers and golf clubs, and I can’t tell whether there’s a load back there or not. It’s as if the airplane just doesn’t care what you put in it. They both have about the same wing area, but the Beech’s wings are 2 feet shorter so they aren’t as effective. That’s why there are a number of STC’d wingtip extension kits for it.”

46 November/December 2020

Glenn said in the air, both airplanes handle pretty much the same, although there’s a noticeable difference in the way the cockpits feel.

“The Lockheed is definitely old-school, with the windshield in a single tight ‘V,’ with the windshield coming back over the instrument panel and fairly close to the pilots,” he said. “Plus, the windshield isn’t very tall, so you’re a little more closed in. You get used to that in about five minutes. The Beech, on the other hand, has the windshield a good distance in front of the panel, and even in the early 18s, the windshield is fairly tall by comparison with the Lockheed. In the postwar Beeches, especially ones like mine, which has about every Twin Beech STC available, including the new-style windshield, the visibility is terrific and the cockpit has a very open feeling.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTOPHER MILLER

“In terms of speed, the Lockheed is a little faster than most Beech 18s,” he said. “At 27 inches of manifold pressure and 1900 rpm, the Lockheed will true about 155 knots at 8,000 feet and will be burning 18 gph per side when lean of peak. At rich of peak settings, you’re looking at around 165 knots and 24 gph per side. I say ‘most’ Beech 18s, because my 18 is a little faster than any other 18 I’ve flown in or with. It has every mod ever created for an 18 to help with speed, but otherwise, it performs almost the same.”

ABOVE: The classic 1930s Lockheed logo.

BELOW: Pilot visibility for the 12A is a little more restricted than for the Beech.

www.vintageaircraft.org

47

PUTTING IT ON THE RUNWAY

All sorts of tales circulate about how difficult the Twin Beech is to land safely. Part of this is because it’s a taildragger, and part of it is because both airplanes are heavy taildraggers. Glenn has his thoughts about that.

“The two airplanes require slightly different approaches and landing techniques, but they share one characteristic: I’ve been flying almost nothing but tailwheel aircraft my entire life, so I feel safe in saying that when you get an airplane as heavy as these crossed up, you’re just along for the ride. They aren’t hard at all to keep straight on the runway, but if you land one of them crooked and it starts for the bushes, you have to catch it very quickly. Remembering you have differential power can help a lot, but you’ll be working pretty hard if you let her get too far away.

48 November/December 2020

“The problem when talking about a Beech 18, though, is that you have to tailor how you fly to that individual airplane,” he said. “Almost every 18 still flying has different mods from the last one you flew. As a result, the performance numbers and specs are a bit different. My 18, for example, has zero dihedral in the tail, making the airplane considerably faster than a stock 18, but it also means you’ll never do three-point landings in the airplane because she’ll quit flying on you around 80 mph. This means approaches in the 18 for me have to be around 90 mph, with the initial flare between 85 and 90. Any slower and you won’t have anything left in the elevator when you go to flare, and she’ll just fly onto the runway, landing harder than you wanted.”

In the 12A Glenn said things happen much slower.

“First, you’re coming down final at 80 mph and you hold it off slightly tail down until it actually stalls and settles onto the mains,” he said. “A little forward yoke keeps the tail up until it comes down at about 40 mph. This makes the Lockheed a pussycat to take into our little runway. I guess a good example of how this all plays out is that most landings in the Lockheed 12 result in zero brakes and being stopped about halfway up the runway, adding power to get to my hangar at the end. The Beech 18 results in using the brakes to get stopped before I reach my turnoff, and in a few cases, having to turn around to come back.

“I’ve been thinking about selling the Beech 18, strictly because I do my own maintenance and keeping up with four R-985 engines is a bit tough, but I haven’t decided for sure yet,” Glenn said. “Please, don’t tell my wife. … Both airplanes are a blast to fly, and my Beech 18 is beautiful in her own right, just not in the same league as the Lockheed 12.”

It has often been said that the only thing better than flying an R-985 is to be flying two R-985s. It could also be said that when you have two airplanes and can’t decide which you like best, you just keep them both. Problem solved!

Glenn, just so you know, we’re all very jealous!

FOR MORE TWIN BEECH INFORMATION and history, read Beech 18: A Civil & Military History by Robert K. Parmerter, 2004. It’s published by Beechcraft Heritage Museum and available through its bookstore; email info@beechcrafthm.org or visit www.BeechcraftHeritageMuseum.org.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY PHIL HIGH, CHRISTOPHER MILLER, MARK SCHAIBLE

TOP: The lean lines of the 12A are apparent.

