Didit.Live

One of the regulars at Henley owned an S2-A Pitts with a dual cockpit. He came for a $50 hamburger almost every weekend. I don’t remember his name, but I heard he made a pile of money in the early days of cable TV. One day in the diner I learned that he would loan his Pitts to Steve Wolf for aerobatic lessons. Steve was one of those rare pilots that most people would trust their airplane to without hesitation. Seemed serendipitous to me.

I soon had Steve and the S2-A lined up for an aerobatic lesson. Steve is a flight instructor, but he didn’t have a formal program in those days. You just went up, and flew aerobatic maneuvers. Steve put me in the forward cockpit for the first lesson. The rear cockpit is where the pilot in command usually sits. It’s easier to fly the Pitts from back there, and quite a bit easier to land from there. We strapped in to our parachutes, and put the headphones on (for intercom use). Steve coached me down the taxiway and onto the runway. (There is no visibility straight ahead in a Pitts, which makes it hard to taxi and land.) Then he had me set full power, and off we went.

As with any taildragger, the first thing you do on takeoff is raise the tail so you can see forward. That happens in the first 50 feet or so in a Pitts. You keep it straight down the runway until you reach 100 knots. Then you pull the stick back a bit, and you’re in the air. My takeoff was picture perfect (not that it’s hard at all). The power to weight ratio of an S2-A is better than a T-6’s, so we were at 2,000 feet AGL by the time we were a mile away.

Steve began the session by demonstrating an aileron roll. Nothing to it. The Pitts is built for aerobatics, and it rolls with ease. You can roll fast or slow with a light touch on the stick. You need a touch of rudder for a precision roll. Rolling slowly allows a neophyte to see how much rudder is needed at each point of the roll. I wasn’t very good at it, but we weren’t going for precision anyway. [Wikipedia: Aerobatic maneuvers]

The next thing was loops. Precision loops are easier in concept, but harder in practice than rolls. Steve had me do some inverted flying first to get me used to seeing the world upside down. That helps with loops. The proper technique is to look out the side window, and keep the wingtips oriented to a point on the horizon. Easier said than done.

We flew a hammerhead or two, and then headed back to Henley. Aerobatics didn’t make me dizzy, but the constant change in orientation wears you out until you adapt. It also gives you a headache and could lead to airsickness. Steve had me bring the Pitts in for a landing, but told me he would take over when we were down at runway level. The reason? The runway disappears there. You sit low in the cockpit, so the engine hides the runway in front, and the lower wing hides most of it to the sides. We tried two or three landings, but I never got close to making a touchdown myself.

That was lesson one. Not much different from flying with Wayne, but with more coaching, and more description of what was happening and what to be looking for.

I had already decided to get an aerobatic airplane of my own. As you might expect, you don’t find many aerobatic planes for rent. 😀 What I wanted was enough experience to have a feel for the real thing before I went off to try it on my own. I knew aerobatics would be harder in an affordable plane. I didn’t want to work on it cold turkey.

I started taking lessons with Steve Wolf after my brief introduction to aerobatics with Wayne Norton. Steve lived at Hackney Airpark, which is located about three miles from Henley Aerodrome in Athol, Idaho. It is another “residential” airport, with houses and hangers off to one side. Steve was usually at Henley when he was in town though. He is an unassuming fellow, who was and is legendary in the sport aviation world. I think you’ll find a short introduction interesting.

Steve was an airport kid at “Fly for Fun” airport in Vancouver, Washington (not BC). You can take flying lessons at any age, but you cannot solo (fly on your own) until your 16th birthday. Steve soloed in ten different airplanes on his 16th birthday. That means he was already “checked out” (qualified to fly) in those ten planes before his birthday. That’s why he could fly them all on his birthday. Ten endorsements in his logbook in a row.

Before I met Steve at Henley he had been building and repairing airplanes, flying at airshows and giving aerobatic instruction. His specialty was rebuilding wings for Stearman biplanes, but he grew tired of that. He had built his own Pitts Special and was making a living on the airshow circuit when I met him.

Steve began work on his boyhood dream soon after I met him. He was building a replica of the Sampson biplane, AKA “Big Pitts”. Curtis Pitts built the original many years before for another airshow pilot. Steve had been thinking about building a replica for many years.

The plans Curtis Pitts drew up for Sampson burned in a hanger fire, but Steve had saved the copy of Model Airplane News that had plans for a scale model of Sampson. Steve knew Curtis long before he decided to build his own Sampson, and he got many pointers about building it from him. Then he scaled up the plans in that magazine to full size and began building the replica with some twists of his own. Steve always has good ideas about how to make an airplane better.

