I learned a great many lessons from these interactions no matter how brief or seemingly inconsequential.
In short order, it became clear that this story was not just about an airplane, a father, a son and a shared love of flight. It is about so much more - life, death, loss, the richness of life, our tenuous, fragile grasp of existence and our collective hopelessness when we are suddenly robbed of the tangible.
When this happens, to an individual, we wallow - stumbling around in the fog like a lost airplane and an uncertain crew, wincing in anticipation of the unimaginable. For the uninitiated, think about how it feels to grope around in the blackest of dark nights, feeling for the light switch and knowing that the precipice of a stairwell lurks in the flat shadows.
When I set out, this is how I felt. I was very much alone. With each step, I gained companions - first singly and then in pairs. A glow appeared on the horizon then a few orphaned shards of dawn and then, finally, the sun. By the time I reached the wilds of this story, slogging uphill and beating my way through the vines and overgrowth of time and memory, I had the wind at my back. The support of friends, family then perfect strangers buoyed me and spurred me onwards.
Believe me when I say, this is our story.
One of the emails came from Charlie Miller - FAM's second owner-pilot. His note arrived in the midst of one of the most vicious flu/food poisoning hybrid maladies I had ever experienced. Feverish and sweating, drunk with delirium and Tylenol, my swimming eyes struggled to focus on the tiny, flickering screen of my Blackberry. I read the email three times before I allowed myself to believe that it had come from the man who sold the biplane to my father.
Heart thumping, head spinning, I launched myself out of bed and lurched out the bedroom door and down the hallway. I made it as far as the office which, mercifully, is home to a lumpy, yet surprisingly comfortable green corduroy couch. I flopped onto my back, breathing hard and feeling the cold sweat trickle from my dwindling hairline, down my temples and over 3 days of stubble.
"Baby!" I yelled - or tried to. It came out as a croak. I gathered my voice and tried again.
"Yeah!" Melody comes bounding up the stairs. This frightens me since, even as an accomplished dancer, she has atrocious balance, our stairs are often polished and she had the unfortunate habit of tumbling out of control - either up or down the stairs.
There's a look of alarm on her face. I have tears in my eyes. The sweat is gathering in rivulets at the corners of my upturned lips.
"Charlie Miller wrote me!" I whisper - as if saying the words out loud would rob me of this gift.
In short order, we are writing back and forth, swapping flying stories and memories. Charlie, obviously, has many more than I do - and I'm happy to listen. There seems to be an latent excitement in our notes that isn't immediately evident in the black and white type. I'm overjoyed to hear from him, buzzing in anticipation of photographs, recollections and impressions of the Miniplane. Charlie eases into it like he would an comfortable, old sweater - happy to relive the 3 years he owned and flew FAM.
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| Charlie Miller racing a motorcycle that he built himself. (Photo Courtesy: Charles Miller) |
Charlie grew up racing motorcycles and boats. An uncle's offer of a flight in a Piper Apache opened up the world of flight. Charlie was hooked. He started working on a private pilot license, sought out a Bellanca Citabria and discovered the magic of aerobatic flight. After his instructor lent him a copy of Richard Bach's "Biplane", Charlie made up his mind: he must have one.
In the summer of 1978, Charlie, in his own words, was "going through one of the most traumatic times of my life. I was nearing the age of 30, found three grey hairs, had a private pilot licence, and no airplane." After forlornly chasing the unpredictable summer weather and here-now-gone-a-minute-later aircraft bookings, Charlie decided, against advice, to buy his own machine.
Charlie's list was short and sweet:
1.) It must have two seats (or I'll end up with an ex-girlfriend)
2.) Good manoeuvrability (or my local EAA Red Baron will have me for breakfast)
3.) Low fuel consumption - self explanatory and,
4.) Cheap - for the same reason as low fuel consumption.
So, Charlie looked up newspaper ads and sought out leads. When he found a promising target, he packed his list, a lunch, road maps and VFR charts, fired up his Volkswagon Beetle and chased down the prospect.
Day by day, trip by trip, Charlie watched the list of candidate airplanes shrink. The Pitts S-2 gulped fuel. The Chipmunk and Cap 10 were too pricey. One by one, each option was shot down until Charlie was faced with a blank page and an empty heart.
"You know what you really need," Charlie's girlfriend said, "is two airplanes."
Brilliant, thought Charlie, but I will need more money.
And so, a la Edward Norton in "Fight Club", everything in Charlie's world appeared with a price tag hovering above it. His 35 mm camera meant $500 towards an airplane. A hockey stick would yield ten bucks, a tape recorder perhaps twenty. Snow tires? Gone too - to the highest bidder.
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| Charlie with his 1973 Porsche 914 2.0L. He rebuilt it and painted it - even designed an exhaust and twin turbos "just for fun." The selling of this car would make the purchase of the Smith and Champ possible. (Photo Courtesy: Charles Miller) |
"When my little white sportscar drove off with its new owner," Charlie writes, "I sat down and admired the contents of a savings book that said I was the proud owner of $9,385.78 of flying money."
