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Abbotsford 2004. Tough motorcycle ramp cop gives Bessy a ticket for dripping oil. |
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Mary and Tony Swain wait by Bessy for COPA enquiries on the static display ramp at Abbotsford 2004. Photo courtesy Bruce Prior
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Volunteer Marshals push a Fleet Canuck and a Cessna-120 to the departure ramp after the air show. |
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The Mary changes plugs on the 330 Shakey Jake of the Pickup Waco CCW at Pitt Meadows in 1972. |
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In his new workshop, Engineer Eldon Bauer inspects CCW’s skeleton after ripping off old fabric. |
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A sad Tony Swain realizes the work needed to get their lovely old Waco back in the air. |
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Historic Waco CCW arrives at the EAA, now RAA chapter 85 at Delta. L-R Dan McGowan, Tony Swain, airport owner Darmel Diston, and ? Circa 1971. |
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The proud restoration crew with a reborn Pickup Waco AQC-6 CF-CCW by the Canadian Museum of Flight Hangar at Langley, B.C, 2003. Maintenance Manager and COPA Award winner Gogi Goguillot, stands by the pilot’s window. Photo courtesy Canadian Museum of Flight
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Dawn Robinson sets out at Delta for her Magic Carpet ride with Tony in Bessy. Photo courtesy Rob Prior |
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Dawn Robinson’s broad smile shows her delight after her first ‘small airplane’ ride with the Copaguy in The Mary’s Harvard, Bessy. |
By Tony Swain
Since getting creaky and retiring from active circus-type aviating, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to attend air show type events.
I mean, you’re expected to be there so darned early in the morning, and I’ve never been good at that.
At least when you were actually in the show, you arrived the day before with all your friends, the show guys checked you in a motel, then mini-bussed you around. A nice cushy number.
Show day, if you got some brekky, and made it to the 10 am briefing, everything was a doddle. No sweat when you’re part of a well oiled group. And running big Pratt radials or huge Wrights, you were that!
We were the bee’s knees, and wore pretty spiffy outfits to prove it. At least some of us did.
For a while I affected the 1953 Penhold Flight Cadet look, with a fancy ‘desert suit’ from Chapmans that approximated my old RAF tropical gear. However, in 1953, I was only 120 pounds and after my new Mary’s initial frenzied feeding program, it soon went in the bin.
The Americans drove this image thing with their fancy flight suits covered in badges proclaiming great skills in such things as being solo pilots and all. It was hard to compete.
LOOKING GOOD…
So I sewed my real RAF wings on a nice navy blue Eisenhower jacket with our Western Warbirds Crest rampant. EAA and COPA jackets of the era couldn’t even come close… Hah!
With my fashionable sideburns and long ‘70’s hair I looked real imposing, until returning from Oshkosh ‘78, the Great Jacket got left in some motel way out yonder, and they denied all knowledge.
Big Jerry lounged around impressively in his really cool Canadian Warplane Heritage leather jacket, till somebody nicked it, so he decreed that ‘Dress of the day’ was golf shirt and jeans.
I never, ever could squeeze into jeans, and anyway, I wobble on cowboy boots. …Sigh.
In early 1983, in his book to be, ‘The Popperly Dressed Air Person,’ Russ Popel of Vicair, listed dress protocol for Warbird guys, that listed three appropriate uniforms with eleven required items. A sample of which are, “blue or white T-shirts, oil stains up to 3 inches max diameter may be worn.
“Note: Total oil stain coverage may not exceed 70 per cent of total shirt area. However, in emergency protocol situations, if extremely dirty, the shirt may be worn inside out, (if dirt is on ONE side only)” and so on.
As you can see, complying with such fernikity dress codes can be a bother, so I reverted to my old faded orange Flota Kote, and claimed it was a life jacket... (or PFD in today speak.)
THE GREAT BLUE JACKET…?
Well, next time through Watertown, we would make an appropriate fuss. Nobody takes a shine to MY stuff and gets away with it! Hah!
Anyway, what with all this Show-Biz flyin’ and all, it was 16 years before we got back Oshkosh way. We would really ream that motel out on the way home. Yes Sir! Relished the thought. The cleaning guy might even still be wearing it whilst mucking out!
Our return to Oshkosh was great. Folks remembered us and crowded around, humpted our stuff to the Warbirds campground and all.
Norm Beckham and son of the Canadian Harvard Association helped us unravel our old style canvas tent. It was a bit creased and musty after 16 years on the floor in back of the barn. We’d forgot how to put it up. To be expected!
Anyway, before too long we had it figured and scrambled in to hoist the center pole. It was a bit gross in there, chaff and stuff. But these are the true joys of camping… Right?
There was a smelly purply blue rag scrunched up in the corner, full of the chaffy stuff. Mary hauled it out… Ugh! …Hey! Just a minute!
I grabbed it and shook it out… It was my beloved Great Blue Flight jacket! Squished like a concertina! Fantastic!
A bit of a scrub in the showers, air it off on the tent pole, good as new! Way to go!
