Two Days in a Biplane

It was 5:45am and humid on an otherwise typical summer morning in Florida’s panhandle when Winston and I arrived at the Tallahassee airport. We were meeting Don Green there to hitch a ride in a borrowed low wing single engine airplane called a Piper Archer. This was the beginning of a grand adventure. I barely slept a wink the night before, but the anticipation and excitement of the events to come had me alert as ever. Our job was to ferry fly a 40-year-old Hatz CB-1 biplane we had never seen before, 1200 miles from Central Florida to upstate New York, delivering the airplane to its new owner. This was actually Winston’s job, but I wasn’t about to miss an adventure of this proportion and essentially invited myself promising to be useful. To be fair, the trip, with this equipment would be much harder to pull off alone. I promoted myself to first officer with tasks that consisted of navigation support, weather checking, hand-propping, fueling, acting as a human autopilot and otherwise a backup to Captain Wright for whatever he needed.

Winston Wright is a CFII, an A&P, he flew for the airlines and is typed in a variety of jets. He is an exceptional pilot in every regard and a good friend. I have logged hundreds of hours flying with him; he taught me how to fly my taildragger, an RV4, and he knows something about everything, but a lot about airplanes and aviation. He is one of those rare people that can fly anything he is a “good stick” as they say, the perfect person for this job.

This was no ordinary ferry flight, no ordinary airplane, with no ordinary story. The Hatz CB-1 is an experimental, home-built stagger winged biplane. Designed by John Hatz in 1968, the CB-1 was a smaller version of a Waco F series biplane. The CB-1 is a tandem, two-seat, dual control biplane with fixed tailwheel landing gear and powered by a variety of nose-mounted small engines, ours a Lycoming O-235. It has a steel tube fuselage and tail with wooden wings. The airplane is 19 feet long, has a wingspan of 25 feet, stands nearly 8 feet tall, weighs about 875 lbs empty, carries 18 gals of fuel and cruises at 90 mph.

The airplane is maroon, accented by cream-colored wings and stripe and covered with fabric in lieu of metal or the fiber of modern aircraft. It has no battery, no electrical system, no transponder, and no way for air traffic control to track us on radar. The airplane contained no built-in radios or GPS’s and no starter, it had to be started by hand. A skill at which I became quite good at doing. The two cockpits had no canopy; only two small windshields for each which were not quite tall enough to fully block the passing air from my head. I did not realize it was possible for hair to hurt, but after a couple of hours mine did. The loss of feeling on my scalp was quickly overtaken by another, much more vicious distraction. To put this as politely as I can, the seat cushions in the airplane were not made for 14-hour cross-country treks. I have never experienced numbness, tingling or cramps in my butt cheeks before and now had all three simultaneously. Other than an achy butt and hair which had no feeling, the airplane was roomier than other tandem biplanes in which I have been.

Airplanes are designated by a unique identifier number called a tail number, a registration number or call sign; the first letter denoting of which country the aircraft is registered. In the US, they start with the letter N because in 1919, when the system was adopted internationally, the US Navy was using the letter N. It stuck although not universally popular initially, others wanted the letter W, a nod to the Wright Brothers.

November Eight Eight Niner Romeo Mike (N889RM) was built in 1982 by a man named Robert Miller, a former Vietnam helicopter mechanic, hence the Romeo Mike tail number. The front cockpit had a control stick, throttle, and rudder pedals fitted for a much shorter person than I but no brakes. The rear cockpit, from which you would solo fly the airplane, had an altimeter, a compass, an airspeed indicator, a vertical speed indicator, a tachometer and heal brakes which were of marginal use. There was no external static port, so the instruments were getting readings from behind the panel. There were two turtle back shaped storage bins, one below the windshield in the front seat and one behind the headrest of the back seat, both just big enough for a medium sized backpack. The airplane was outfitted with many custom features including beautifully stained and lacquered wood on the dash panels and the control stick end knobs; wood harvested from the builder’s family farm. On the left side of the fuselage, just below the leather wrapped opening of the rear cockpit was hand-painted the name, “Bob Miller”, a classy reminder of the airplanes first owner and builder. Despite the airplane lacking modern electronics and other creature comforts, this was a very special machine.

