There is beauty and grace about biplanes that I can't describe, just as I can't find words to describe the scent of a beautiful woman or the sounds of a rain forest. I have been in love with biplanes since I was a kid. How many Fokker D.7s did I cut out of balsa wood, glue together, and paper and dope in those long-gone days of the 1950s? How many decals did I proudly paste on as the finishing touch? I don't know. It is beyond remembering. But the vision of a real, yellow biwing airplane silhouetted against the blue sky over my boyhood town of Linton, Indiana, is sharp in my memory. I remember watching, transfixed, as it banked away in tilted symmetry and power, and slowly climbed westward into that far-off summer sky. That biplane vision gripped me then, made my heart race, and my heart still races at the memory. Now, later in life than I had intended, I have learned to fly. Today, I'm going to fly a Stearman biplane.
The first stage of my Stearman adventure was a flight to a Stearman. I flew my Beechcraft Debonair to St. Charles, Missouri, from my home in Lafayette, Indiana. Stan Poelstra, my instrument instructor, and my wife, Susie, went along. They were eager to fly the Stearman too. I made the trip as an IFR practice flight, under the hood the whole time. That flight was fun, though challenging and tiring work, never letting the heading or altitude stray, talking to the controllers and repeating their instructions. It was an adventure in itself, in an unfamiliar land. I flew instruments for training, even though the weather was gorgeous, bright, and clear, because I hope to earn my instrument rating soon.
Until I reached St. Charles County Smartt Airport and the hangar of River Bend Flying Service, I didn't appreciate that the Stearman is a big airplane. It is 9 feet 5 inches tall from the ground to the top of the upper wing. You have to crawl up there on the top wing to put in gas, using footholds on the fuselage, being careful not to kick your foot through the fabric skin of the bird. The engine is a big black radial, with seven cylinders. It makes an awesome sound, a deep smooth growl that gives you goose bumps. Sitting in the back cockpit, the pilot's seat, you can't see anything directly in front of you when you are on the ground, so you taxi, making S-turns to make sure you don't ram into anything. In front of the engine is a laminated wood propeller that looks both sturdy and beautiful, yet somehow a bit inadequate for the big airplane it is supposed to pull through the air.
The Stearman we are flying today has a red fuselage, with white wings and the moniker Mimi stenciled on the nose. Mimi's exterior isn't particularly showy, but she is in solid mechanical condition. Mimi's owner, Bob Kraemer, a recently retired electrical engineer and professional pilot and instructor, greets us with a smile as we walk up to his hangar.
Bob is a warm, friendly guy whose enthusiasm for Stearmans is infectious. He has a cheery, encouraging voice. When I first talked to him on the telephone — merely to inquire about the vague future possibility of taking a lesson — our conversation lasted more than an hour. Instruction began almost immediately, as he swept me along like a cork on a mountain stream: "On the ground, if there is a left quartering tailwind, push the stick forward and to the right," he told me. Bob had returned my initial call, so the telephone bill for our long talk was on him. Still, he talked on and on, and I listened eagerly, squeezing in a question now and then. Each question was like throwing a new log on the fire. He told me that one has to fly the Stearman until it is tied down, and that it flies beautifully in the air but will turn and bite you on the ground. By the end of our talk we had somehow gravitated to talking seriously about my buying a Stearman, with Bob volunteering to assist me in finding a suitable machine.
In St. Charles, after about an hour of preflight briefing, during which Bob explained the basic operations of the airplane and instructed us about what to do and cautioned us about what not to do, things begin to tumble downhill.
After strapping me in Mimi's rear seat and pulling the canvas cap with attached headphones and goggles onto my head, Bob coaches me through the start-up procedures.
"Five pumps on the primer," he calls from the front seat over the intercom.
"Five pumps," I call back confidently — after a long pause, that is. The primer knob didn't exactly cooperate. It is a metal disk hardly larger than a quarter, and it is tight. After much struggling, with the fingers of my left hand aching, I finally get it freed from its secure position and manage five pumps.
"Magnetos on Both."
"Magnetos on Both."
"Ignition switch on."
"Ignition switch on!"
"Clear!" he yells.
I press the starter button and hold it down.
The starter motor cranks and cranks, and the prop rolls over lazily, but the big Continental radial does not fire.