The Mary disagreed however. Her nose in the air and hardly breathing, she barely allowed time to snip off the hallowed wings and badges, before hurling it in the garbage. A perfectly good pilot jacket!
Sigh, women just don’t appreciate the guy value of such irreplaceable items. “The Popperly Dress Code” would surely have allowed it, somewhere in the appendices, no?
These days, without the pressures of show business, I wear a simple grey Anorak, or scruffy-ish COPA jacket… I love ‘em.
SO, TO ABBOTSFORD…
Since the Western Warbirds faded here on the coast, we haven’t made a real effort to fly to the show fearing we’d probably end up parked far from our friends in the performers enclosure, and we’re not exactly great walkers these days.
So we’ve given it a pass with Bessy in recent years and drove in. But after Mary’s recent experience with a boiling Volvo, we’re leery of driving in too.
These days, the Western Warbirds are a group of Harvards way across The Rocks near Edmonton. The local Vancouver area Harvards fly about on the Battle of Britain and Remembrance Days to honour those who flew for real back in WW 2.
The active group in the North West now is the EAA Warbirds of America Cascade Squadron #2 around Seattle. As you may have gathered from my September Column, they’re a great bunch.
Anyway, their Commander, Dave Desmon emailed us all that Squadron aircraft were welcome at the Great Abbotsford International Air Show as static display.
We would enhance the WW 2 flying display centered around the B-17. There’d be some brekky and socializing happenings depending, and all.
LET’S GO…!
The Mary said “Lets go!” Easy said at two days notice! I called The CYXX Guy, Randy Kelly, for instructions, and he was delighted.
We Copaguys and Bessy were minor, celebrities he said, just be in before 8 am, when all the bothersome ATC Arrival Flow Control, transponder codes and stuff, would start.
I made a list, and checked it twice, thrice, and more… CFS XX info, Film, broken camera, sunscreen, COPA shirts, hats, First Aid Kit, A5 radio, Cell phone, gas & oil, water, lunch, Windex spray, fluffy towel, canopy cover, two folding chairs, a COPA brochure display, and my ‘you never know’ Pilot Stuff briefcase.
Called NavCan for weather and NOTAMs, nothing distressing, some runway closures and taxi info. After some sweat, I figured we could handle it.
However, to meet the 8 am deadline, we would need to be off Delta by 07:30, and working back from that, get up, brush teeth, eat something, drive 22 miles to Delta, half hour for loading warm-up and take-off… It’s a mind numbing ten minute flight. We would need to be up and about by 5 am. Sheesh!
To save time Sat morning, I pulled Bessy out of the hangar on Friday, gassed up, and put her on a tie down. Amazing how uncomfortable one feels doing this when your plane is normally all snug in a hangar. It’s as if you locked your kid outside for the night!
Everything went fine, and arrived well before 8 am, and were politely marshaled to a static display spot between a bare metal Nancheng and a water truck.
It was a good spot, on the walkabout route between the show line and the parked B-17.
A row of huge modern military freighters and surveillance planes were across the ramp. We got out our chairs, and relaxed.
It was a great day. The Abbotsford volunteers made sure everyone had water. Lots of people dropped by. One bloke visiting from the States had a South African T-6 down in California. So we let him up in the cockpit, and he was surprised and commented on the nice layout and furnishings of the Mark 4.
GETTING A TICKET…
We’d just got settled when a tough motorcycle Show Cop turned up and gave us a bad time about dripping oil on their nice clean ramp.
Part of the ambience says I. …There was some argy-bargy. Turned out what he really wanted, a snap of him, his motorbike, me, The Mary and Bessy.
Of course he didn’t have a camera, so The Mary used ours. Broken flash, dead batteries, and all. And he just got me. Ho well.
But the show must go on. Bessy was faced away from the showline, and we busily chatted up the passing crowd, so we only glimpsed bits of the show over our shoulders.
We made sure to watch Bud Granley chuck his SNJ about. (That’s a US Navy Harvard) He’s a delight to watch, probably the best in the world!
Especially his snap roll on take-off, the wheels still folding to the wells. Don’t do that at home!
He did a beautiful vertical roll, very spectacular. It was a specialty of mine, not easy, but I’d never actually seen it done before from the ground. Great.
I wandered down and spoke with Getchell, there with his gorgeous Hawker Sea Fury, with an equally gorgeous feminine person polishing the already sparkling wings.
A Western Warbird Old Boy, Getch, was surprised to see me and earnestly asked after the guys from the old days. He just lives for the Sea Fury, and I must admit that if I were able to move up, a two place Sea Fury would be first on the list!
‘OUR’ WACO…!
Later, chatting to someone, suddenly, the roar of a round engine, and a red biplane zoomed into a wing over after a pass… It was our plane! The Pickup 1936 Cabin Waco from the Canadian Museum of Flight!
The museum finished a long term restoration of the lovely old plane just last year, and it’s absolutely fabulous.
