Adventures in Airplane Trading: Part 1

2024 was a crazy year.

My wife, Mary, and I have a theory of “crazy years.” Every few years, we experience a year of multiple upsets … some bad, some good, all stressful, though usually the aftermath is positive. Examples could be getting married, buying a house, having kids, or changing jobs. A lot happened that year, but on the aviation front, this crazy year first manifested itself in health issues that would require a special issuance medical, unless I limited my flying to Light Sport Aircraft (LSA), which require no medical. My doctors agreed that I would be safe to fly, and I was confident that I could obtain the SI but didn’t want to wait while going through the hassle and expense of that process … not to mention the risk of forever losing the LSA option if the SI was denied for some reason.

Besides, I had been flying happily under the sport pilot rules until about six years ago, when I bought my Hatz Biplane, which only missed being SP eligible by a couple of hundred pounds under the then-current rules. Today, after the passage of the MOSAIC rulemaking, the Hatz can be flown by a sport pilot, but at the time it was still uncertain when or even if the rule change would pass. I didn’t want to wait a year or two until it passed … if in fact it did. I spent some time looking for LSA biplanes on Barnstormers and other sites. Many of the small sport biplanes have too high a stall speed for pre-MOSAIC LSA (some were marginal depending on who you ask), and most of the ones that didn’t are scarcer than hens’ teeth.

A Stolp V-Star (think baby Starduster) was high on my list, having owned a single-seat Starduster some years prior, as were the Skyote, the Sherwood Ranger (an English kitplane that is unusual in that it has aluminum structure and folding wings), and the Murphy Renegade. Unfortunately, all of these are somewhat rare. I definitely wanted something capable of at least “gentleman’s aerobatics,” which ruled out some otherwise nice aircraft like the Fisher biplanes. I had owned a Fisher FP-404 biplane before the Starduster, and while I had fun with it, I wanted more performance. I did find a V-Star on Barnstormers, but it was far away, hadn’t flown in several years (estate sale), and there were some other things about that particular aircraft that I didn’t like.

Then I came across an interesting option … a Rose Parrakeet near Dallas, Texas, “for sale or trade,” with an asking price just about what my Hatz was worth. It too was far away, but it checked all the boxes. I had seen occasional references to Parrakeets previously and thought they were kind of neat, but never paid much attention because of their rarity.

Jack Rose designed the original Parrakeet in 1929, and his Rose Aeroplane & Motor Company produced eight type-certificated Parrakeets starting in 1935. Production briefly resumed in the 1970s when another five aircraft were completed under the Rhinehart-Rose name, ending when Doug Rhinehart lost his life in a crash (of a Luscombe, not a Parrakeet). However, the drawings were released (some would say “leaked”) to homebuilders during an abortive attempt to resume production during the 1950s, and a number have been built over the years, possibly up to a couple dozen. The first production models were powered by the Continental A-40 engine, but later examples were equipped (and most of the early ones re-engined) with 65-, 75-, or 85-hp engines, with the last production models sporting a 100-hp O-200. The one I found originally had an A-75, but now had a C-85.

I called Bobby, the seller, to get some more information, and asked what kind of trades he might be interested in. “Well, I’m really looking for a Hatz,” he replied. Well, that’s convenient! Bobby told me that he had once owned Hatz Number 2, which was the second Hatz built (by Dudley Kelly, who was a friend of John Hatz who drew the original blueprints from John’s prototype when people started asking for plans). Bobby had sold that Hatz years ago and said he still wished he’d kept it. Now that his grandchildren were getting old enough to ride in a biplane, he wanted a two-seater again.

It’ll be a few years before my own granddaughter is old enough to fly with me, and although I enjoyed taking people for rides in the Hatz, I didn’t do it that often and I had flown most everybody I really wanted to. The very last flight I made in the Hatz was a ride (finally!) for my younger daughter, and while Mary has reluctantly flown with me a few times, she really doesn’t like flying. Like most people with “fun” airplanes, most of my flying was solo, so a single-seat airplane would be OK at this point. Besides, I’d owned the Hatz for five years, which is about how long I tend to keep airplanes anyway.