Charlie knew Ernst Muller from the local EAA meetings. Muller, of course, had been flying FAM for about 5 years and currently had the impeccable little airplane for sale.
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| CF-FAM in her original, EAA-inspired, paint job. Ernie Muller is at the controls. This shot was taken in the mid to late 70s at King City Airport. (Photo Courtesy: Charles Miller) |
Miller fell in love. More than 3 decades later he remembers FAM "as the prettiest little blue and white Smith Miniplane you ever saw." He'd made up his mind. He'd found the biplane he'd dreamed of since the day he picked up Bach's book.
On August 6th, 1978, Miller made a quick trip to King City to make sure his 6 foot frame fit inside the diminutive bipe. When Miller slipped into FAM's single seat for the first time, he knew - and Muller had a deal. After a quick pep talk from her former master, Charlie fired up the 85 horsepower Continental, opened the throttle and watched helplessly as the little biplane executed a beautiful right hand 360 degree turn.
It would be his first education in FAM's notoriously cantankerous ground landing characteristics. As an old Pelican once said of a much larger taildragger, "there are two kinds of airplanes - those you fly and those that fly you . . . you must have a distinct understanding at the very start as to who is the boss."
After a few additional abortive attempts and an upturned eyebrow from FAM's soon to be former owner, Charlie surrendered the pilot's seat to Muller. Muller flew FAM to Brampton. Miller followed in Ernie's car - peering up through the windshield in a vain attempt to keep an eye on his prized airplane.
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| Charlie poses with FAM at his tie down at Brampton, 1978. (Photo Courtesy: Charles Miller) |
Charlie spent two weeks getting to know FAM...without leaving the ground. He ran her up and down Brampton's runways; first, slowly, with the tail down then a little faster, endeavouring to raise the tailwheel and bring life to the stubby twin wings. Each practice run was a conversation between plane and pilot; an incremental education as to what the aviator must do and when. In a single seat aircraft, it is painfully evident that there is no instructor, no seasoned veteran to guide one's development. The airplane, therefore, becomes the teacher...but the pilot must remain her master.
It is a delicate proposition - one that is balanced precariously, in this case, on a rigid Taylorcraft landing gear.
After two weeks of courtship, Charlie and FAM left the ground for the first time together.
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| Charlie, decked in leather flying cap and goggles, gives a thumbs up before departing on a weekly EAA dogfight. One of his opponents, Smith Miniplane C-FYSG (owned by EAA local president George Jones) is in the background. (Photo Courtesy: Charles Miller) |
Miller describes what follows as "very exciting lessons taught between two short wings and a total lack of forward visibility." FAM was everything he'd dreamed of and more: quick, manoeuvrable and exciting. After each pulse racing flight, however, Miller would return to find his girlfriend waiting. He still needed a two seat airplane.
Not long after, and once again thanks to Ernie Muller, Charlie found a red and white Aeronca Champ for sale and FAM had her first stablemate.
The flights of fancy in the Smith, however, could not delay Winter's approach. The leaves turned from green to rustic red, burnt orange and golden yellow. The humidity bled from the southern Ontario skies. The air grew cool and fresh then cold and sharp. The color drained from the leaves, they turned, wilted and fell in heaps onto the brittle grass.
There was change in the air for FAM as well. You see, in Charlie's mind, the ideal picture of a biplane was a Pitts Special. So, he took FAM apart - storing the fuselage in the garage of his Bramalea townhome and the wings in the living room. Charlie insulated the garage door against the ferocity of winter but he still found it too cold whenever he opened the door to work on the airplane. One day, an accidental but conveniently placed hammer strike opened a hole in the garage wall...and Charlie could see into his hallway closet on the other side. This happy coincidence gave Charlie an idea and in short order, he installed a door on the inside of the closet so that he could gain direct access to the garage and his airplane.
With the temperature issue solved, he got to work. He removed FAM's engine cowls and the sheet metal surrounding the cockpit and built new ones. He created new coverings for the landing gear legs, found a new spinner and reshaped the nose bowl. He made the Naugahyde cockpit trim with a rubber hose. Charlie put in a new instrument panel, complete with a G-meter. Then, Muller's EAA-inspired coat of blue and white with yellow and black trim came off. Charlie repainted FAM in the iconic colours and scheme of the Pitts Special biplanes.
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| C-FFAM, newly rebuilt and repainted, in the Brampton EAA hangar in the spring of 1979. |
In the spring, he moved the airplane, in pieces, back to the Brampton airport and put her back together.
Now, Charlie Miller had his dream biplane and an entire sprawling province, littered with airfields, to explore.
The horizons were wide open and plane and pilot were raring to go.
Footnotes:
This entry references the following articles and publications:
1. "On being decisive" by Charlie Miller, Canadian Homebuilt Aircraft Vol. 3, No. 2, 1979
2. "Blackhole's Buckers" by Garth Wallace, Canadian Aviation, May 1989
It feels so nice to find somebody with some original thoughts on this subject. Really thank full to you for starting this.
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