I first saw Steve’s Sampson in 1985 when the fuselage and lower wing were just skeletons. It was sitting on its landing gear in his hanger at Hackney Airpark. Steve was a wizard at adapting basic tools to make complex parts, and he explained some of his methods to my friend Dave Schwartz and me. A FAA certificate is required for all work on aircraft. Dave was also certified, and he did all the wiring for Sampson’s radios, lights, panel instruments, etc.

It is relatively easy to remove the wings from a biplane. When Steve had nearly finished building Sampson he trucked it to Henley, which had a paved runway. He wanted that for safety on the maiden flight. Many Henley regulars were at Henley a couple of weeks later to see Sampson fly for the first time. Knowing Steve, we expected it to fly perfectly, and it did. Steve soon had Sampson on the airshow circuit. He also flew it to the EAA Oshkosh Airshow that year. They had invited him to fly an aerobatic routine every day at the airshow. That was an unprecedented request. Other airshow pilots are lucky if they get to fly once at Oshkosh.

Sampson is light biplane with a 985 cubic inch radial engine, giving it a huge power to weight ratio. Steve set the 10,000-foot time-to-climb world record with Sampson. Sampson could fly a vertical figure 8 maneuver with ease. It’s not the usual horizontal one. It looks like an “8” looks here on the page. Most planes can only muster the bottom half of a vertical 8. Steve sold the Sampson after nine years flying it on the airshow circuit. Later on, he built another Sampson for Bobby Younkin. Steve continued to improve the design for Sampson, and recently offered the last one he built for $495,000. [Video: Bobby Younkin flying Sampson]

Steve moved to Oregon after selling Sampson. He went there to get a bigger hanger and better winter weather. There he built unique one-off planes for other airshow pilots. Most notable was a replica of a 1930s GeeBee R2 air racer. Steve and his flying buddies were always talking about building airplanes that nobody would have given a second thought to.

The original R2 was dangerous to fly, 5 or 6 pilots died trying. Although Jimmy Doolittle set a speed record with it, it was known as The Widowmaker. The R2 was also a complex airplane to build (the Granville Brothers probably had a dozen people building theirs). So why not build a GeeBee R2? There will be a story about that plane later. [here]

Steve also gave aerobatic lessons in Oregon. One of his students was a sports physician. She eventually became a full time spin recovery and aerobatics instructor herself. It was much more satisfying for her than being an MD. She and Steve then married and moved to Florida, where the flying weather is even better than in Oregon. Steve continued to build his own “Wolf-Pitts” brand of biplanes there, but from what I gather from their website he is not very active with projects now. They are both busy with aerobatic and spin recovery instruction though. [Video: Zlin Spin]

That’s a brief summary of Steve’s 48 year (so far) career performing and instructing aerobatics. The next post will have a few stories about my sessions with Steve.

I started hanging out at Henley most weekends soon after I learned to fly gliders. Ideal soaring conditions only come once in a while, and the time of day plays a big role in that. I would go up there in the morning to watch the weather and other glider flights to see how conditions were developing.

There were usually several other pilots there too. They flew in for $50 hamburgers, fuel, glider flying, aerobatics, and mostly hanger flying (telling tall tales). The hamburgers were $50 because the restaurant wanted their $5 and you spend $45 for fuel and maintenance flying in and back out to your home airport.

One day I learned that Henley was going to put on an airshow. There would be wing walking, professional aerobatic routines, mock dogfights, antique airplanes, sky diving and more. It was free to boot. Just a bunch of enthusiasts getting together for the fun of it. And there would be time for glider flying too, conditions permitting. You can probably guess where I was that weekend.

I watched several airshows at Henley over the years. They’re blurred together in my mind now. I specifically remember the team aerobatic routine that Steve Wolf and Steve Soper flew, and the mock dogfight at that first airshow though.

Steve & Steve were flying S1-A Pitts Specials that they built themselves. They made a living barnstorming during the summer, but they often came home.  Steve flew with a legendary pilot named Dave Rahm earlier (that’s another story), but now he was teamed up with Steve Soper.

Gene Soper, Steve Soper’s dad, was often the public address commentator for their performances. Gene was also qualified to fly multi-engine airplanes. He flew Gary’s tri-motors for him.

What is team aerobatics? Part of it is flying basic aerobatic maneuvers in formation. There are also more challenging team maneuvers. In one you fly low over the runway, one plane from each end. One of them is inverted (flying upside down). You meet in the middle, one on one side of the runway, and one on the other side. Or you each fly a loop, and you meet at the top and bottom with the same kind of close separation.