I liked what Bobby had to say about the Parrakeet. This one is a homebuilt, completed in 1993. The builder made a few changes from the original design, including the use of flying and landing wires instead of the original (unusual for a 1930s design) lift struts, a slightly stretched cockpit, and four ailerons instead of two. The plane was in good shape if not perfect, he said, and the annual condition inspection was in progress when I talked to him. I also talked to two former owners of the plane as well as the original builder, Ed Jankow. Ed told me he used wires instead of struts simply “because I wanted to.” He also substituted simple aluminum plates typical of newer airplanes for the complicated bent-up steel weldments used for the wing fittings in the original design and increased the spar thickness slightly. Four ailerons would increase the roll rate, of course, and it had an M-6 airfoil (also used on the Starduster and Pitts S-1C) instead of the NACA 2412 airfoil used on the original design. The latter two changes should give it even better aerobatic performance than the original, which was known for aerobatics in its day, and was a popular airshow performer. Perhaps because of the changes, Ed registered the plane as a “Gypsy Rose,” rather than actually calling it a “Parrakeet,” but its external appearance is pure Parrakeet, except for the wires and ailerons.

Everybody I talked to spoke highly of the airplane’s flying qualities. In fact, Bobby liked it so much that he had purchased and owned the airplane three separate times over the years. The last owner sold it back to Bobby only because he was near to completing his own brand-new Parrakeet build. I joked with Bobby that if we made the trade, I’d maybe call him again in five years or so.

Bobby was willing to take my plane sight unseen, based on photos, videos, and talking to me, as he had already owned a Hatz so he was familiar with the design. I felt good about the Parrakeet, but I had never seen one in person, so I booked a flight to Texas to look at it. It wasn’t a perfect show plane, but neither was my Hatz. Bobby’s airstrip was too wet from recent rains so I couldn’t fly it or even see it fly, but I was able to look the plane over, sit in the cockpit, and hear the engine run. The cockpit is tight, but I’m not a big guy. After looking over the airplane and logs and peering inside all the inspection covers, I was satisfied, we shook hands, and we signed the paperwork.

Now we had to figure out how to move two airplanes between Connecticut and Texas. Bobby said he had made enough long cross-countries in biplanes and didn’t care to do it again, so he planned to hire a ferry pilot, if he could find one with suitable experience. I wanted to fly the Parrakeet home myself and spent some time flight planning, but in the end, I decided that considering my recent health issues and limited time availability I wasn’t comfortable with the stress and uncertainty of a long VFR cross-country in an unfamiliar airplane. And I too had “been there, done that,” having ferried a somewhat beat-up Starduster from Tennessee to Connecticut some years earlier. Around the same time, I discovered that an obscure electric bike Mary had been wanting was only available in Austin, Texas, which crystallized the plans … we would fly to Austin together, look at the bike, then drive to Dallas, swap the rental car for a U-Haul truck, and drive the 1,800 miles to get home. With two of us, the ride would be a lot less tedious, almost a mini vacation.

Bobby found and hired a ferry pilot—a young pilot with lots of hours, no biplane time but lots of tailwheel time, mostly towing banners and gliders. The Thursday before we were to leave for Texas, the ferry pilot arrived to pick up the Hatz. I spent some time with him going over the plane and its systems and flying characteristics, having already emailed him detailed information about power settings, speeds, and fuel consumption for his flight planning. I kind of thought he was only giving me half of his attention, but I figured he was a professional with three times the flying hours I had, maybe with a bit of a hotshot kid attitude of not wanting to take advice from an old guy. Oh, well.

I didn’t do a checkout flight with him. Legally he’d have to be PIC since I no longer had a valid medical. That would be no big deal, but as much as I had loved flying the plane, I really didn’t want to fly it again that day as a passenger. The very last flight I had made in it was with my daughter, and I wanted to leave it with that pleasant memory. He was OK with making the first flight solo, and after watching him fly a few circuits on that fairly breezy day and handle a go-around due to geese on the runway, I figured he’d be fine. After topping off the fuel tank, I watched my old plane disappear to the west. He sent me a text later that night saying he’d reached Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with no problems.

On Monday afternoon, I got the kind of phone call no seller wants to hear: “Well, he crashed and burned.” Bobby was only half joking … he didn’t crash or burn, and he almost made it, but the engine did quit, and he put it down in a muddy farm field about 100 miles north of where Bobby lived. Then, with a severe thunderstorm approaching, he left the plane where it was without even trying to secure it and left for a motel! Details were vague, but eventually we learned that the engine quit and restarted a couple times before dying completely, which sounded like fuel starvation. Bobby was rounding up friends and trailers to retrieve the plane if it couldn’t be flown out. When he got there late that night, the engine started immediately … and immediately quit. Further investigation revealed that the fuel tank was bone dry. Miraculously the plane was intact; we theorized that the mud was sticky enough to keep the airplane anchored in the wind.

