Dream Wacos Collection

Like many of you I’ve been to Airventure plenty of times but I’ve never displayed a “show plane” before so this was an interesting year. I thought I’d share a bit about that experience.

The idea of taking a plane to Airventure began to take shape in the Spring of 2022 when I took the newly acquired Waco UBF2 to Rob Lock’s shop down in Winterhaven, FL for some cosmetic improvements. As we got under the skin, literally, we realized how well the cadre of people who built it had done their work. We decided to take it to Sun N Fun and possibly Oshkosh the following year.

Lots of work ensues in fits and starts and one day I sent Rob photos of my UMF 3. It’s a special plane restored by Dave Allen, a retired dentist out in California just exactly the way it had been in 1934. This airplane is the only one of its kind still flying (though there is another on static display at the Waco Museum in Troy, OH) and Rob encouraged me to bring it to OSH with the F2.

I asked, “Why would I do that?” to which he replied, “Because you can”. I decided that if we could get Dave Allen, an unsung hero of airplane restoration, some attention for his work it would be worth doing. So, the F3 headed to Florida last September for a thorough annual, paint correction and other cosmetic tune-ups and maybe a conformity inspection to get its standard category registration back.

There was a lot of work done by Rob and others over many months to get the planes ready. Rob’s wife Jill put together comprehensive “build books” that tell each airplane’s unique story and photographically show the restoration process. I had lots of calls with people all over the country to fill in gaps in my knowledge of the airplane’s provenances.

SNF was a short and fairly stress-free trial run but showed how important the preparation of the planes is. The F2 won one of the top prizes which was exciting but nothing for Dave’s F3 so we had more work to do.

And the work continued with things as mundane as the right kind of screws and having prop spinners built. Some projects like researching correct instrument face design and color in 1933 and 1934 took more time.

Then it was time to move the F3 north for conformity inspection and ultimately to Dekalb, IL for staging. Finally, the F2 was flown to Poplar Grove in Illinois for final cleanup. I flew the F3 over to C77 too where Steve and Tina found us hangars to work and store the planes in for a couple of days, fitted us into the avionics shop for last-minute checks and generally played great hosts. After a first hard day of work, Clay Adams flew with me for a few hours in the F2 to finish my insurance checkout ending in the “golden hour” on C77’s fairway-like runways.

We plugged away polishing, cleaning, adjusting, and a myriad of other things on Friday finishing in time to fly a three-ship formation with a Stearman Rob built and won first place at Galesburg last year to Oshkosh. Friday afternoons are supposed to be subdued arrivals but EAA’s Jim Buscha called Rob to say, “Where are you – it’s really busy” which presaged the stress we heard from first day controllers and a busy arrival. Taxied in, tied down, and covered up we went off to dinner.

Day-to-day displaying means up at dawn every day to wipe down the planes to get rain and dew off. Covers come off when no two are threatened. Taking a break and sitting down inevitably means you see something you missed and you’re back up rubbing, squirting, polishing.

Hundreds, probably thousands of people come by and you meet old friends and make lots of new introductions. Answering hundreds of questions is fun and the fact that no one touches the planes is gratifying.

Finally, the judges start coming by and looking carefully at the plane and its records. They ask a lot of questions which is a distracting relief. The EAA photography team and journalists come by to prep us for the air-to-air shoot. In between the polishing resumes.

When I left this morning I realized I’d only been out of the Vintage parking area to eat except for my one foray into an exhibition building to buy something we needed that I didn’t bring. As I walked to the exit this morning, because both planes were headed in different directions for a bit of maintenance, I realized there were a lot of planes that came to Airventure not made of wood and fabric. In a judge show my entire attention for six days was a few hundred square feet in an alternately baking and drenched field filled with the gorgeous memories of a halcyon aviation past.

It was the most expensive and exhausting Airventure of my time as a pilot. Certainly the most enjoyable.