LEFT: The 12A windshield is much closer to the pilot than in the Beech.

ABOVE: The Beech logo reminds the pilot what he’s flying.

www.vintageaircraft.org

49

Dennis Moehn

50 November/December 2020

HARD WORK, GRIT, PASSION, PERSEVERANCE. All the ingredients necessary to restore an airplane. Dennis Moehn has all of that and more. He doesn’t stop at satisfactory; he goes the extra mile and passes on his knowledge and passion to those in need of a mentor.

FROM SMALL BEGINNINGS TO PASSING THE TORCH TO THE NEXT GENERATION

BY CHRISTINA BASKEN

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTINA BASKEN

51

PHOTOGRAPHY BY XXXX CONNOR www.vintageaircraft.org MADISON

ennis grew up on a dairy farm in Stockbridge, Wisconsin, alongside nine siblings. His entire outlook on life changed one hot summer day as he was baling hay, looked up, and saw the Canadian Snowbirds practicing overhead.

“With 10 kids, going over to EAA wasn’t something my parents were going to do,” he said. “Seeing the Snowbirds, I was just thinking of the different life that must be than being a farmer baling hay, and how much more exciting that must be, but I didn’t know of any professional pilots at that time to show me a path to go from my interest in the Snowbirds at that time to being a commercial pilot.”

Unsure of how to approach this newfound interest, and to his surprise, Dennis discovered one of his high school teachers was an aviator, owned an airplane, and was willing to take him for a ride. So at 16, Dennis experienced his first ride in a Cessna 170.

On the farm Dennis would earn money by milking the cows before and after school. His dad would put his earnings in a savings account with the idea that he would go to a four-year college. When Dennis mentioned to his father that he was interested in aviation, at that point he had enough money saved up to attend a four-year university, so his father suggested that he get some aviation experience before deciding on a career within the field.

52 November/December 2020

“When I decided that I wanted to be an airplane mechanic, my dad said, ‘Well, if you want to be an airplane mechanic, you may as well learn something about it,’” Dennis said. “So, he took me to Maxair in Appleton, and I got my private pilot license through Maxair at 17 using the funds that I had in savings.”

From there, Dennis decided to go to A&P mechanic school at Blackhawk Technical College in Janesville, Wisconsin. From 1988 to 2006, he worked at Delta Air Lines as an aircraft mechanic, overhauling L-1011s and 767s and working as a line mechanic at the Atlanta airport.

While working at Delta, a lot of his time was spent as a lead mechanic guiding entry-level mechanics.

“A lot of being a lead mechanic over the new employees was to teach them a lot of the same basics taught in A&P school,” Dennis said. “Having that experience at Delta made me a great candidate for my next job.”

Having had a bit of experience mentoring and teaching, Dennis decided that wouldn’t be a bad career path to embark on. In 2006, he began teaching A&P courses at Fox Valley Technical College in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Two years into his teaching career, with a desire to improve his skills and knowledge within general aviation, he decided to try his hand at restoring an airplane.

“I was actually at an aviation group meeting, and one of the old guys there, in a conversation about projects, told me that if I didn’t have my own project, I should keep my mouth shut for a while,” Dennis said while laughing. “He meant it in the best possible way. But that is what really drove me to get my first project. All of my experience at Delta obviously wasn’t on reciprocating engines and small airplanes, and most of the teaching at an A&P school is in these small, general aviation airplanes. So, that was another reason for starting projects was to thoroughly involve myself in general aviation so I had a better idea of what I was teaching, and it’s definitely made me a better instructor.”

The finished product.

Installing the panel.

CHOOSING AN AIRPLANE TO RESTORE With most of his experience in large airliners, and this being his first time restoring an airplane, Dennis thought carefully about which airplane would be best to get his feet wet. He opted for a 1966 Cessna 172 as his first project, because he was familiar with it and it fit his flying needs.

Dennis said you should think of restoration experience the same as grade school. With each grade, or project, you gradually expand your knowledge and skills, and eventually move on to harder courses or projects.

When Dennis came across a disassembled Cessna 140 for sale in Poplar Grove, he knew it would be perfect for his next restoration project.

