WOW! What a month! First, I have to apologize for the lateness of this issue. I spent the last two weeks of June on the east coast helping my parents move from St. John’s to Halifax, followed by helping my sister and her family load all their worldly possessions into a container for their move from Halifax to the Caribbean! Then we spent a week at the lake followed by a week-long trip to Arlington!

Unfortunately, although I did spend a lot of time in airplanes this month, much of it was in the cattle car of a WestJet flight.

Before heading to the east coast, I took the prop off Chrissy to have it overhauled and re-pitched. I haven’t been that pleased with the Ivo prop I’ve been using for the last year or so, as it seems to be a lot rougher than the old McCauley metal prop. It’s likely out of balance, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to balance the prop since you have to disassemble it to remove it. When I performed the annual last month, I decided to put the metal prop back on. I was able to determine that the prop was about 2” too coarse, and since its last overhaul was more than four years ago, I decided to have that done as well.

The local shop promised that if I got it in by Wednesday, they could have it done by the following Friday (about 10 days). This worked out well as I would be away over that time period. Renée got it into the shop on time for me, so I was surprised to hear it wasn’t done when I returned. Although this messed up my plans to take the plane to the lake, I was OK with it. We adjusted our plans to be back in town the following Friday to get the prop. Again, the prop wasn’t done. However, the shop scrambled to have it completed by 6 PM and further resolved the issue by apologizing for the delay and providing me with a huge discount. I’ve always believed that the merit of a business can be gauged by how they handle mistakes and problems; these guys handled it in spades!

In between the week at the lake and the Arlington trip, I got in a flight from Carstairs to Lacombe, with a stop in Red Deer for good measure. Pat Munroe gave Glen Bishell a lift in his PA-20 Pacer, and Jorn joined us in the C-120. Chrissy’s performance with the re-pitched prop was outstanding. Cruise speeds have jumped from 95 mph to 110 mph at the same RPM. Climb and take-off have not been affected. I’m more than happy to pay the 6 lb weight penalty that the McCauley imposes.

At the stop in Red Deer, Jorn mentioned that he had recently purchased a Stinson 108 fuselage and that there were others there for sale. He directed me to a trio of fuselages resting forlornly under the bulk of a DC-3. Two were Stinsons, and the third was an Aeronca 15AC Sedan. The Sedan immediately caught my attention. I’ve always appreciated the Sedan’s attractive, slim lines that hide a cavernous 4-place cabin. Although underpowered with the original C-145, they really come alive with a Lycoming O-360 coupled with a constant speed prop.

This fuselage was relatively complete, missing only the seats, yokes, tail, wings, and firewall forward. OK, so there was more missing than was there, but at $500, I considered it a bargain. The following morning, equipped with my trusty 6’x12’ trailer, I made my way to Red Deer and loaded up my new treasure. Of course, my wife’s reaction was less enthusiastic. Renée is a very understanding wife when it comes to my aviation follies, but she could not fathom my interest in this smelly, rotting pile of pooh (not quite her term, but this is a family show).

The fuselage was still clad in its fabric, wood, and aluminum covering and displayed a rather nasty bruise on the top of the firewall where the upper engine mount attaches. This cluster is composed of eight members that end with the mount point… and all eight members are bent. Fortunately, this shouldn’t pose a great challenge to repair. The rest of the structure is sound and is, as far as I can determine, corrosion-free. I’ll be able to tell more after I remove the fabric.

Most of the missing parts will pose no problem to replace. The missing tail is not much different in construction than the Christavia, so I should be able to fabricate a set from scratch. The landing gear has no machined parts and uses a bungee shock system with the cords tucked up in the belly. This will also be relatively easy to fabricate. At Arlington, I learned that many of the Sedans that have been converted to O-360s use a Piper Cherokee 180 cowling. That shouldn’t be that hard to find. The engine mount can be fabricated from plans used in the O-360 conversion STC.

Of course, the big challenge will be the wings. I have two options here. First, I could find a set of original wings and rebuild/repair them. Second, I could build a set of wings from scratch or from a kit. As it turns out, the Bearhawk wings are a close match to the Aeronca wings, with the exception that the Bearhawk has flaps and the Aeronca does not. The Aeronca wing area is 200 square feet, whereas the Bearhawk is only 180.

The Aeronca wing is about 3’ longer than the Bearhawk and is about 2.5” narrower. Spar spacing is within ½” and can easily be changed with a new front spar wing attach point on the fuselage. This would be an interesting solution…

Fortunately, Renée’s misguided impression of the Aeronca made a 180° turn when we got to Arlington!

The trip to Arlington started on Tuesday afternoon at around 4 PM. We were driving our trusty GMC 1500 with our 19’ camper in tow. We arranged to meet Troy Branch and his family at a Revelstoke campground that evening. We were a bit late getting in but enjoyed a pleasant visit with them. The next day we drove the remaining 10 hours to Arlington. We arrived in the middle of a heat wave with temperatures exceeding 40°C at the Abbotsford border crossing. We waited in line for about an hour at customs. Unfortunately, the truck’s water temperature started to creep up after about 20 minutes, leaving us baking in the truck cab for half an hour! Fortunately, the temperature in Arlington was under 30°C by the time we arrived, around 5 PM.

We did a quick survey of the field that evening where we found a web buddy, Bill Newby and his wife Rosemary lounging by their highly modified Christavia MK IV. Having never met them in person, I was quite surprised when Rosemary’s initial reaction on seeing me was “Hey! We just saw you on YouTube!!! Your airplane is C-GREN!” This was amazing since I hadn’t even said a word to them at that point!!! Sure enough, they had seen the video that Stu Simpson had produced of me and Chrissy last winter. Rosemary was very curious about winter flying as they had never experienced it in Santa Paula, CA. We had a very nice visit until well after dark.

The following morning turned up the highlight of the show for me. Sitting all alone in one of the rows was a pristine Aeronca 15AC Sedan! I pointed out the plane to Renée and asked her what she thought of it. I wasn’t surprised when she exclaimed her admiration for the plane. That’s when I told her that this was a Sedan… the same as the “pile of pooh” in the garage! Fortunately, the owner was sitting under the wing. I grilled him for about an hour on the details of the Sedan. Renée seemed to be very interested in the conversation and jumped in from time to time with comments and questions. When we finally walked away from the plane, Renée turned to me and said, “Let’s put the Buttercup on hold and build the Sedan first!” The rotting hulk in the garage was no longer a “pile of pooh”! I later returned with the camera and took over fifty pictures of the plane…

Shortly after leaving the Sedan, we were surprised to see a familiar RV-7A… C-GMMJ. A quick call to Ralph Inkster and I found out that he was hanging out with the High River EAA chapter crowd down in the campgrounds. Calvin Thorne had joined him for the flight. On our way back to the campgrounds, we ran into Ed D’Antoni. By the time the sun went down, Ed D’Antoni, Ralph Inkster, Calvin Thorne, Troy Branch and his wife Jodi, Glen Clark, Colin Cleland and his father and daughter were sitting around the campsite with Renée and me enjoying a few cold ones! What a great evening.

We finally left Arlington, but not before doing a little shopping both at Arlington and at the super-duper outlet mall across the interstate! We departed at 6 AM and arrived back in Calgary at 9 PM that evening.

I’ve decided to cancel my Oshkosh trip this year in favor of the CUFC Annual Air Adventure Tour! I’m sure there will be some great new stories to tell after that trip.