Anyone flying to the Antique Airplane Association fly in next week at KGLE? I’m thinking of flying the Waco. There is a Davis D1K that may attend. I am having the Waco factory finish my Davis restoration project and eager to see another airworthy D1K.

More great work at Van Sant. This is my buddy Quentins' plane. It's first flight after restoration was about 10 minutes after I took these photos this afternoon. It flies hands off. I'm not surprised.

Are there any single-seat post WWI biplanes? I saw a video of a 1935 one of a kind Speedbird and got intrigued. I know of the Pitts S1 but wonder if there are any others.

Baby Lakes. Smith Miniplane. Only small experimental homebuilts that I'm aware of.

I think you'll need to be more specific. In the years between WWI and WWII there were a couple of fighters and a few sport aerobatic planes. Since WWII there have also been a handful of serious aerobatic biplanes that were 1 holers.

I wanted to rule out fighters and the more sporty aerobatic aircraft. Just a single seat biplane to tool around in.

During my sailplane training my instructor said, "Let's give this a try" and sat me in a Schweizer SGS 1-26. So there I was... all my training in both powered and non-powered was with an instructor in the right seat. Now I'm sitting there all by my lonesome in a strange aircraft that I've never flown before with the instructor squatting outside giving me tips on what to do. Closed the canopy and off I went. No backup. No one to pull my butt out of something stupid I did. It was an amazing experience and I did pretty OK. So when I ran across the Speedbird I started thinking about what single-seat non-ultralight aircraft there were, just for fun.

Rose Parakeet, Starduster I, Starlet, Acrosport, Little Toot, Pitts S1C, S1E, S1S, WolfPitts, Bowers Fly-Baby, Jungmeister (or Jungmann), Smith DSA-1, Hegy Chuparosa, Willie Pete, Skyote, Baby Great Lakes, Jungster I Etc...
All from the glory days of the real airplane buiders and pilots.

TN

Wow! Far more than I expected. Thank you for the extensive list.

Jim

Alex I hope you had a great time at the fly in. I wanted to come but I was flying this back from Troy, OH. It's not a biplane but it's got a round motor on it! 1946 Fairchild 24R with STC Continental W670. I picked it up with about 40 hours SMOH and restoration. So basically new. It flies amazingly well is a very comfortable airplane.

Back to biplanes, Rob and his crew loaded my Travelair B4000 project into a truck today in Michigan and are headed back tomorrow for Florida. Our goal is to have it ready to take to Airventure in 2024.

And my F2 is headed to the painter next week. Hopefully, it will be reassembled and finished in early November. I'm going to leave it there over the winter so we can take it to Sun N Fun next spring.

Took advantage of the warm spell (60 degrees…ha) to fly around in the Golden Hour this afternoon. The old Stearman sure is fun on days like this.

I have not flown one. Yet.

Waco Classic is manufacturing new ones based mostly on the old type certificate. Peter Bowers at WC probably knows as much about the type as anyone. He's a great guy and would suggest talking to him.

It's a beautiful biplane. Light, quick, aerobatic. Not as comfortable as a Waco but not built for the same purpose.

When I bought my UBF2 last spring I thought we'd do a few cosmetic corrections and it would be back home. Seven months later have seen a bit of mission creep!

I decided that the wings would never look as good as the fuselage so we pulled the plane apart. The wings and empennage have now been repainted and the N numbers added as they were missing. While we were painting we repainted all the struts and control sticks (which for some reason were still bare metal) as well as the ailerons which were unpainted. The airplane had a minor ground loop in the past and one aileron, while repaired, wasn't perfect so we replaced that.

As the wings come back on all the wire ends are being replaced with stainless as they had some surface corrosion. The prop had salt air abrasions as well so we sent it off for inspection, replated the hub and the blades have been polished.

During the annual we replaced every hose and rubber bushing. The engine has been detailed and all the bright work including wire loom, braided ignition wires, etc. have been polished.

The existing speed ring was cracked in a couple of places from too tight an installation so I bought a new one. Against the advice of Vaughn Lovley who spun it we decided to polish it. That took Jamie Lyon about four full days all in! Jamie also polished the exhaust, prop, engine backing plate, venturi etc. I decided to have him polish the fuselage paint as well so that it would look as good as the new wings finish. He then ceramic coated everything to keep it looking new.

We did a lot of other things "while we were in there" like making new windscreens out of thicker material to replace the rear which had cracked.

The wings are going back on now and I should be able to test fly next month. Then it will stay in Florida until SNF where it will be displayed and then up to OSH this summer.

It's a bad case...

I've been scouring northern California for an affordable hangar to put my F2 in. While I've met a number of nice people (including a BTer!) along the way who have been helpful I have had little success.

A couple of months ago I was investigating Sonoma Schellville and saw a partially open hangar door with just a bit of red wing showing. I asked the line guy if there was a Waco in there and he didn't know. I bet him $5 there was and asked him who owned it. After introducing myself and spending a pleasant hour visiting and admiring the plane I went on my way.

Last weekend, stopping back by, the retired United Captain who owned it mentioned he was going to sell. Today, after perusing the logbooks back to 1935, the restoration history, etc. we shook hands on a deal for me to buy the plane...and the hangar! I have a new aviation base for biplane flying and I'm very excited about that. And soon to be two red and black Waco's to fly.

This one is a 1935 Waco YKS 6 cabin which seats 5 1930's people or 4 21st century folks in comfort on it's over stuffed, wool upholstery. In 1935 it was the epitome of executive transportation with roll up windows, a comfortable cabin and decent speed with the Jacobs 755-5 engine and Hamilton Standard constant speed propeller. Restored in 2000 it only has 58 hours TTAF&E!

Here are a few photos:

Well the F2 is finally finished! Headed down to fly it in a couple of weeks. Now we start on some minor work on the F3. Both will be at SNF and OSH later in the year.