We repeat the process a couple more times. She still won't start.
Eventually I climb out and stand back while Bob cranks her himself. Again and again, but no luck.
After half an hour of trying various tricks, he gives up, somewhat embarrassed, saying that this has happened before, but very rarely.
He has an ace in the hole, though, his second Stearman, named Maren, which sits in the back of the hangar. This one hasn't flown for a while, and a friend of his, Gordon, who had appeared while we were trying to get Mimi started, pulls the prop through. Gordon remarks that there may be oil pooled in the lower cylinders.
After some effort, Stearman number two eventually roars to life, but when it fires up it sends out a shower of oil. The oil that had accumulated in the bottom cylinders has blown into the exhaust manifold and out over the lower right wing. Satisfied that the engine is OK, Bob eventually taxis out and takes off to check her out. When he lands and taxis back toward us, he shakes his head and gives a thumbs down. While the engine is fine, he has lost the brakes on the left side. It's too tricky to handle on the ground, especially with a novice Stearman pilot (me) driving it.
Bob walks around, distracted, muttering to himself. He feels bad. His face gets longer and longer. We have come all the way over to St. Louis from Indiana to fly a Stearman, but it looks like we are out of luck. There are no more Stearmans in his hangar. He apologizes. We tell him that we are philosophical. And we are. Disappointed, but philosophical, like I was that time in Garoua, Cameroon, when I waited 13 hours in sweltering heat for the airplane to arrive from London.
By now it is noon. Susie is dispatched to a local bar to fetch us some sandwiches. She takes the airport courtesy car, a blue 1966 Dodge, a real airport queen. Looking askance at this free transportation, she climbs in. She finds that the front seat doesn't adjust. It has been pushed as far back as it goes, and it is stuck fast. She can't reach the brake or accelerator if she sits back. We wrestle with the seat control, grunting. It's locked up tight. I shove her purse behind the small of her back and tell her to go. She does, barely able to see over the steering wheel as she chugs off, the engine backfiring. She's a trooper. Halfway there, the "Check Engine" light flashes red. She ignores it.
Moments after her departure I am back with Mimi. Bob tries to start her again. No luck. Theories fly as to why she won't run. Not enough prime? Gas flows out onto the ground after several turns of the prop with the starter. Flooded? Let's wait 20 minutes. No luck. Bob, a handsome 50-ish fellow with reddish hair turning to gray, his face now alarmingly long, looks grayer and grayer. "I'm really sorry about this," he says. He really is. We try to cheer him up.
Susie comes back toting plastic bags of sandwiches and a carton of drinks, a smile lighting her face. She shows signs of relief after her little adventure with the ancient blue Dodge. She had found the bar, a rather dingy place, but the barmaid had been friendly and helpful.
We sit and munch our hamburgers and try to think what to do. Gordon, a TWA pilot and training officer and erstwhile Stearman pilot, keeps our spirits up. He has a lot of taildragger time and is comfortable with the Stearman. As we sit and eat and ponder our dilemma, he announces that he has to go, but decides to try Mimi one more time. We sit and watch, with little hope, as he swings the prop. He climbs in, goes through the prestart checklist, then starts her cranking. Inspired, I yell, "Start, Baby!" and in that instant the engine roars to life, with a sub-woofer growl and a puff of blue smoke. We all stand up and cheer and smile at one another. We get to fly her after all!
Piloting this big brawny biplane is real old-fashioned flying, with goggles and a canvas cap and the wind roaring past you at 90 mph. She is as nimble as a cat in the air. Move the stick hard right and over she goes in a near-vertical bank. Kick hard rudder to center the ball and pull back on the stick to keep from losing altitude and you can make a 180-degree turn in seconds. Whew! I can't believe it! The G forces press my butt hard into the seat and the pressure forces a broad smile on my face.
Shortly before Bob turns Mimi over to me he demonstrates a sideslip. Bank her to one side or the other and kick in opposite rudder. Keep her nose on the horizon and she flies along half-sideways, but quite stable. It's hard work for the leg holding the rudder. After a couple of tries I do it! Left, then right. I try it again and again, until my legs ache. Great fun!