“I wanted something that would give me experience in fabric covering,” he explained. “I was also interested in the sheet metal construction of the fuselage side of the project. The other thing is that there are a lot of parts out there, so parts are readily available.

O-200 is an excellent engine for the 140, and I already had experience overhauling them; we use them for teaching at the school.

“If you select an airplane and there aren’t parts available out there, you really end up going to drawings and manufacturing things by yourself,” Dennis said. “And when you step into that next level, you also step into the next time frame, as far as restorations. If you want to go to that restoration level, you have to be able to double or maybe triple the amount of time on the airplane. If you get into an airplane that you’re ending up machining and milling, fittings, and things like that, you’re kind of graduating to the next level of restoration. And once you get into that level of restoration, you really need to start contacting the manufacturer for component drawings and stuff like that, so that you’re making the component as it was manufactured, with the right alloy and things like that. I’m not quite to that restoration level yet.”

But he will get there!

Dennis said that prior to purchase, he knew there was a Cessna 120-140 association that he could contact with questions, so he felt confident about his purchase.

“The 120-140 association was very helpful; different parts that I was unable to find, they directed me towards,” he said. “If you have questions on how things go together, they’re just a phone call away. And actually, more than anything with this restoration, I used the forum that they have online, and you can usually find somebody who has either tried the same thing that you’re trying or has come up with ideas on how to get around or work through a problem.”

“If somebody comes into the aviation market and they look at all of the brand-new certified airplanes, aviation seems out of touch, pricewise. Where, if I can teach my students that they can restore an older airplane like this for a lot less money, it’s a viable path to start flying.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTINA BASKEN, PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF DENNIS MOEHN

— DENNIS MOEHN www.vintageaircraft.org 53

THE RESTORATION The first thing Dennis did was disassemble the aircraft and inspect everything.

“When I started disassembling it, I was kind of disappointed in what I discovered,” he said. “As I took the control surfaces apart, it had corrosion on the inside, as well as cracks.

So, all of the control surfaces ended up coming apart and getting reskinned. It needed new elevators spars. The horizontal stabilizer was also damaged, so that also came all the way apart.”

He said he knew he would be able to repair the damage, but it was a matter of how long the restoration process would take.

“I was a little disappointed in what previous owners had covered up with primer and stuff like that.

But, in any restoration, you have to expect some of this. And again, taking a 140 with a lot of parts out there, I pretty much found everything that I needed; it would have been a much bigger deal had I been restoring something where parts weren’t as readily available.”

The other thing that Dennis noticed upon further inspection was corrosion to the spar.

“When I took the primer off of the wings and I took the pan out from under the fuel tank, I found out that there was spar corrosion,” he said. “I had to purchase a second set of 140 wings from Myers Aviation, and out of the two of them, I made an airworthy set. To do that, I did a thorough inspection of the original wings and new ones and decided what I could repair using AC 43.13 [Federal aviation regulations for maintenance, preventive maintenance, rebuilding, and alteration]. You just evaluate all the pieces that you have. You start pulling ribs from the one set of wings that wasn’t going to be salvageable and moving them over to the new wing in a wing jig to keep it square and rigid. Working from one end of the wing to the other, making new parts or pulling them off of the old one. I think restoring the wings back to airworthy condition was probably the hardest part, simply because of the number of pieces that had to be changed, wing ribs that had to be replaced, and things like that.”

Dennis said due to the corrosion on the lower spar caps of two different spars, he had to get a designated engineering representative repair.

“There was a problem with the lower web of the forward spar that was corroded beyond allowable limits,” he said. “So, to repair the forward spars to make them airworthy, I had to get a DER to give me a legal repair for the forward spars that were on the original set of wings. AC 43.13 are general repairs that you can use for minor damage. So, they’re very general. And as soon as you get beyond the allowable limits for 43.13, you then need a specific engineering evaluation of the issue that you have.”

He said the other issue he ran into was that the original fabric-attachment clips had worn.

“I ended up doing a Dip Davis Pop rivet modification using Pop rivets to hold the fabric on the wings, instead of the normal clips that Cessna put on there,” Dennis said.

He said the best piece of advice he can give is to do a thorough inspection prior to purchasing any project, because he might have noticed the corrosion damage had he spent more time looking at the airplane prior to purchasing.

Attaching the covering.

54 November/December 2020

Painting on the stripes.

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF DENNIS MOEHN

MANY FIRSTS

First experience with fabric covering When it came to the fabric covering, Dennis decided to phone a friend since he had no experience in this area.