Yup, the ferry pilot simply ran out of fuel! It looked like a case of “gethomeitis” and wanting to beat the weather, passing up a fuel stop. When he called me a couple of days later, still trying to understand what happened, I asked what power setting he had been using. He told me he was cruising at 2400 rpm. WHAT?! That’s 95% power where it burns nearly 10 gph instead of the expected 6.5 to 7 gph at the normal 2250 (65%) cruise power setting I had told him to use. With only an 18-gallon tank, it’s no wonder he ran out of gas.

Needless to say, Bobby wasn’t happy.

The field was much too wet to attempt to fly it out, so Bobby and his friends spent a long day in the mud disassembling the plane and loading it onto two trailers. Mary and I arrived at Bobby’s hangar on Friday morning after driving from Austin (yes, she bought the bike, but we had it shipped to our home). There sat the Hatz, sans wings and covered with mud, next to the Parrakeet. I wondered if he was having buyer’s remorse, but he already had a list of things to do “while it was apart.”

We spent the day disassembling the ‘keet in the 100° F Texas heat and then went out for an excellent steak dinner (this was Texas, after all). On Saturday morning we swapped the rental car for a 20-foot U-Haul truck and loaded the plane into it before hitting the road for home in the afternoon. After a long (five nights, 12 states) but uneventful drive we arrived at my hangar on Thursday afternoon, where we quickly unloaded the truck with the help of our daughter and some friends and went home to get some much-needed sleep.

It might seem that reassembling a plane is just the reverse of disassembling it, which is true to an extent, but it’s never that simple. There were a few things I wanted to do first, without diving too deep into the rabbit hole of “while it’s apart, I might as well …” Back in Texas, Bobby was going through the same thing with the Hatz. Some things that would be easy to do with the wings off would be difficult or impossible once reassembled, and thus might never get done.

The airplane was airworthy as it was, but there were some cosmetic issues. The end clevises on the flying and landing wires had varying amounts of surface rust, and the N-struts (interplane struts) had some rust, as did the small fittings between the clevises and the lugs on the wings. Nothing serious, everything was solid, but it looked messy and should be addressed before it got worse.

I ordered all new clevises, and new nuts and bolts to attach the wings. The N-struts were sandblasted, primed, and repainted. Lacquer thinner did a surprisingly good job of stripping the paint from the small fittings, and a brass wire brush took care of the minor rust and remaining paint before repainting them.

Some plumbing work was also in order. One brake line had a small leak from the fitting above the caliper where the aluminum line ended. It wasn’t clear exactly where it was coming from, but as the rubber lines connecting the aluminum lines to the master cylinders were old and rock hard (and probably 30 years old), I scrapped the aluminum lines as well and made up new braided stainless/Teflon hoses for the entire run. The fuel hoses were similarly old, so I replaced them as well. As the plane is experimental, I was able to use hose from a racing supplier instead of official “aircraft hose,” at one-third the price. Note that for fuel lines, it’s important to use hoses rated for fuel systems; these have a conductive Teflon liner to dissipate static charges caused by the fuel flowing through the line, which could otherwise arc through the liner to the outer casing, eventually causing failure (for brake hoses, this is not necessary). I used Aeroquip “racing hose” (which does not have the conductive liner) for the brake lines and assembled the reusable end fittings onto the hose myself, but for the fuel hoses I ordered premade fuel hoses with crimped on end fittings and picked them up at a local speed shop.

Finally, it was time to put the wings back on the plane. This required some thought, as well as a couple of friends. On a biplane with a separate top wing center section, the lower wing is usually mounted first, supported by the landing wires that run from the outboard end of the lower wing to the upper center section. Then the top wing can be installed, supported by the center section and the outboard N-struts while the flying wires are added.

The Parrakeet, however, has no center section. Furthermore, the landing wires attach not to the cabane struts but to the upper wing itself, just outboard of the struts. This meant the lower wing couldn’t be supported by the landing wires until the top wing was installed. When we disassembled the plane, we put sawhorses with pillows under the lower wings to take the weight of the wings before disconnecting the landing wires, then removed the top wings before removing the bottom wings. This means awkwardly working around the lower wing while dealing with the bolts holding the top wing. In Texas, we had up to five people working and holding things, which made things a lot easier.

I figured it would be easier to build a support for the top wings first, so with only one helper I could rest the upper wing on the support while bolting the inboard end to the cabanes, taking my time while lining things up. Then the N-struts were hung from the top wing, the lower wing brought underneath, and the bolts inserted. I also made a set of alignment pins by turning a taper on the ends of two bolts of each size to help get all the bolt holes lined up. Once the tapered pin was holding the parts in alignment, the bolt could be inserted from the opposite side, pushing the tapered pin out.

