The Tin Goose Lives up to Her Name
Text by Budd Davisson, Photos: Mike O'Leary and Budd Davisson, Air Progress, June 1986

PAGE THREE

Talk about an airplane having character!

Editor O'Leary and Bruce Guberman, our always-famished camera plane pilot, came drifting past and O'Leary motioned through the open door to join up. Ed looked over and said (read that: shouted), "It's you're airplane!" My first thought was, "You've got to be kidding!" He wasn't and my first 45 minutes at the controls of a Ford Tri-Motor were spent flying formation on a Seneca. Thanks to Guberman's super smooth formation lead, things worked out because once I got it in position the Ford's inherent stability took care of the rest.
 
What kind of a formation bird is the Ford? Well, remember that Peterbilt we mentioned? If anybody cares, the really grim looking guy in the right seat is me. When I concentrate, I frown (and sweat) a lot. Photos over, I decided to mess around with the Ford a bit, trying to discover what I could of its personality in such a short time. In flying formation I found it easy to coordinate and, when I pushed the rudder with no aileron to check its effectiveness I found out why: Even though you're perched on the beak of a really ancient bird, there is absolutely no doubt when you are slipping or sliding. When I tried rolling into a bank using only aileron, that center Wright J-6 looked really intent on going the opposite direction. Point One: When flying a Ford Tri-Motor, you coordinate. Period. If you don't it lets you know about it pronto.
 
Incidentally, if you want to talk about control response, don't. The airplane has none. You can move the wheel forward and back about six inches and roll the yoke 30 degrees either direction and, if you continue moving forward and back, left and right, the airplane blithely ignores you. It does absolutely nothing. You have to roll in the aileron, wait until the airplane catches up with you and then neutralize. A Pitts it ain't!
 
Then I brought the power back and hauled the nose up. Or at least tried to. In a matter of seconds, I found myself with both arms wrapped around the wheel, hugging it to my chest in an effort to keep the nose from falling. Then, down around 63 mph, the airplane mushed slightly forward and that was it. A little power put me back into aviating again and I tried the same thing in a bank. Same thing happened. I gave the wheel a bear hug and the (airplane gave me a sink rate of about 1000 fpm.
 
Power back in and the airspeed returning to its indicated cruise of 90 mph, I glanced left to clear traffic and at the same time caught some extra faces in my peripheral vision. That's the first time I ever did a stall series or flew formation with a half dozen people looking over my shoulder! I had forgotten they were there. They certainly got their twenty bucks worth! (They were jumpers so only got half of a ride.)
 
I NEVER DID GET THE KNACK OF SYNCHING THE props on the three engines. I understood the concept, but the concept on an old Ford is a lot different than most multi-engine machines I'd flown. For one thing there was one extra lever, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that you didn't get that rhythmic "beat" you get out of most twins, when one prop is out of synch. First of all, the tachs are just tired enough that you set no. 1 at 1800, no. 2 at 1820 and no. 3 at 1850. That should be 1850 all around. I tried moving one throttle a couple hundred rpm either direction. I could sense a change in the vibration, but that was it. There was absolutely no "beat" to work with, so I tried my best to even out the vibes, but I'm afraid my butt wasn't in tune with the Ford, so I never got it exactly right.

Island Airways operated a bunch of Tri-motors as school buses for the Great Lakes islands.

I drove us back onto downwind and saw Ed's hands creep back up onto the wheel. By mutual consent, he would make the landing. Neither one of us trusted me with his airplane, which coincidentally, was the last known working Tri-Motor in the world.
 
Showing 75 to 80 mph on final, we gradually slowed to 70 mph or so as we crossed the threshold. On the first landing, I was in the process of being amused with Ed's rhythmic moving of the wheel fore and aft, when I felt the wheels touch. We were so far in the air, that left to my own devices I would have tried to land us another five feet under the runway. On its main gear, the bird tracked ahead with only gentle suggestions from the rudder about what it was or was not doing right. The only part that looked truly tricky or unusual that was after the tail came down and you had to maneuver it off the runway with the help of the Johnson Bar. It was a little like using a tiller in a boat at such a high speed was because we had a forward CG. With the CG further back, it will go clear down to around 55 mph and keep flying. More or less.
 
Ed Rusch continually refers to his blue collar antique as a "Cub on stilts" and says you ". . . fly it like a Cub . . . three times!" These are cliches he's used to using, but the funny thing about cliches is that they are usually true. In this case, they are absolutely true. The numbers in takeoff and landing are Cub-like and the three tachometers fit the pattern. When those big airwheels kiss the pavement, they remind you of nothing but a Cub.
 
This big Cub has a hard working past that few, if any, single airplanes can match. Nearly sixty years of age and it is still making its own way. All we can hope is that the plane continues until it flies past the century mark. Right now, unfortunately, the barnstorming Ford's future is questionable. The varied guardians of public safety have hit it with such important necessities as liability insurance premiums of $70,000 per ... and rising! This, combined with the inherent problems of keeping three old-fashioned rubber bands and an aging body airworthy, presents formidable obstacles.
 
Damn it, anyway! It would be absolutely criminal to see the barnstorming Ford relegated to pure antique status. We have a number of them in museums, so let's keep this one in the air where it should be but not have it stuck out there like so many antique airplanes are, like some sort of giant model airplane to be gawked at. This is one of the last chances so many of us will ever have to see where air transportation got its start. Our kids today have grown used to Space Shuttles, satellites and 747s. They absolutely have to know where those all came from and nothing will brand it so indelibly on their minds as a hop around the patch in a Ford Tri-Motor. What a travesty it will be if the combined greed of consumers who can't watch out for themselves, lawyers, insurance companies and stone blinds bureaucrats slam a door that presents a truly unique look at our past. Let's hear it for pushing the retirement age for this hard-working antique into the next millennium!

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