“With the help of a good friend, Tracy Noack, the fabric covering turned out great,” he said. “It was a real good learning experience. I’m probably more apt to go and do an airplane by myself next. I would probably still have Tracy watch over my shoulder as I do my next one, though.”

Dennis met Tracy when he was invited to her hangar by mutual friends for Sunday morning coffee.

They got to talking, and Dennis came to learn that Tracy had quite a bit of experience in fabric covering.

“We used the Stits process, and I really like [it]. There are some waterbased ones that are coming out, but I think I’d stick to the Stits when doing it again,” he said. “I was just really happy with how the fabric turned out. I ended up using a Ranthane paint on it, and that was the first time I had used that paint process, and it turned out really well.”

There’s a first time for everything!

In addition to the first time doing fabric covering, Dennis said this was his first time going through the engineering field approval process as well.

“You need a field approval when you want to change something on your airplane from how it was originally built,” he explained. “The airplane has Cessna 150 seats in it, and that was quite a detailed field approval process. There is an airworthiness directive on the Cessna 150 seats. The FAA is very reluctant to allow a modification to an airplane that introduces an AD to a fuselage that would normally not have it.

When you adjust your seat, the seat is held in the seat track with a pin. And the problem is when the seat tracks get worn out enough, that pin ends up popping out of the track and the seat goes sliding back.

“So, picture yourself in one of these airplanes and you just took off out of Oshkosh, and all of a sudden, your seat goes from where you adjusted it to, to the back of the track while you’re hanging on to the control yoke. So, it might pull you into a high angle of attack and probably a stall,” he said. “What the FAA is worried about is, when somebody goes and does an annual on my 140 and they pull up all of the ADs that apply to assessment 140, that seat track AD wouldn’t normally come up unless they did a search for the seat tracks that I put in there. So, the FAA’s worry is that those seat track holes wouldn’t get inspected because an unwary inspector wouldn’t know to look for it on that airplane.”

Dennis said going through this process firsthand was a great experience because now he can better explain it to his students.

The difference between a field approval and DER, as stated by the FAA on its website: If the alteration requires approval of data beyond the DER’s authority, then additional approval, such as an FAA field approval or supplemental type certificate, is required.

Driving fabric rivets.

www.vintageaircraft.org 55

SPECS

Continental O-200A.

Aircraft Make and Model: 1946 Cessna 140 Certification: Standard Airworthiness Certificate LENGTH:

21 feet, 6 inches

WINGSPAN:

33 feet, 4 inches

HEIGHT:

6 feet, 3 inches

MAXIMUM GROSS WEIGHT:

1,450 pounds

EMPTY WEIGHT:

950 pounds

FUEL CAPACITY:

25 gallons

SEATS:

2

POWERPLANT MAKE & MODEL:

Continental O-200A

HORSEPOWER:

100

PROPELLER:

McCauley 1A101/DCM6948

CRUISE SPEED/FUEL CONSUMPTION:

105 mph/6 gph

POWER LOADING:

14.5 pounds/hp

WING LOADING:

9.1 pounds/square foot

EQUIPPED FOR:

VFR flight

VNE:

140 mph

VSO:

45 mph

V X:

61 mph

V Y:

73 mph

56 November/December 2020

First flight The other motivation factor for purchasing this airplane was so that Dennis could get some tailwheel experience. When he finished the restoration, he was still working with an instructor to get his endorsement, so they went up together for the first flight.

“We went to about 3,000 feet and circled the airport for an hour, checking the engine out,” he said. “After that hour, we flew out to the practice area west of Oshkosh, and we did steep turns, stalls, straight and level. And I was extremely happy with how the airplane flew. We didn’t do any flight control rigging after we had come back. I’m very happy with how it handled and how it flew.”

Dennis said his 140 has more than lived up to his expectations, and the best part of flying it is the cost of operating.

“It has been within my price range to operate,” he said. “I am pretty much a weekend flyer, chasing the $100 hamburger, and the 140 is a great airplane for that. It burns about 5 to 6 gph.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTINA BASKEN

“Students sign up for A&P school, and the first thing we do is we give them a stack of books and a big reading assignment. Having projects like this that I can talk about helps maintain the enthusiasm for aviation.”

— DENNIS MOEHN

Old elevator skins.