With both wings in position but held a little higher at the tips, it was easy to install the landing wires with some slack, then remove the support and let the wings down to be supported by the landing wires before installing the flying wires and tensioning everything. During disassembly, I had put tape on all the wires exactly 2 inches back from the clevises, allowing the new clevises to be installed in the exact same place, simplifying rerigging. This worked pretty well, and only minor tension adjustments were necessary after the test flights (but I’m getting ahead of myself).

One issue with keeping an airplane in Texas, or buying one from there, is the prevalence of mud dauber wasps. They exist worldwide but are particularly troublesome in the south. These wasps don’t sting but have been responsible for a number of airplane crashes when pitot tubes or other critical systems are blocked. While disassembling the plane, we found and removed some of their nests, but more waited to be found. While handling the upper wings in particular, bits of the nests could be heard rattling inside under the fabric. Fortunately, the Parrakeet’s wings are small enough that it wasn’t difficult to stand them up on end and shake them to dump the nests out through the exposed wing root after going in through the various inspection covers to dislodge and break them up. The upper ailerons were more problematic, though, and after removing them from the wing it took several hours to break up and remove all the nests, repeatedly turning them this way and that and shaking them to maneuver all of the bits out through the one small access hole. Finally, it was done, and the ailerons reinstalled and rigged.

One of the last bits to do was fabricating and installing a mount for a handheld radio. Although an antenna had been installed at some point in the past, Bobby hadn’t bothered with a radio, flying from his own private strip. My home field is a bit busier. I also adapted a bicycle handlebar mount to hold my phone, which I use for navigation and flight track recording (using Avare and GPSLogger apps). I couldn’t easily get the control stick grip off to install a PTT switch and didn’t want to waste any more time messing with it right then, so I installed the switch in the panel just above the throttle, where I could easily push it with my left thumb.

Finally, after reinstalling the cowling and access panels, three months after getting it home, the plane was ready for flight! Bobby had only gotten the Hatz back together and flying a couple of days earlier, having also done some touch-up painting and other minor work. One is always at least a little nervous when making the first flight in a single-seat plane especially after not flying at all for five months, but I felt pretty comfortable as I climbed in and switched on the ignition. Contact! A friend spun the prop and I taxied to the runway.

The Parrakeet accelerated quickly and after a short run was airborne and climbing. The plan was to make a right turnout and climb up above the traffic pattern altitude on the opposite side of the airport and feel the plane out before the first landing, but as I passed through about 400 feet AGL the engine sagged and started to lose rpm. Uh-oh. I pulled carb heat, reduced power, and pushed the nose down, and the engine came back, but I immediately turned left instead of right and pushed the new PTT button. “Chester traffic, biplane turning left crosswind, having some engine issues, returning for landing.” Another pilot ahead of me said he’d go around to give me room to land if I needed to.

This was not entirely unexpected. Previous owners, including Bobby, had told me the engine would starve for fuel in a steep climb with less than a half-tank. This was due to the geometry of the fuel system, the combination of a deep fuel tank and a long engine mount. I had actually somewhat more than a half-tank of fuel, but the C-85 engine was larger than the original C-75, so its fuel demand is higher. All the previous owners had just lived with it (“Engine quits in a steep climb with low fuel? Just don’t do that!”), and the plane had accumulated over 300 hours that way. Still, it certainly got my attention!

On downwind at cruise power, it appeared that the engine wasn’t going to actually quit any time soon, so I decided not to land just yet, instead increasing power slightly and starting a shallow climb while turning base. “Chester traffic, biplane turning high base, NOT landing, going to climb and maneuver west of the airport while I sort things out.”

“Good luck!” called a friend from the ground. I found the engine would hold full power in a climb for about 30 seconds before starving, and but would run continuously at a lower power setting and pitch angle while still climbing, and I soon found myself at 4,500 feet. I flew around for about a half hour, getting the feel of the plane’s handling (delightful!) and its stall characteristics (benign). Finally, I headed back down, rejoined the pattern, and made an uneventful landing. It’s a little livelier on the ground than my Hatz, but nothing like the Starduster I owned before that.

That was enough excitement for one day and I opened a cold celebratory beverage from the hangar fridge to enforce the decision to quit while I was ahead. I made two more flights the next day (staying within gliding distance of the airport, of course), getting more comfortable with the plane and adjusting the rigging between flights. It flew straight, but a few wires needed a bit of tightening to stop them from vibrating. On these flights I was already comfortable enough with the plane to use the 900-foot grass strip alongside the longer paved runway. It really is a sweet-flying plane, but the engine issue wasn’t going away, and on the last flight it was struggling even in level flight at cruise power with about a quarter-tank. I would have to do something about the fuel system.

Continued in part 2.