Tweet
In the mid 80's I was lucky enough to have a Stearman. I think about it alot. I'd ALWAYS wanted one. Finally a 1942 Navy paint job Stearman came along, with stars and bars etc. It was not Oshkosh by any means but looked pretty good. I would get in it on a Saturday or Sunday morning at dawn, taxi out, letting it warm up real good. Take off and go out near the Chesapeake Bay where there are alot of inlets. In these inlets were rafted together alot of sailboats, sometimes 8-10 boats together. Sun was up now, great morning, 65 degrees, calm, smooooth! I usually stayed 2 to 300 feet over mainly farmland, then out over the water. People on the boats, usually 30-50 footers, would just about fall overboard waving! If quite a few were on deck, I would circle once and wave back, then go on to the next cove, repeating the flyby. Sometimes, during the week, if I flew, I'd work a farmer with a combine over, BIG corn and soybean fields where you could get really low and come at them head on. Great times! It was an easy airplane to fly, very stable, slow, (85mph) and lots of noise which I liked alot. It had been flown by the RCAF in WW 2, then a duster in Maize, Kansas, pulled banners in 29 Palms, Calif. then much later rebuilt by an AA Captain. Then I had it. Great memories and great people I met who would remember flying them in WW2 training. JC