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF DENNIS MOEHN

www.vintageaircraft.org 57

COMING FULL CIRCLE: FROM SMALL BEGINNINGS TO PASSING THE TORCH INTERESTED IN CESSNA 140S? For in-depth information, contact the International 120/140 Association.

58 November/December 2020

“A Cessna 140, when you fix it up, you can get a good flyable airplane for mid-20-something, pricewise.” Dennis said. “If somebody comes into the aviation market and they look at all of the brandnew certified airplanes, aviation seems out of touch, pricewise. Where, if I can teach my students that they can restore an older airplane like this for a lot less money, it’s a viable path to start flying.”

He said gaining restoration experience has helped him to become a better instructor and be able to better connect with his students.

“It also allows me to make connections with students who are interested in general aviation and not just the airlines, so I have a good basis to talk from,” he said. “I try to inspire students to get, or go above and beyond, the education that they get here at the Tech. I really want them to try to get into projects outside of the Tech.”

One of the ways Dennis encourages his students to get involved with projects outside of the classroom is by sharing his own projects with them.

“Just last year, when we were talking about taildraggers and landing gear, I actually had my 140 in school,” he said. “It was an excellent example of how to inspect and show the operation of a tailwheel, as compared to all the other airplanes we have in the school, which are nosewheel airplanes.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTINA BASKEN, PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF DENNIS MOEHN

“I think it really helps them understand working on certified airplanes, and what’s involved, and what it takes to do modifications to them,” Dennis said. “But it’s the whole package. It shows students the importance of maintaining the type design in a certified airplane and going through the proper steps to modify the airplane if you want. Students sign up for A&P school, and the first thing we do is we give them a stack of books and a big reading assignment.

Having projects like this that I can talk about helps maintain the enthusiasm for aviation.”

Dennis said that knowing firsthand what it feels like to not know what steps to take to follow your dreams when you’re young makes it all the more important that he tries his best to do his part in helping the next generation of enthusiasts.

“I don’t think that high school counselors or most high school instructors understand aviation, and it was kind of like the conundrum that I had coming from a farm,” he said. “If you don’t know how to progress to a professional career in aviation, and you don’t have a mentor to show you the steps, how do you get there? So, hopefully I’m showing kids and students steps to earn a living in aviation.”

ADVICE When it comes to restoring a Cessna 140, Dennis said there are a few key things to look out for.

“You have to pay attention to the forward doorposts, because there is a make-it-or-break-it AD on the doorposts,” he said. “The first crack is above the glare shield up to [where] the wings spar attach. And the second crack to be aware of is down by the strut attach at the landing gear box area. The next place to look for cracks is by the fuselage rear bulkhead, which is the attachment of the horizontal stabilizer and vertical stabilizer. Be sure to look at the elevator spar hinge points for cracks, too.

“But if you’re weighing your options for which airplane to start your first restoration with, your first restoration should be a popular airplane where you can readily find replacement parts, as well as find a group of people, like a type club, to help you.”

CHRISTINA BASKEN, EAA 1299943, is EAA’s multimedia journalist, and an active student pilot. When she is not taking photos or writing for various publications, you can find her outside enjoying nature.

Shrinking the fabric.

www.vintageaircraft.org 59

The Vintage Mechanic ROBERT G. LOCK

Fuel and Oil Systems

BY ROBERT G. LOCK

OUR SUBJECT FOR THIS ISSUE is fuel and oil sys-

tems. So let’s get started with some basics. There are two types of fuel systems — gravity feed and pressure feed (both can be carbureted), and injected (always pressure feed). Unless modified, all older aircraft used a carbureted system. There are two types of oil systems — wet sump and dry sump. Most older aircraft used dry sump systems because they were powered by radial engines. Dry sump systems carry the oil in an external tank, while wet sump systems carry the oil in the main crankcase of the engine.

GRAVITY FEED FUEL SYSTEMS: Gravity feed fuel systems are the most common among older aircraft.

They are simple in operation and require no enginedriven or auxiliary fuel pump. Gravity feed systems operate at a very low carburetor inlet pressure, generally 0.5-1.0 psi. The pressure depends on the height of the fuel tank above the carburetor inlet; 39 inches will give the system 1.0 psi of positive fuel pressure.

Therefore, no engine-driven fuel pump is necessary.

Pressure feed systems use an engine-driven pump with an auxiliary hand (wobble) or electrically driven pump.

These systems normally operate at a pressure of 3-5 psi.