While Bob was building the airplane in a car garage behind the family home, his young cousin Kevin watched, helped, and learned; a special bond formed between them, a relationship that was sadly cut short. Bob was later tragically killed in a motorcycle accident and the airplane was sold but not before Kevin, now grown, was made a promise by the airplane’s new owner. That promise consisted of a right of first refusal upon the future sale of the airplane. Years had passed when on a day in the summer of 2021 Kevin’s phone rang. It was Dick on the other line, the airplane’s current owner and caretaker. Dick kept his promise and Kevin bought the airplane. It turns out, Winston and I were taking the airplane back home, to its birthplace, to its family.

Days before the scheduled departure, we double checked and coordinated our modest packing lists, made up mostly of battery packs, charging wires, navigation devices of one sort or another and a single change of clothes. We monitored the weather especially the few developing systems in the central US, which would surely find their way east along our route of travel by the time we headed north. However, as the departure date got closer, the heavy storms while still present, became less organized and avoidable so it was game time, and a decision was made to go.

Don Green, our transportation from Tallahassee to Eustis, where the Hatz currently lived, is a pilot’s pilot, old school, by the book, competent and confident in every way. Slight and fit, he had a giant of a reputation. Having met Don for the first time that morning, my impression of him was that he had already seen and handled most everything that could or would go wrong in an airplane. During the one hour and forty-minute trip to the Mid- Florida airport, ID X55, which featured a north/ south grass strip just east of Leesburg, I soaked up every word of every story he told us about oceanic crossings, Loran technology that often didn’t work in certain places on the earth and navigating by following the contrails of the overhead jets ahead of him. He talked about his time as a corporate chief pilot for a fleet of DC3’s and 4s and as pilot for State of Florida.

We descended to pattern altitude at X55 just a few minutes past 0900 local time. As we flew our downwind leg, I looked left to notice one open T-hangar on this small and quiet but well-maintained airfield. It was hard to imagine that less than 15 minutes away by air was the hustle and bustle of Orlando International Airport. In the hangar, I saw stately looking man sitting on a lawn chair, next to him was the Hatz biplane. Dick was an aviator, he tinkered with airplanes and cars, and things mechanical. Hanging on the back wall of the hangar was a 100 square foot American flag and an uncovered wooden wing, exposing the intricate design features and structure of the airfoil and craftsmanship of its builder. He raced hydroplane boats earlier in his life, my sense of him was that he had lived a full life and had an appreciation for it. I wish I had more time to visit with him, the things I could learn. But we had a long couple of days ahead of us and a schedule to keep so we exchanged some war stories and pressed on with the tasks at hand.

Dick told us what we needed to know about the airplane, it cruised at 2350 rpms, we could expect about 2 hours of fuel endurance. He said the airplane liked to land in a wheel attitude and that if we idled the airplane at 800 rpms before shutting down, it would easily hand prop while hot with one turn. He said the airplane was superbly built and flew true. He knew this airplane inside and out and he was right on all accounts. Before we departed on our long journey and said goodbyes to the group who had assembled to see the airplane off, Winston flew around patch to get a feel for how she handled and took Don along. We watched as Winston and Don taxied to the grass runway and I asked Dick if he was sad to see the airplane go. I shouldn’t have asked; I could see the answer on his face. He reassured me though that there was a season for everything in life and this was the right time.

Within a few minutes, Winston and I were airborne headed due east for a few miles to avoid the Palatka restricted space which extended south to just north of the airport. We initially planned for a total of eight, approximately two-hour legs; split evenly over the following two days. Not completely certain of the airplane’s fuel burn, we stopped at the Fernandina Beach airport (KFHB) to complete the first of 10 legs, a 1.7-hour flight. We wanted to get a sense of how much fuel the airplane was in fact burning and were glad we did, as it was consuming a little more than anticipated. It could have been the extra weight, maybe the engine was running a little richer than normal. It wasn’t the wind as we had a slight tailwind for most of the trip. Whatever the reason, we decided that 1.8 hours under current conditions was the maximum we felt comfortable doing and adjusted the rest of the flight planning to accommodate this new information.

