Miller Time

By August of 1978, Ernst Muller, in his words, "had another airplane on the go" and sold CF-FAM to Charles Miller for $6,000.

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.

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!

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.

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. 

A Biplane is Born

At a small airfield north of Toronto, the low hum of an 85 horsepower Continental engine grows to a buzz.
A small, blue and white biplane rolls down the paved runway, tail low, propeller thrashing the autumn air at high revolutions.
The tail rises, both sets of wings begin to fly under the rush of air.  There's a slight swing of the button nose and the rudder flicks right, right, left, right to compensate.
Galloping down the 2650 foot asphalt runway, wings begging for flight, flying wires flexed, the rigid gear grows fidgety and impatient with the pilot who chooses to hold his brave little ship back just a moment more. 
Boots dance on rudder pedals. 
There is no romance here, no style, no grace...only a point two thousand feet beyond where the runway vanishes at the intersection of emerald fields and sapphire skies.
A light, barely perceptible bit of aft pressure on the stick, the runway falls away and CF-FAM bounds into the air.

The day is October 20th, 1973.  The time 5:45pm.  Ernst Muller has just left the ground in CF-FAM for the very first time.  Maple Airport was his Kittyhawk. 

An aerial shot of the construction of Canada's Wonderland in 1980 - which my dad and godfather worked on.  Maple Airport is pictured at top right.  (Photo Courtesy Canada's Wonderland)

"It kept your feet busy," he recalls, almost 40 years later.  His voice is firm but far away on the other end of the line. 

"It was squirrely on the ground," a pause, a hint of fondness in recalling a distance memory."But in the air, it was just perfect...really light on the controls...you flew it with two fingers."

His first test flight lasted 20 minutes.  Muller landed at Maple just after 6:00pm. 

"It was a challenge to land on asphalt," he remembers.  "It sat very nose high so you couldn't see well over the nose."

That first flight was the culmination of a year of work for Muller - he finished the airplane in the garage of his Rexdale, Ontario home - but FAM's story begins years before.

Thanks to a stranger's generosity, I am now in possession of the aircraft's manufacturer's plate.  On the front, are all the particulars identifying FAM as an Ernst Muller build.

CF-FAM's manufacturer's plate.  (Family Collection).

On the reverse however, hidden for the entirety of the aircraft's service life, a mystery.  The plate had been heavily filed down, obscuring previous engravings.  Stamped onto the shiny surface is the following:

SMITH     DSA-1

REG. CF-FAM

SERIAL - 8730

1971

FRED A. MCGREGOR

The reverse of CF-FAM's manufacturer's plate. (Family Collection)

"Does the name Fred A. McGregor mean anything to you?"  I ask Muller.
"Who?"
"Fred A. McGregor."
"Oh, yes," the 76-year-old replies.  "He's the fellow I bought it from - but he wasn't the first to work on it."
This would explain the earlier date, the difference in serial numbers...the file marks.
"At least 3 others worked on the airplane before he did,"  Muller explains.  "You see, it was a very unique airplane...and no matter where I took it, someone would tell me stories of how they tried to get it flying."
Before Muller, McGregor had come the closest.  He went as far as applying to the Civil Aviation Branch of the Department of Transport for a customised registration.

Fred A. McGregor

FAM

"I liked the look of it," Muller remembers.  "A single seat biplane, it was very unique...but it was a challenge to get it flying."

Muller spent a year finishing McGregor's project.  He remembers satisfaction at finally getting it into the air...but little else. No pictures survive, no documents...nothing but memories.

Sketches of N90P - the Smith Miniplane prototype.

He tells me that he painted it blue and white, that he put a canopy on it after flying around in the rain, that he did some basic aerobatics in it and that it spun sweetly.  He remembers that, due to the angle of the fuel tank, the aircraft was prone to power loss during take-off if the tank was less than one-third full. 

His tone is matter of fact and distant but not unfriendly. 

You see, there are, in basic terms, two sorts of pilots.  The first group regards their machines as living, breathing aerial companions that understand and empathise, reward and punish, give and take life...but always poetically, heroically, rich in grace and with a certain measure of mechanical humanity.  The second group means to fly them - and that's it.

It becomes obvious to me that Muller is of the latter persuasion.  If I needed more proof, the evidence is plainly set out in the aircraft's journey log.

Muller flew FAM for 5 years less 3 months.  He filled 14 pages and logged 509.5 hours.  The furthest east he took it was St. Lazare.  The furthest west: Gore Bay on Manitoulin Island.  Every flight is meticulously logged: date, nature of flight, pilot's name, times up and down, air and flight time, aircraft total time, etc... 
In all that time, he didn't see the need to set anything down in the remarks section.  It is entirely devoid of any insight...except the words "test flite"...on September 17th, 1977.

Our phone conversation of June 28th, 2012 lasted about 12 minutes.  We spoke of other things I will reveal as this story develops.  The entire time, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was on a train to some faraway, unknown place...and that my ticket would only take me so far.

I am, as you can well imagine, overjoyed to speak to him.  I prattle on excitedly about my inspiration for this project, my research, those I've talked to, who owned the airplane, where it had been, where it is now...

He listens patiently...but when I ask him if he'd be interested in my sending him all this information, he politely declines.

"Some people get attached to airplanes," he says in a slight Swiss accent.  "I don't."

"I've had other ones, you go on to other things..."

I've heard similar words before.  There's some finality to this conversation.

He thanks me again and wishes me good luck.  I scarcely have time to thank him before a click and the drone of the dial tone.

I hear so much promise in that "F" note.