In another maneuver, you fly down the runway with one plane inverted and slightly above the other. The pilot in the lower plane flys down the center line. The pilot in the inverted plane guides his flight by maintaining “canopy-to-canopy” spacing a few feet above the bottom plane. You need some serious practice to do maneuvers like that safely.

The mock dogfights were flown with accurate replicas of WW I fighters: Three legendary biplanes — a Spad, Neuport, and de Havilland — plus a Fokker tri-plane (Red Barron’s plane). Those dogfights looked like chaos aloft to me to me. They didn’t have a planned routine, but I’m sure they had some rules of thumb to follow. Otherwise the chance of colliding would not have been negligible. Some of those replicas were built by Wimpy Redfern, and others were built by builders using the plans he sold. Wimpy was another of the Henley aviators who lived near to the runway.

There were also demonstration flights of unique airplanes. Gary Norton, who owned Henley Aerodrome, had a dozen or more old planes in his personal collection. Some of these were million dollar acquisitions. He had P-51 and P-40 fighters; Ford and Stinson tri-motors; Stearman and T-6 military trainers; Pitts Special, Bucker-Jungman, Travel Air 2000, and Fleet biplanes; a flying car, etc. They flew a couple of these airplanes at the airshow, and many of the others on other weekends.

Many of the pilots who flew in to Henley had unique airplanes. Jack Rose had a P-51 and a Stearman (more about him later). Several other WW II planes came by from time to time. Several Pitts Specials showed up regularly. Steve Wolf eventually built a replica of the legendary Pitts Samson, and he often flew impromptu aerobatic sessions in it at Henley. [Video: Bobby Younkin flying Samson NX985PW built by Steve Wolf]

Wimpy Redfern built a replica of a Model 2 de Havilland, a pusher biplane used in WW I, at Henley. Its radial engine was behind the pilot, which gave him superb forward visibility for shooting at the enemy. I was there when Wimpy flew it for the first time.

I learned about many airshow pilots in hanger-flying sessions at Henley. I also met most of them at Henley or airshows at other airports. You demonstrate your aerobatic skills to a FAA examiner to obtain a low-level aerobatics waver. You need that to be an airshow (“stunt”) pilot. Those pilots had the right stuff. Several of them died in crashes though. (I flew aerobatics at 1,500 feet or more above ground level as required by regulations. That was no more dangerous than riding a motorcycle.)

My first aerobatic flying at Henley involved some serendipity. I learned that I could fly their T-6 military trainer for $90 an hour. The only catch was you could only fly it if you had an instructor along.

I took the next day off from work and went up to Henley. I had Wayne Norton, the brother of Gary Norton, lined up as my instructor. After some ground instruction, off we went. A T-6 has a big radial engine. The full-throttle sound and thrust from that engine on takeoff is something you’d never forget. It’s the kind of feeling you’d get running a steam locomotive down the track at 90 miles per hour.

After we took off, Wayne asked me what I wanted to do. I’d been thinking we’d just fly around doing turns, stalls and such. It never hurts to ask though, so I told him I’d like to fly some aerobatics. He said, “OK, take us up to 4,000 feet (2,000 above ground level).” When we got there he demonstrated a loop and then gave the plane back to me. I basically knew how you fly a loop, but I had never done it before in a real airplane. I flew several loops, and we moved on to aileron rolls, Cuban eights, etc., boring all kinds of wormholes in the sky.

Eventually Wayne asked, “Do you know we’re at 10,000 feet? What do you want to do now?” I hadn’t been paying much attention to altitude, and a T-6 has no trouble climbing while doing aerobatics. I had a headache (prelude to air-sickness), so we wrapped up with some steep turns, wingovers, stalls, etc., and flew back to land.

The visibility out of a T-6 is excellent, the controls are smooth, and it has a solid feel. Wayne let me do the landing, which went just fine. The T-6 approach speed is 80 knots, compared to 50 knots or so for a light plane, but it was easy to adjust to the faster pace.

I was now keen to fly the T-6 some more. It was the only big plane they were letting people fly. I was afraid they might change their minds. I had a mental budget of spending $1,000 or so flying it over the next few months. I planned to go back in a day or two, but disaster struck.

The next day Wayne took his brother’s Pitts Special up for a little aerobatics at the end of the day. “Witnesses reported” that his engine stopped at the top of a hammerhead, and the plane fell off on it’s back. Wayne had neglected to check the fuel level before going up. The engine ran out of fuel at the worst possible moment.

You start a hammerhead by flying straight up until the airplane comes to a stop. You reverse direction at the top, and fly straight down to regain airspeed. Finally you pull out of the dive.