Leg number two took us 115 nautical miles from Fernandina Beach, Florida to Ridgeland, South Carolina, straight up the Georgia and South Carolina Atlantic coastlines then east of the class Charlie airspace at Savannah. We passed Jekyll Island and St. Simons and from 3000 feet saw lighthouses, shrimp boats, and people enjoying the beautiful blue water and sandy beaches. We checked the NOTAMs at Ridgeland (3J1) to make sure they had fuel and decided that would be a good spot to stop. We landed, taxied to the self-service fuel pump and before we were able to get out of the airplane, were greeted by a handful of locals on the ramp. One of them, Cam, a young guy with a beard and tattoos on his arms says, “I hope you guys don’t need fuel”. I’m now thinking oh hell what have I got myself into. The fuel pump had been inoperable for two weeks with no update to the NOTAMs. NOTAMs are Notices to Airmen, alerts airports publish to make pilots aware of changes to normal operations; things like lights out, taxiways closed and or when the fuel ops are interrupted.

Cam was an aerobatic pilot, he and Winston connected quickly and conspired on a fuel solution while I hunted for power to charge our radio, ADSB weather receiver and to put new AA batteries in the headsets. The headset microphones pick up the sound of passing air on account of the open-air cockpit; essentially each mic on each headset was hot, running continuously and making the noise cancelling features of the Bose A20 headsets work overtime, consuming more battery life than normal. I found an open hangar a few hundred yards away where I met Dennis and Casey. Dennis was a mechanic and when I got there, he was bucking rivets on a horizontal stabilizer for an RV8 whose owner had plopped down on the runway a little too hard. He said I was welcome to use whatever power or tools I needed. Casey Porter was a self-described airport bum, he had apparently gotten good at buying and selling real estate and airplanes, we had a good visit, exchanged Instagram handles and promised to try and meet up again.

Fortunately, the Hatz’s Lycoming engine burns auto gas. In fact, the airplane prefers auto gas to aviation gas. So, we scrounged a few 5-gallon jugs from a nearby hangar and Cam drove Winston to the nearest gas station. After refueling the airplane, splitting the very best Subway wrap I have ever tasted, and taking a breather in the small but welcoming air conditioned FBO building, Winston and I set out again. By the time we got the Hatz started and taxied to the runway, Cam had jumped in his recently restored Cessna 170 taildragger, it was blue and beautiful, and positioned in the grass next to us. The airplanes joined up for a short formation flight as we turned north toward our next stop, Woodward Field, near Camden, South Carolina (KCDN), 110 nautical miles away.

Woodward Field is named for philanthropist Ernest Woodward, who donated 160 acres of land for the airport in 1929. Woodward, with his brother, had sold the Jell-O Company in 1926 to Marjorie Merriweather Post and her husband E.F. Hutton as an early acquisition of what eventually became the General Foods Corporation. Woodward was a Director of General Foods until his death in 1948.

In 1941 the United States Army Air Forces declared a need for the airfield as a training airfield. Activated on March 22, 1941, Woodward Field was used by the Army Air Forces Flying Training Command, Southeast Training Center (later Eastern Flying Training Command) as a basic flying training airfield, with instruction being carried out by the 64th Flying Training Detachment. The Camden-based Southern Aviation School was the civilian contractor performing the basic flight training. Flight training was performed with Fairchild PT-19s as the primary trainer. Also assigned there were several PT-17 Stearmans and a few P-40 Warhawks.

It was a quick turn. After a fuel top-off and a bathroom break, it was approaching 5:00 in the afternoon. Winston and I discussed the possibility of completing two more legs before dark, which would put us more than halfway to our destination. Agreeing on this plan, we set a course for Davidson County Airport in Lexington, North Carolina, airport ID EXX which took us around the Bravo airspace of Charlotte. After landing, we topped off the fuel again quickly at the self-serve pump on the south end of the ramp, we were racing the sun which was now low in the sky. The activities of the long day, the heat, the attention needed navigate and fly this airplane safely were starting to catch up to us with one more leg to go before we could stop for the day.

The final leg of Day 1 took us to KDAN, Danville, Virginia, our shortest leg so far at just 70 nms. Danville was an ideal choice to overnight primarily because it would have been dark had we tried going further but also because it was a non-towered airport close to a city where we would be able to get a good meal and hotel room.