Therefore, fuel flow is greater in a pressure feed system over a gravity feed system. It is important to note that gravity feed carburetors will not work on pressure feed systems, and pressure feed carbs won’t work on gravity feed systems.

PRESSURE FEED FUEL SYSTEMS: Pressure feed systems are similar to gravity feed but operate at a higher carburetor fuel inlet pressure. This pressure is boosted by an engine-driven, vane-type fuel pump.

The pump pressure is adjustable; I usually set the pressure to the middle of the range of operation. Most systems of this type operate at 3-5 psi, so I set the pressure at 4 psi. There must be an emergency backup pump, which may be hand-operated (wobble) or electrically driven. When the pump is operated it should not raise fuel pressure above the maximum allowed.

There will be a bourdon-type fuel gauge to indicate fuel flow pressure. Gauge pressure should be taken at the inlet to the carburetor.

Now, let’s start at the top of the system and work down.

60 November/December 2020

FUEL TANK: Originally made from Terneplate and soft-soldered together, these tanks were heavy when compared with aluminum. Terneplate is thin steel sheet coated with lead for corrosion protection. Because these materials are weldable, it is common to remanufacture tanks using aluminum alloys 3003 or 5052. Tanks have internal baffles for structural support and to keep fuel from sloshing around in the tank. Tanks are constructed to withstand an internal pressure of 3 psi. Tanks have sumps to drain water and sediment from the lowest portion of the tank. They are vented to the atmosphere; if two tanks are interconnected, their vent lines are also interconnected.

FUEL STRAINER: Usually mounted on the forward side of the firewall (but some were mounted in the rear cockpit), the gascolator/ strainer will remove sediment before it enters the carburetor. There is a means to drain water condensation from the unit. It may or may not be the lowest point in the system. The correct nomenclature for this unit is gascolator.

SHUT-OFF/SELECTOR VALVE: Located on the aft side of the firewall, the fuel valve directs and shuts off fuel to the carburetor. The valve should be plainly marked to show fuel quantity in each tank, and the pointer should show from which tank the engine is drawing. The valve must positively shut off the fuel. There must be positive detents in the valve so the valve feels as though it “snaps” into place. Remove the fuel line to the carburetor and ensure there is no flow of fuel with the valve in the “off” position.

If automotive fuel is used, check the inside diameter of the flexible hose from the gascolator to the carburetor; I use a 3/8-inch or 1/2-inch wood dowel rounded on one end to accomplish this task. Because of additives to the gasoline, automotive fuel can cause swelling of flexible lines. This check should be done at each annual inspection. Swelling of the inner-tube diameter can cause fuel starvation to the engine, with disastrous results.

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Gravity feed carburetors will not work on pressure feed systems, and pressure feed carbs won’t work on gravity feed systems.

CARBURETOR: Often overlooked during restoration is the type of carburetor to be installed. Gravity systems use a carburetor capable of operation at low fuel pressures. Gravity systems often work at fuel pressures up to 1.0 psi. The carburetor overhaul manual will tell you which part-numbered carburetors are gravity feed and which are pressure feed. As the fuel enters the carburetor, it is again strained. At the fuel inlet there is another small screen that should be periodically inspected, particularly during the annual inspection.

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ENGINE-DRIVEN FUEL PUMPS: Pumps are usually a vane-type pump, the sliding vanes producing a low positive pressure. A means to adjust pressure is included on the pump. The drive shaft has a “shear” section to protect the engine in case of pump seizure.

EMERGENCY FUEL PUMP: A common type is a hand-operated “wobble” pump. Later installations may use an electric boost pump. There should be a means to adjust output boost pressure to the carburetor. Some pumps have a small screen incorporated to further strain the fuel before it enters the carburetor.

LINES & FITTINGS: Fuel lines are commonly made from aluminum alloy 5052 tubing. This alloy is easily bent and flared. The flaring angle is 37 degrees (not automotive type, which is flared at 45 degrees). Aluminum AN fittings are to be used; blue anodizing on the fittings identifies them as aluminum. The tubing should be clamped every 18 inches. Common tube diameters for radial engines up to 225 hp are 3/8 inch, and for engines to 450 hp, 1/2 inch. I use the Boeing Stearman as an example when there is no factory data on fuel line size. The Stearman used fuel lines that are 1/2 inch in diameter.