“Mary!” I shouted, “Look! Look! Look! There’s our Waco!” We were totally over the moon. After so many years, it was the only time we’d seen it fly.
In a share arrangement with Doc Pickup of Alert Bay, Mary and I, with Bob George, an old sailing friend, spent many optimistic hours through three or four years, 1969 thru 1972, trying to get it airworthy.
Those days we didn’t know much about wood and fabric planes, and it was just too much for us.
Bob couldn’t wait, and bought himself a Standard Cabin WACO that was flying. I went and ferried it up from Thun Field just south of Seattle.
Engineer Eldon Bauer replaced Bob, and we dismantled her and towed it to his place, where Mary’s Dad and I roofed up a workshop by Eldon’s cabin in Port Coquitlam.
He stripped off the fabric for a look, and it was pretty grim. Then Eldon was transferred up to the Yukon or someplace, and old CCW was hauled out to Delta, to be stored in the old farmhouse. Then the old farmhouse was to be demolished…
So we gave up, and after some time stored in a shed someplace, the Museum of Flight at Crescent Beach took it in hand, and they work, work, worked on it.
The Museum was forced to move to Langley Airport, the work picked up again… all the time by volunteers, and now here she was, flying in the Abbotsford show…
Exactly as I promised Doc Pickup all those years ago. Sadly, Doc’s no longer here to see it. He truly would have been thrilled.
COME THE DAWN…
All to soon, the day was over. Marshalers began pushing the small general display aircraft down to the active ramp so they could fire up and be on their way.
We loaded up, and waited for the look-abouts to clear before we could start up Bessy. At two and a half tons, no pushing for her! Soon, we were given the OK and we were on our way.
The flight home was pleasant, and after landing, we being pretty well exhausted, tied her down outside for another night. We planned to be at the Pitt Meadows open house the next day.
But we slept in! Didn’t really matter because PK was open all day, no flight events planned.
At Delta we found a Ford Mustang car meet in progress, and being an old car nut, I wandered about the concourse, admiring both vintage and new models.
Strolling back to the Old Coffee Shop, I passed a young couple, who said “Hi” and gave me a big smile. Where had I seen that lovely girl before? I knew her! But who?
Mary was no help, so I wandered back out to the cars, when it struck me. It was Dawn Robinson, a partner in FOR ART’S SAKE, the little Art and Framing shop that I frequent near the library on West Broadway!
Well, what a surprise. They as much as I! …I took and showed them a real vintage car, our airplane tug, a 1962 Corvair, and some other goodies we hide in the hangar. Like a real he-person engine, our spare P/W 1340 sitting on the bench with it’s big 12:1 blower, lording it over everything at 600 horsepower. The standard blower is 10:1, so there! They were suitably impressed.
Of course, what can a guy do, would she like an airplane ride? …Would she… With bells on! So off across the field, fired up Ol Bessy and taxied over and parked right across the driveway from the car meet.
Everything stopped to look, a Harvard is pretty impressive taxiing by up close, with all that rumbling, swishing, clicking, and ticking at shut down.
Dawn was excited to be strapped in and given the big briefing… A roller coaster nut, she hoped to be chucked about a bit. We’d see.
MAGIC CARPET TOUR…
Soon we were off, and climbing away to the east. Way over Fort Langley and climbing up by Loon Lake to look at the Golden Ears. Spectacular. Then away for a whiffodill or two down to Pitt Lake, out through the Widgeon Lake valley at 1500 feet, rumbling along at low cruise, seeing the tiny canoes threading the winding creeks, white bottom sand glistening through the crystal water.
Back over Port Coquitlam, the old Westwood Race Track way over to the right, over the Fraser River by the NewsTech paper recycling plant, back to Delta along Scott Road.
All the pilot stuff back into the circuit, calling downwind and finals, gear lights blink on, flaps throw you forward in the harness, a turning final and plunk, the wheels rumble along the ground and the gear strokes gently up and down like a row boat in a slight chop. A perfect flight!
Dawn has the biggest smile in the world. …After a short while, her Best Fella, Jason, went for the same magic carpet tour. That’s what friends and planes are all about. I think we’ll see them again!
We ended the day excitedly discussing the various options for getting into the flying world… And so it begins?
DELTA STUFF…
The BC Aviation Council awards the William Templeton Trophy of Excellence to the Greater Vancouver Regional District Parks for their Delta Heritage Air Park operation.
The Airpark is actually run by a volunteer committee of tenants and flying club appointees. They work very hard, and thoroughly deserve this honour. The presentation takes, or has taken place at Victoria’s Empress Hotel, Thursday, Sept. 30. Well done everyone!
Remember, when visiting Delta, please review your Canadian Flight Supplement for recent circuit revisions, and, in deference to our friendly neighbours, please avoid unnecessary circuits. Thank you.
I guess that’s it for now… Take care now and Fly Safe!
Tony Swain has been a COPA member for over 20 years and has been an active participant in many aviation groups. He flies many types of aircraft and is concerned about the rights of sport pilots.