The sun was setting to the west while a thunderstorm in its mature stage loomed a few miles east, the wind favored Runway 02. As we made our last inbound call, “Danville traffic, experimental Hatz Biplane, two-mile final Runway zero two”, I was dreaming about dinner, a hot shower and wondering how low the thermostat in our hotel room would go. Winston had just set the tail wheel softly on that concrete runway, his forward visibility now zero due to the tail low attitude of the airplane while on the ground. Forward vision is diminished even in the front seat in that attitude but somehow in the dim light of dusk, I noticed movement on the runway ahead of us. I quickly refocused my eyes, trying to peer over and around the engine cowl to get a better look. There was a family of deer, 4 of them to be precise, standing on the runway approximately 300 hundred feet in front of us. I said as calmly but as quickly as possible, “Winston, get on the brakes or go around.” Three of the deer, the smart ones, thankfully vanished into the woods adjacent to the runway as we neared. One however, defiantly stood his ground remaining on the runway until we turned. We did stop in time and as we turned the airplane off the runway, that lone remaining deer seemed to be gloating as if he’d won a standoff.

We were safe on the ramp but not home free. We landed minutes after 8pm, the airport FBO closed an hour earlier. We looked for a place to store the airplane overnight but found not even a shade hangar. I unpacked the airplane on the ramp as Winston walked to the FBO hoping there was an after-hours number. There was, and the gentleman who answered the phone wasted no time in returning to the airport to help us. After a fuel top-off, we tucked the airplane in an open spot in the maintenance hangar for the night, were given a restaurant recommendation and a car to use, a black GMC Envoy, all at no charge. People at small airports are typically helpful but this was next level service. He was a second-generation family owner of the FBO flight services company, so I was disappointed to learn that the FBO was being taken over by a new owner at the end of the month.  

We ate dinner at the Tuscany Italian Grill on South Boston Road, it was delicious. We each had a Peroni, some pasta and split an order of onion rings. It was nearing 10:00 pm, our stomach’s full and body’s unwinding, we turned our attention to the next priority, sleep. We found a cheap but clean room at the Quality Inn in town and after plugging in the myriad of devices to re-charge and peeking at the morning’s weather forecast, the lights went out. We flew 7.1 hours.

Morning on Day two came quickly. We woke to overcast skies, got ready, grabbed some hotel breakfast, and headed to the airport in hopes of catching a break in the weather. As we pulled our borrowed SUV back into its parking spot near the FBO building around 7:30 am, we counted ten Piper Archer’s positioned in a row sitting on the ramp, all with Averett University logo stickers displayed on the vertical stab. Danville is home to Averett, a private college with about 2000 students and a thriving flight school. Soon, one after the other, the Archers departed to the South.

Winston and I were sitting in the FBO visiting with a young man, an Averett flight student who was also working at the FBO and Mark, Averett’s mechanic. The audio for the common traffic frequency was being piped into the main room. As we sipped coffee, contemplating our own departure plans, there was chatter among the flight instructors about the decaying weather conditions and cloud base reports. It was not long before the ceiling started to drop, and the Averett airplanes returned. Winston and I, with no instruments to speak of, we were not going anywhere anytime soon.

Mark invited us to make ourselves at home and that we did. We warmed our coffee, pre-flighted and wiped the airplane down, then waited. We waited some more, refreshing weather reports on Foreflight and being reminded of that expression, a watched pot never boils. By 10:00 am, the airports north of us were all opening up and indicating VFR, but it wasn’t until 10:30 or so that the bases lifted enough for us to depart. We pointed the airplane toward KSHD, Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport 104 nms away. Once around the Lynchburg Class Delta airspace, we started paying even more attention to our altitude as the terrain was rising, we were crossing the Blue Ridge Mountains with elevations of more than 4,000 ft along our route. It takes a while for our little biplane to climb that high so there was a lot of conversation about which routes to take to navigate around the highest peaks especially considering the clouds in the area. We found some valleys and road passageways that were lower and made our way through some of the most beautiful land I have ever seen. There were hilltop lakes, mowed pastures which from the sky looked like pieces of art, and red farmhouses. It was green as far as the eye could see. The Shenandoah Valley airport FBO was the most modern of any we visited on this trip. It had huge glass walls, exposed steel ceiling trusses which highlighted its lofted roof line and beautiful wood accent features. Like a NASCAR pit crew, we executed a quick turn stop, fuel and bathroom to perfection and we were off again.