Bob yells at me through the intercom and asks if I want to try a spin. I naively say, "Sure, why not?" We climb to 3,000 feet above the Mississippi River. He cuts the power and hauls back firmly on the stick, the nose rises steeply, the airspeed drops, and suddenly — I tell you it is instantaneous — we are in a tail-up vertical attitude looking straight downward. I gape down over the top of the little windscreen to the earth directly below. The world is whirling crazily to the right and the wind is screaming past us like a hurricane. We fall vertically at 120 mph and spin like a top — fast! Holy cow! Mimi is literally screaming! After two and one-half dizzy, lightning-fast left turns (did these take three seconds all together?), Bob neutralizes the stick, kicks hard right rudder to stop the spin, then hauls back on the stick to get her out of the dive. Big G forces on my butt; then, almost instantly, we are straight and level and purring along again. Life is good! My jaw aches from smiling! It was wonderful!
I am not scared by the spin, my first — I don't have time to be scared — but I can see that if a spin ever happens by accident, it would be disorienting and frightening. If a pilot in an inadvertent spin takes too long to figure out what is happening, he could easily buy the farm. I make firm plans to stay out of spins. But just as fast I decide to learn how to do them myself one of these days — with a good instructor on board, of course.
Landings are fun, and not awfully hard, but I only do two of them, because after two hours of working the rudders and the stick — both of which require a fair amount of force — I am physically tired. Mentally, too. My first three-point landings in the Stearman seem a bit like controlled crashes. As you flare, the nose goes up and the tail goes down, and you sit there anxiously waiting for the grass runway to grab you in its welcoming arms. When it does, it is with a bit of a bang and a thump — at least during my landings. Bob demonstrates landings that are so smooth that I don't know we are rolling along the ground until we bump over some ruts. The Stearman is a bundle to handle on the ground, partly because it is heavy, because the landing gear are narrowly spaced, and because you can't see forward. On rollout Mimi immediately proves she has a mind of her own. On a whim — it seems to me — she suddenly and inexplicably veers left. It proves vital to catch her early with opposite rudder; otherwise, she heads lickety-split for the cornfield. Too much right rudder and she heads for the weeds to the right. The trick is to catch her with just the right amount of counter rudder, then to arrest the turn with judicious application of opposite rudder. As I gradually get the hang of steering Mimi on rollout — and this includes numerous thrilling veers — I imagine poor Bob up there in the forward cockpit sweating bullets, or maybe fingering his rosary beads.
I find taking off to be more difficult than landing. After getting lined up, you gradually push forward on the throttle with your left hand while inching the stick forward bit by bit with your right. Bob teaches me a trick for keeping the airplane aimed down the runway on the takeoff run. While the tail is still down, the line of yellow cones along either side of the grass strip emerges into view from the fuselage and passes back and disappears under the wing on both sides. This line, together with the edges of the fuselage and wings, forms a triangle on each side.
"Keep the triangles the equal size on both sides and she's going straight down the runway," Bob explains.
"Throttle! Stick! Throttle! Stick! Throttle! Stick," Bob yells through the intercom on takeoff.
Eventually the tail comes up and you can at last see the runway ahead of you. There's a sense of hurtling down the runway, bouncing and bumping and roaring along while the big biplane begins straining to fly. At about 65 mph, a firm pull on the stick and you're flying!
While somewhat cantankerous on the ground, the Stearman does have one really neat characteristic — it can turn on a dime. Just push in some power with the throttle in your left hand, kick in some rudder, then push hard on the toe brake on the same side, and she pirouettes lightly around. To straighten out in a new direction, kick rudder in the direction opposite to stop your turn. There's a lot of legwork flying a Stearman.
I have never known a sensation like flying Mimi. The wind in my face and the growl of that sweet powerful Continental radial engine, and being able to look down toward the meadows and cornfields with no glass between me and the land and the Mississippi waters far below. Two hours after the experience, sitting on the ground again, just watching the others take off in the Stearman and climb slowly into the sky, is almost too much to bear. In those moments there is a longing that is indescribable. As tired as I am — and I am nearly a stretcher case — it is with a touch of envy that I watch first Stan, then Susie, go up with Bob. I have made up my mind to learn to fly a Stearman well, and then, one day to own one. What more could a pilot want?
Larry L. Murdock, AOPA 1320131, owns a 1963 Beechcraft Debonair.
