Laurie Muzzy, owner of the Indian Hill Motel here in Greenville ME drives us over to the airport, with her two young children John and Susan riding along to look at the biplanes. Laurie is just bubbling over with enthusiasm about getting up close to these planes and she confides to us that she has taken the liberty of telling her father about our planes, and he has driven 35 miles through the Maine woods to spend a few minutes looking them over before we take off.
Several other people are at the airport, seemingly with no other purpose except to take pictures, hear the engines and watch the planes lift off. It seems that there is no end of questions as we fuel up and do the preflight checks, and load the baggage. We've been through this routine enough by now to know that Laurie and her father, Dick, are real biplane enthusiasts, and are just coming apart inside with the desire to go for a ride, but they don't want to ask. Art just loves to give rides, and would really like to take them for a ride, especially because Laurie has been so nice to us.
Unfortunately, Art is low on oil, and the airport doesn't have any, so a couple of rides would put him too low to fly on to the next stop. My plane is out of service for rides because my front windshield is removed and the cockpit is loaded with Art and Les's baggage. There is no choice. We have to go, disappointing these nice people.
Finally ready, pictures and handshakes all around, we jump in and fire up the big radial engines. The crowd melts back to the sidelines, and we sit there on the ramp warming up the engines and going through checklists. When everything is ready, we wave final good-byes, and taxi away to the end of the runway. Art does his runup check first and powers down the runway for a very nice takeoff, low pass and turning climb which I'm sure is very impressive to the crowd still watching from near the hangar.
Now it's my turn. The engine is warm, everything is ready except the runup check. Brakes set, throttle forward to 1500 RPM, full rich mixture, key switch from Both to Magneto, check the drop in RPM.... everything is fine. Turn the key switch to Distributor..... THE ENGINE DIES! Whoa there Waco, what's this? Key switch back to Both. Engine keeps running. This is not a good sign. Back to Distributor... engine dies again. I call to Art over the radio that I'm having problems on the ground and he comes back in for a landing.
I'm familiar with this problem. It has happened to me before, so I know where to look. It's certainly the distributor, and I'm certain that it's the condenser, and I have a spare in the baggage compartment, so I figure that we'll be delayed a couple of hours while we pull off the cowl and a couple of fairings, open up the distributor and swap out the condenser. All of this goes according to plan. The condenser is definitely shot because it is oozing a waxy substance out of one end, so we put in the spare, and while we have it opened up, we replace the points as well. But when I go to fire it up again, I get the same result. After another couple of hours of trouble shooting, Charlie the mechanic determines that the rotor is the culprit, having developed an electrical leak. I don't have a spare rotor, so a quick call to the Waco factory and we can have a rotor and condenser and points Fedexed here tomorrow by noon.
Art takes advantage of the break in the action by flying with Les about 40 minutes down the road to another airport in search of oil, and lunch. I stay back and work with the mechanic.
When I woke up this morning, I could have sworn that I was going to see the Atlantic Ocean today. But it didn't happen. When Laurie woke up this morning she probably hoped for a ride in a biplane, but was disappointed because my rotor had other plans. And then, right at the end of the day, Art comes flying over the horizon, comes in for a low pass, turns downwind, short approach and lands while Laurie and the kids look on. As he pulls up to the hangar, Art waves to Laurie to "Let's go flying!". She lights up like a Christmas tree, smiling from ear to ear, and her kids are jumping with joy that Mom is really going to fly in that great airplane! Art gives her a great ride and takes her out over Moosehead Lake, and her home, and her motel, and all around town, giving her a perspective of her hometown she has never seen before. When they return about half an hour later, Art presents Laurie with a special embroidered patch as a momento of the occasion.
Later that evening, Laurie invites us over to her house to see some home videos she has taken of the DC-3 on floats. Proudly displayed on the cupboard is the patch she just received, already framed for all to see!
Tomorrow I'm going to give Laurie my rotor. Maybe she can put it next to her patch, and be reminded of the interconnectedness of all things. Even the simplest of things can have the most extraordinary effects.