1941 Waco UPF 7 Words of Recognition
NC 32071
NC32071 created a lifetime memory for me the day I first saw it on July 20, 2018. My friend Barry Branin was assisting me in finding a Waco biplane and had suggested I go look at several in different parts of the country. On this late July day, my close friend and fellow pilot, Les Banta and I climbed in my TBM 850 early in the morning and flew east to the North Carolina coast for nearly four hours to meet Jack and Glynda Hill, the owners of this amazing John and Scott Shue restoration and 2007 Airventure Lindy Award winner.
Jack and Glynda met us at their hangar and showed us the plane. We looked carefully and then climbed back into the TBM for what would be over five flying hours to get home. Near the end of a long day of flying in the flight levels to go see an antique biplane – which spent almost all its life below a thousand feet – the Master Warning light on the TBM’s panel began flashing. We’d lost pressurization at 30,000 feet! Things worked out ok for that memorable flight and a memorable day of Waco admiring.
I didn’t end up buying Jack’s plane as I purchased Dave Allen’s beautiful UMF 3 instead. Eventually, Marla Boone bought it and flew it home to her grass strip near its place of creation in Troy, Ohio. I next saw NC 32071 in June of 2022 at the American Waco Club fly-in at Poplar Grove, Illinois where I admired the careful restoration, hand rubbed dope finish, and simplicity of its lines without an engine cowl or wheel pants.
Later, in October of the same year, I saw Marla and her red beauty again when I was at her next-door neighbor Sean Saddler’s house buying another beautiful red antique airplane: his just restored Fairchild 24. When Marla put her plane up for sale recently in 2024, I realized that if I bought it, it would be the second red airplane I purchased from a private strip just west of Waco’s home field.
When NC 32071 got to Oklahoma City, courtesy of my friend Rob Lock’s frigid ferry flight, I was struck again at the simple beauty of Waco’s standard paint scheme from the 1930’s. This UPF 7 was built for the Civilian Pilot Training Program and originally painted Army blue and yellow. Yet, the red color with white fishhook striping looks at home and compliments the Shue’s perfect rib stitching and the immaculate wing and fuselage construction underneath. My original thought in buying the plane from Marla was to take it back to its 1941 CPTP livery.
Now, I’m not certain of that and will be mulling it over during the winter as I work to clean and polish the engine and airframe to bring it back as closely to the condition it was in when Jack first picked it up in Pennsylvania from the Shue’s. It’s in terrific condition but nearly two decades, and almost 750 hours of flying, have had their effect on the paint and on the numerous nooks and crannies which inevitably attract oil, grease and dirt.
Whether it stays red or goes blue and yellow, the plan is to honor John and Scott’s workmanship and Jack and Marla’s careful custodianship of one of the best Waco’s every built.
In 2022 I got the crazy idea to try to collect one pristine example of each of the six Waco “F” models manufactured from 1930 to 1942. In 2023, I purchased NC 30107, a gorgeous red example restored by famed Rare Aircraft. While not an award winner it easily could have been. I thought I was all set on my UPF 7 part of the collection.
But as I added planes to the series, and began closing in on completing what I believe is the only collection in the world to include an example of every “F” model, I started thinking that at least one of them should be in military livery. After all, just about every Waco F series plane served during World War II and most as trainers in the Civilian Pilot Training Program. Almost all F7’s were, in fact, first owned by the Defense Plant Corporation or some other operator of initial flight training schools for the war effort.
I’ve kept my eye open for a blue and yellow UPF 7 for sale with no luck for a year or so. Seeing one at a private fly in near Sacramento this spring really fired my imagination and when a friend showed me the bones of a former Nicaraguan Air Force example, including its original sheet metal still bearing the South American country’s roundel, I decided I needed to add a military version to the collection even if it meant parting with what is arguably the second prettiest plane in the collection.
Then Marla Boone put her beautiful UPF 7 up for sale at a price that would allow repainting or even recovering. It’s a Shue restoration and their reputation for quality is well deserved. They also build planes just the way Waco did so it’s bones would be perfect. After a brief visit to catch up on NC 32071’s history since I’d last seen it Marla agreed to sell it to me.
My plan is to have the exterior refinished so that it looks exactly the way it did when it left the factory in Troy, Ohio on September 17, 1941. That will mean taking it partially apart and either sanding the existing finish off and repainting or recovering. Either way the plane will be ready for another couple of decades of flying adventures when we’re finished. In the meantime, for the next year or so at least, I’m planning on enjoying it as I fly on and off the grass runway of the old Mustang Training Field first established in 1943 as a CPTP field and now operated as El Reno Regional Airport.
