Muller flew the airplane from its operating base at King City to Brampton on August 6th, 1978. Miller took possession of FAM on the following day - reporting the aircraft to be in very good condition.
He made first flight - a 15 minute local trip - 6 days later and immediately set out to make the little biplane his own.
At 190 pounds, Miller was a bigger man than his predecessor, so he moved the seat down and back slightly to accommodate his larger frame. Miller removed the canopy and turtle deck - replacing them with a single curved Plexiglas windshield and a streamlined headrest.
He then gave it the paint job it would wear for the bulk of its life.
Miller had Muller's blue and white coat stripped off and replaced with a base of bright cherry red. To the the top of each wing, six ice white lines were applied - spreading out from the centre line like the rays of a rising sun. Four smaller ones graced the top of the horizontal stabiliser while a broad white band was painted down each side from the end of the engine cowling to the tip of the tail. The aircraft's wheel pants were similarly adorned.
FAM's slick new paint job gave it the air of a smallish Pitts Special. He typically flew the airplane on weekends and, from the frequency of his logbook entries, one can assume he had a ball doing so. The 14 pages chronicling Miller's 340 hours at the Smith's controls are crowded with entries outlining several flights a day. On some days, Miller would do 2 or 3 quick jaunts around Brampton. On others, he would embark on cross country flights - dropping into any of the dozens upon dozens of small airports that littered the patchwork fields of south-western Ontario in those days. His snappy little biplane turned heads wherever it went.
He apparently had so much fun flying the little machine that he forgot to log, and lost, flights between March and July of '79. These flights accounted for 70 hours...and were eventually found and logged by the pilot along with a sheepish notation.
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| A page from FAM's logbook while Charles Miller owned and flew it. (Family Collection) |
The aircraft's journey log highlights one stark difference between the airplane's first two pilots. Muller's logbook entries were complete but spartan. They outlined the particulars of the flight but nothing more. If Muller was Hemingway, then Miller was Dickens. His entries leap off the rough pages of FAM's journey log with the same enthusiasm and descriptiveness as when they were set down more than 30 years ago.
On September 24th, 1978, Miller participated in a United Way Air Day from Brampton to Guelph and then did a little formation flying with the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) during the return trip. In March of 1979, he replaced the aircraft's spinner, nosebowl, cowling, fairings, rudder cables, landing gear bolts and seatbelt.
In June of that year, CF-FAM's registration was changed to C-FFAM to bring it in line with the Department of Transport's new registration convention. Miller dutifully advised the ministry.
August and September of 1979 were a challenge for plane and pilot. On August 25th, Miller lost power on take-off from Guelph. It happened again in Erin on September 1st prompting the pilot to wonder aloud in the logbook if the cause was the fuel surge Muller had likely warned him about or carburetor ice. He rerouted the fuel line to troubleshoot the problem. In King City the next day, he aborted a take-off run after losing power and it seems he had had enough. The following morning, he made a fuel flow check, installed new fuel lines, cleaned the tank and carburetor. Outside of a partial power loss in-flight near Guelph nearly three weeks later which Miller attributed to carb ice, FAM had no further engine issues.
In late July of this year, my mom uncovered a nondescript beige envelope while packing up my childhood home. On the front, scrawled in pencil in my father's easily recognisable hand was the following note addressed to me:
Jona -
Please keep this envelope for me - this (is) the biplane log book.
Thanks
Dad!
Thanks
Dad!
Inside, as advertised, were full sized copies of FAM's logbook - but they were incomplete. The entries only covered the time Miller owned the airplane. After leafing through, I soon discovered why. Tucked into the spine of the photocopies was a neatly folded piece of thin stationary - a letter addressed to my dad and written by Charlie Miller more than 25 years before.
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| Charlie Miller's letter to my father requesting copies of FAM's logbook. The letter was written June 8th, 1987. I'm not sure my dad ever replied. (Family Collection) |
It's a short note - and obviously a follow-up - asking if my father had sent copies of the aircraft's logbook. Given I found the letter with the requested copies and my dad's impressive ability to not bother with this sort of thing (more a product of inattention than malice, I might add) , I'm almost positive Miller never received the documents. I considered the discovery a windfall, given this project's juncture, and called the number for Miller that I found scrawled on the back of one of the copies. Not surprisingly, the number had been disconnected. Internet searches failed to reveal any likely contact information and since Charles Miller is about as common as John Smith, calling them all would require a robot dialer. The two contradicting addresses on the photocopies and the letter led to nowhere. The last certain record of Miller comes from Transport Canada and a 1941 Fairchild 24 registered as C-FFUH. It was deleted from the civil aircraft register on October 3rd, 1991.
As I've been unable to reach FAM's second owner and pilot, his meticulously maintained logbook entries are my only source to tell the aircraft's story during the time he owned and flew it.
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