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61

The Vintage Mechanic ROBERT G. LOCK

TROUBLESHOOTING: Other than checking screens and looking for leaks, there isn’t much to look for. Always check lines for chafing; chafing can eventually cause a hole to be rubbed into the line. Sump drains may continually leak as seals wear or debris collects in the drain seat area. Pressure systems should be monitored on the pressure gauge for any changes in operating pressure. A lowering of the pressure could indicate pump wear.

OIL SYSTEMS: All radial engines were equipped with dry sump oil systems. Dry sump systems had an external oil tank, while wet sump systems had the oil contained within the engine case. Now, let’s look at the system components in detail.

ENGINE-DRIVEN OIL PUMP: These pumps were gear type and had two functions: to provide positive oil pressure to the engine, and to scavenge oil from the engine sumps and return it to the tank. Therefore the scavenge side of the pump had twice the capacity as the pressure side. The engine-driven pump contains a suction inlet check valve, the purpose of which is to block oil from entering the pump when the engine is not running. However, it seems that if the oil tank is mounted above the pump inlet, oil will seep around the check valve and flow into the lower cylinders, creating the dreaded hydraulic lock. Always turn the prop at least 14 blades before starting. If in doubt, remove one spark plug from the lower cylinders, start and run the engine with the plugs out, then shut down and reinstall the plugs. Then clean the engine and fuselage of all the oil that was blown out of the lower cylinders!

OIL TANK: Most small, single-row radial engines carried 4 to 8 gallons of oil. The amount of oil carried is determined by the airframe designer. Tanks were designed to withstand an internal pressure of 5 psi, so they were well baffled and made of heavy Terneplate or aluminum. Some aircraft were equipped with an oil shut-off valve to keep oil from entering the engine when not running. But this was always dangerous if the pilot forgets to turn on the oil prior to starting.

“Y” DRAIN: The “Y” drain is installed at the lowest point of the system and allows oil to be drained from the tank. Some “Y” drains had a built-in fuel dilution port that allowed the pilot to introduce fuel into the oil system to dilute the oil for cold starting.

OIL COOLER: If installed, the oil radiator is used to cool the oil before it re-enters the engine. Oil coolers are equipped with a thermostat valve that directs oil through the cooler when a certain temperature is reached. Oil coolers are best repaired by sending them out to a repair shop for overhaul and test.

Coolers were made of brass and soft-soldered together during assembly.

62 November/December 2020

LINES, FITTINGS, & HOSE: Since they carry little or no pressure, oil lines are made from 3003 aluminum tubing usually 1 inch in diameter. The ends are beaded to accept hose and clamps. The fittings are brass or aluminum and are coded AN840, AN842, and AN844. Hose is Mil-H-6000, which is fuel- and oil-resistant. Clamps are stainless-steel worm-type clamps. Worm-type clamps tend to stay round when tightened, while the older clamps will move to an out-of-round condition when over-tightened. Note: Use only enough torque on the clamps to stop seepage, and no more. Do not over-tighten clamps. Normal torque for clamps is a mere 20-25 inch-pounds. When assembling the aluminum tubing, the tubing should not touch and the maximum separation should be one tube diameter.

INSTRUMENTATION: Pressure and temperature gauges are provided in the cockpit to monitor oil. These gauges are bourdon-tube type, the pressure gauge being connected to a pressure port on the engine case by a flex line to the firewall, then to the instrument by aluminum tubing. The temperature gauge has a shielded line filled with a liquid, which vaporizes and expands as the oil temperature increases; this is what is known as a vapor-pressure indicator. Methyl chloride is a common fluid used in the sensing bulb. The sensing bulb at the end of the line probes heat either in the crankcase or the oil line. Never cut the capillary line to shorten it! The liquid will turn to a gas under atmospheric pressure. If there is excess length of line, it will have to be coiled and clamped, preferably behind the instrument panel.

MAINTENANCE: The chafing of oil lines can cause failure with disastrous results. Check all lines for security, chafing, and leaks. Tighten hose clamps to about 20-25 pounds of torque.

Once a hose is saturated with oil, continued tightening of the clamp will not stop the seep; replace the hose. If the engine is to be replaced for any reason, remove and flush the oil tank and cooler (if installed). This is especially important if metal is found in the main or sump oil screen, indicating some type of failure. I’ve heard stories of metal contamination in a newly overhauled engine, only to be found that it came from the tank or cooler and not the newly overhauled engine. A flexible line should always be installed from the engine to the firewall to sense oil pressure. A synthetic rubber hose is recommended.

