I once owned a Stinson 108-2 Voyager, a rag-wing tail wheel plane about the size of Cesna 172. I only put about a hundred hours on it before I ran into problems. The plane needed to be recovered, but when they pulled the old fabric off the wings, they found corroded spars. Basically, I sold it for scrap instead of getting it repaired, which was a damn shame. I was naïve.
Lovely plane. It flew like a much heavier plane, though landings could be a bit tricky. I always landed it three-wheel; I never mastered a wheel landing, a landing on the two main wheels. I tended to bounce down the runway when I tried.
I once flew up to Cape Canaveral, hovered at 7000 feet, and watched a manned Saturn rocket break through the clouds and head for the moon. Well, I sort of saw it. Just as it broke through the clouds, another plane, one of a dozen or so circling for the same reason I was, cut right in front of me for a better look. I had tp concentrate on him and didn't see much of the spaceship. C'est la vie.
Don't know whether I'll ever get to fly again -- I'm still basically one armed from the stroke -- but I hope to. I sure miss it.
Posted by Deck at November 27, 2006 09:01 AM