Shortly after I purchased my first airplane in 1968 (a Globe Swift), I shared an executive hangar with a Ryan PT-22 and a Big Yellow Stearman, the latter owned by a retired Pan Am captain. Yes, it was one of those Stearmans, a totally restored prize winner, a perfect example of time standing still. It was as perfect as unlimited money and several thousand hours of TLC could make it. Doug was fanatical about his airplane and also given to a certain amount of whimsy.
I rode with him several times, but they were always rides, not flights, as he'd conveniently removed the front stick, so no one else could actually fly his airplane. As it happened, his Stearman's registration was N22747, and Doug, characteristically irreverent, took every advantage of the N-number.
He flew the airplane regularly, and said he delighted in contacting approach control at Long Beach, called simply SoCal in those days, and announcing, "SoCal, this is Boeing 747 at the east tip with Oscar. We'd like the ILS to Long Beach."
Doug chuckled that the controllers were always amazed when they assigned him a discrete squawk and identified his airplane on radar, flying the approach at 70 knots. The next call from ATC was usually something like, "Say again type aircraft."
These days, I have another friend with an equally pristine Boeing Stearman, Mike Hanson of Westminister, Calif. Hanson doesn't fly many ILSs in his Stearman, real or practice, but he and his vintage Boeing model 75 are a common sight in the skies over Southern California. His airplane is a fully restored Navy N2S3 trainer, a 1943 model, one of the 10,346 built by Boeing as primary flight-training machines during World War II, and used all over the world as a military trainer. Since the airplane never saw combat, there was little to demilitarize after the war, and thousands of Stearmans were sold as surplus.
Hanson is a roofing contractor by trade, and as he admits, he came by his classic airplane in perhaps the best/worst way possible. He inherited it. "I had a good friend in the early 1990s who owned this airplane and a Bonanza," Hanson explains. "He dearly loved his Stearman. When he died a few years later, he willed it to me, and suddenly, I became caretaker of a treasured piece of aviation history."
Since then, Hanson and his wife, Kendle, have established their own freelance barnstorming business (www.biplanefun.com) out of Compton, hopping rides above the spectacular Palos Verdes coastline. The Hansons have logged some 2,000 hours in their classic Boeing in the last 13 years.
Unlike some antique flying machines that seem to sit in their hangars, the Stearman isn't a shop queen. Hanson reports maintenance hasn't been that difficult, partially because of the number of airplanes still on the registry.
Lloyd Stearman created the first Stearman in the early '30s and subsequently sold his company to Boeing. The then-Wichita-based company later won the contract to provide basic trainers to the Navy and Army Air Force, and the Stearman (sometimes branded by students as the "Yellow Peril") was the airplane of choice. The model 75 had spruce wings, tube-steel fuselage and fabric covering, and was considered dramatically overbuilt for its mission, so well constructed that back in the mid '30s, each airplane cost just over $11,000 to produce (in contrast to a Beech Staggerwing B17L that sold for $8,000). Translated to today's dollars, you could probably buy a decent used Lear 23 for equivalent money.
Stearmans were fitted with a bewildering variety of radial engines, everything from Continentals and Jacobs to Lycomings and Wrights, ranging in hp from 220 to 420. Mike Hanson's Stearman Kaydet features the original seven-cylinder Continental, rated for 220 hp.
After the war, the airplanes were pressed into civilian service and modified as necessary with such improvements as wheel pants, a cowling and speed fairings. These were employed as barnstormers, air show/wing walkers, mail planes and a hundred other jobs, some retrofitted with the huge Pratt & Whitney R-985 engine, boosting power to 450 hp. Hundreds of Stearmans were converted to crop dusters by simply mounting an aerial applicant tank up front and spray booms beneath the wings.
Hanson's airplane, like many of the early Stearmans, was equipped with a wood prop that provided limited performance. Hanson flew with the wood blades out front for the first thousand hours. "I call those the 'good-for-nothing' props, in between good climb and good cruise," says Hanson. He later retrofitted his airplane with the ground-adjustable all-metal McCauley prop, and picked up 10 knots cruise. (A Hamilton-Standard also is available.)
That's not to suggest cruise was a Stearman strong point, whatever the prop. With the drag of two open cockpits and accompanying wind shields, guy wires, struts, landing gear and two fat wings hanging in the wind, the Stearman has all the aerodynamic sophistication of a boxing glove. It's surprising that the stock Stearman managed the speed it did, about 90 knots. With 43-gallon tanks topped and a burn of 13 gph, the Kaydet has 2.5 hours endurance plus reserve at max cruise, enough for 230 nm range.
The airplane has a baggage compartment behind the aft pit, approved for up to 60 pounds. Typical useful load was about 750 pounds. Hanson's payload works out to a generous 492 pounds, two big folks and all the luggage you can stuff inside the baggage area.
With two wing walks, you can climb aboard from either side, but tradition suggests you treat the airplane like a thoroughbred—mount from the left. Step up on the wing, throw a leg over the sidewall, step down onto the seat and ease your rear end into the chute/cushion.
According:planeandpilot
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