From KSHD, we charted a course to KAOO, the Altoona Blair County Airport which was in Martinsville, Pennsylvania. I was doing more of the airplane driving on these legs giving Winston a needed break. The worst of the entire trip’s weather was encountered about 15 miles south of Altoona. To avoid the heaviest of the rain shafts, we took up a more northly track, skirted some 2000’ ridges then entered a left base for runway three zero. We were on the ground no more than 20 mins, two legs down, three to go.

From the Altoona airport we went to KOYM, St. Mary’s Pennsylvania. St. Mary’s featured a single east/ west runway, we crossed midfield for a left downwind to Rwy 10. The runway has a parabolic shape to it, the ends were higher than the middle and felt like we were landing on a banana. We made a beeline for the self-serve pump where we met a guy with a Top Cub, which I think is called a Super Cub now; he flew a Cirrus like mine when visiting his family in Ft. Myers Florida, so we had a lot to talk about. Beyond the gas pump was a partially opened hangar, the large metal door cracked just enough to see inside and still provide shade to the people and equipment occupying it. In the shadows, I saw the unmistakable shape of a Stearman and by then the owner had come out to greet us. I asked him if I could take pictures and when I got closer, noticed two more Stearman’s at different stages of restoration. Sitting in the right-hand corner of the hangar was a Bell helicopter, it looked like the one from M.A.S.H. We were invited to eat a late lunch by the locals and upon hearing how good the food was, seriously considered it. But we were only 100 nms from finishing the trip and we needed to make one more stop prior to our arrival.

From St. Mary’s we went to KELZ, Wellsville, NY, airport elevation 2,124’. Of all the cool airports to which we had been on this trip and the ones visited during my 800 or so previous hours flying airplanes, this airport had to be the coolest. It sits alone on top of a hill, overlooking the neighboring city below. The grass around the paved runway was perfectly manicured. There were wildflowers growing everywhere else. The taxiway lights stood unusually high, about two feet off the ground which provided clearance for the winter’s snow. The gas pumps were state of the art. Next to them, a metal staircase on caster wheels. The staircase was used, instead of the customary ladder, to reach the fuel cap of the high wing airplane. I climbed up the staircase to see over the massive above ground gas storage tanks and noticed a handful of guys a few hangars away talking and working on airplanes. There was an RV3 sitting on the ramp, this is what heaven looks like. We walked over to say hello and talk shop, traded Vans RV stories and got some pictures. This hangar was particularly interesting, it had doors for each individual hangar and exterior walls which shared a common roof like normal, but there were no interior walls. We were in the last hangar so I could see all the way to the other end, a couple of football fields long maybe, it was filled with every sort of flying machine you could think of; motor powered flying kites, experimental home-built airplanes, varieties of taildraggers and certified GA aircraft. It looked like a flea market for airplanes. After saying goodbye, we took off for what would be our last leg, a 34-minute flight to 5G0, a small airport set in the middle of the picturesque rural farmland southwest of Rochester, New York.

Winston was at the controls, my mind had drifted off about all the things we had seen and done, the generosity and kindness of the aviation community, the incredible honor and responsibility we had to deliver this airplane safely, and how we were almost finished. Kevin was expecting us at 7:00pm. At three minutes past, Winston lined up Hatz biplane N889RM on final approach for runway 10 at the Le Roy Airport, pushed the throttle forward and keyed the radio mic to tell anyone who could hear that we would be doing a low pass, commemorating the completion of our trip.

As we sped down the runway, just a few feet off the ground, I saw a man between two buildings with a camera in his hands. It was Kevin, he was seeing his new airplane for the first time in years, and it made me smile. We came back around and landed and after extending handshakes and hugs, unpacked the airplane for the last time. Total flight time was 13.5 hours in two days. I was ready for the trip to be over, to wear clean clothes, get back to my family and work and yet, I could have stayed in that open air cockpit forever. Farewell 889RM, I won’t ever forget the time I spent with you and the special people you brought into my life.