There Wayne was, with the plane on its back. Usually that’s not a problem. But he was spinning down like a seed from a maple tree. There wasn’t much he could do without power though. He did get the Pitts righted, but it hit the ground before he could pick up airspeed. Wayne’s death put a big damper on everything at Henley, including T-6 flights.

Over the next few years, Gary turned Henley into Silverwood, a theme park with all kinds of thrilling rides. I imagine he changed his plans for the Henley because of his brother’s death. The runway did stay open for a few years, but Henley is filled with theme park attractions now.

I’m taking license with this title. This ode is a bit of prose, not poetry, in praise of what we called “the northwest room”. I came to realize later in life it was one of the resources that enabled what I came to think of as my accidental homegrown education.

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” —Norman Rockwell

Our farmhouse was commodious by most measures. The northwest room was a “spare bedroom” that we used for storage. It provided a secure, weatherproof place to store fragile things. We all have things we just hate to throw away. Most of the things stored there were artifacts from the 1920s and 30s. There were some precision things in the NW Room too. My dad’s home-made astronomical telescope and its 6″ mirror was one. Also a surveyor’s transit. I don’t know where all those NW Room treasures came from (not a secret — just didn’t ask). But there was a rich variety of things to use and appreciate.

Old radios, radio parts, and books were the most important artifacts for me. There was also a lot of other interesting stuff too — an old x-ray tube from a dentist’s office, a coin collection, an Indian arrowhead collection, my mom’s pair of over-the-calf lace up boots for her visit to Estes Park around 1928, the turntable of a hand-wound Victrola, and an old canvas tent.

The radio stuff was all 1920’s vintage. It offered several things for me. First, it gave me an idea of how radios were constructed. These old radios made the physics of basic radio elements visible. For example, it was very clear how variable coupling transformers and variable capacitors worked. They also made the ultimate sacrifice. I cannibalized them for radio components, insulated wire, connectors, etc., that I needed.

The books might have been more important than the junk. Other than the ordinary grade-school collection of books, I had never seen a real library in those early days. There was no Internet either. But that old bookcase offered many hours of intrigue for me.

For example, the (farm) Animal Medicine book was fun to peruse. I imagine it was the sort of book that traveling salesmen carried to snag impulse buys with. It was about cows, horses, and I think pigs too. The main feature was colorful, multi-layer illustrations of animal anatomy. As you lifted the layers you went from skin to muscles to bones. It also exposed organs and their interiors. It was much more accurate and detailed that shown in the picture here.

The ABC of Bee Keeping was another detailed book I found interesting. It described the seasonal and life cycle of bees and their hives, illustrated how to manage honey production, etc. We had an active bee hive in the wall of our barn to observe as well. One year they swarmed. Bees swarm when it gets too crowded in their hive. They raise another queen, and she goes off with a large part of the workers looking for a place to establish a new hive.

I thought we could set up a box hive with the swarm, and extract our own honey. Dad even knew where we could get an empty hive. I had no beekeeping equipment, but that didn’t hold me back. Getting them in the hive didn’t go well. They got fed up with my attempt and attacked me. I ended up in the stock watering tank. I had to drown the bees that were all over me and inside my clothes.

The bookshelf in the NW Room held a variety of treasures. I’ve mentioned some, like the old Amateur Radio book. There were books on astronomy, building amateur telescopes, high-school physics, motor vehicles, Latin (the Romans had a way with words), and mental arithmetic. That’s most of what I remember of the 100 or so books that were there.

I spent many hours with a big book that gave instructions for various projects that a boy could undertake. I have no idea how it got there, but I tried several of them. One project was a rubber-band-powered model airplane. It had a quaint old design, with two rubber bands and twin propellers. Never did get it flying. Another was a model of Columbus’s square-rigged Santa Maria. The scope of that project exceeded my persistence. Besides, radios were more fun.

I found the book on physics fascinating. I particularly remember chapters on pulleys and levers. It was very interesting to me to learn that you could accurately describe how they worked by using a little arithmetic. I had an experiential feel from using pulleys and levers, and I learned that math had much more usefulness than just counting. To quote Sir Isaac Newton, “Mathematics is the hound that runs by the wheel of nature.” (Picture a stagecoach pulled by four horses, with a hound following a rear wheel.)

An aside: I’ve walked on the grave of Newton. He is buried under the floor in Westminster Abbey. There was heated competition in his day between the churches that emerged after Henry VIII’s excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church. They were eager to claim famous scientists of their day as members. In those days, science was taken to prove God’s existence (not so much these days). Each church proclaimed that their sect was the true one because the best scientists resided in their graveyards.