The chafing of oil lines can cause failure with disastrous results. Check all lines for security, chafing, and leaks.

TROUBLESHOOTING: Once the pressure has been set at the pressure pump, it should only vary in pressure due to temperature. The oil system in an engine is complex, and on single-row radials, only one pump is used to pressure and scavenge the oil. Oil will seek the path of least resistance, so if a clearance between two parts increases, the oil will be pushed through at this point. This will cause a drop in oil pressure. Rather than adjusting the pressure, one should investigate and locate the real problem. This could be easier said than done, as some disassembly of the engine may be required.

CHOOSING OIL: The following represents my opinion. There will be other opinions, and one should choose what he or she thinks best for the engine. I have always broken in a newly overhauled engine with pure mineral oil, either 50 or 60 weight, whatever the overhaul manual recommends. Assuming the engine had some test-stand time, I generally run the new engine long enough to check for operation and leaks.

Then test flight at a high power setting for one hour; then check all screens for contamination. At 10 hours of time I drain and replace the oil, check the screens, and do a cylinder leakage check of the engine and also a close inspection of the engine and controls. The next oil change is done at 25 hours of time. The oil is drained, cylinder leakage checked, and a close inspection made of the engine and controls.

One should keep a close accounting of the oil that must be added to the tank during run-in. When oil consumption decreases, the rings have seated, and at this point the engine can continue on mineral oil or be switched to ashless dispersant (AD) oil. My preference is to run the engine another 25 hours on mineral oil, then switch to AD oil.

Having said that, I have completed the break-in of a Continental W-670 engine using 50-weight AeroShell ashless dispersant oil, with excellent results. However, always follow the recommendations of the overhaul shop. Most overhaul shops still recommend engine break-in using straight mineral oil.

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63

Message From the President SUSAN DUSENBURY, VAA PRESIDENT

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

“I’m on a good ride here with Vintage even after all of these years. I love it!”

— Steve Nesse The Vintage Aircraft Association is and has been so fortunate to have someone like Steve on our team. Steve is a person with a passion and a commitment to the task at hand. That’s a rare find in today’s culture where so much is temporary and thrown away. Recently, I asked Steve to share his thoughts on his long and successful association with VAA. In typical Steve Nesse style, he said, “I’m on a good ride here with Vintage even after all of these years. I love it!”

On behalf of VAA I would like to thank Steve for 33 years of service (and still going!) to the organization. Steve has retired as secretary of the organization but will continue as a VAA director and as chairman of the Tall Pines Café.

And lastly, I might add that VAA lucked out again when the very talented and dedicated Dan Wood was elected to the position of secretary to replace Steve.

Blue skies!

Flymart & Classifieds

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

SECRETARY Dan Wood 75 Walton Place Dr. Newnan, GA 30263 678-458-3459 fly170@gmail.com

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

TREASURER Jerry Brown 4605 Hickory Wood Row Greenwood, IN 46143 317-627-9428 lbrown4906@aol.com

DIRECTORS

AIRCRAFT APPRAISALS I Specialize in Aircraft NOT found in any price guide. Desktop or Full On-Site Appraisal for ANY Aircraft. JetValues-Jeremy LLC www.jetvaluesjeremy.com +1.636.751.3987 MISC Gordon Wilson, EAA 36367 For Sale: Original factory installed tinted windshield removed from 1981 Cessna 182R. No damage, good condition. Contact 708-767-1851 Michigan resident

COPYRIGHT © 2020 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.

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

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

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

Paul Kyle 1273 Troy Ct. Mason, OH 45040 262-844-3351 paul_e_kyle@hotmail.com

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

Steve Nesse 2009 Highland Ave. Albert Lea, MN 56007 507-383-2850 stnes2009@live.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

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

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

ADVISERS Kevin McKenzie 40550 La Colima Rd. Temecula, CA 92591

Joel Meanor 1015 Trail Ridge Ct. Keller, TX 76248

DIRECTORS EMERITUS David Bennett antiquer@inreach.com

Ronald C. Fritz itzfray@gmail.com

Robert C. Brauer photopilot@aol.com

Robert D. “Bob” Lumley rlumley1@wi.rr.com

Phil Coulson rcoulson516@cs.com

Gene Morris genemorris@charter.net

S.H. “Wes” Schmid shschmid@gmail.com

EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT 64 November/December 2020

Amy Lemke alemke@eaa.org

© 2020 Experimental Aircraft Association, Inc.

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