Built Ford Tough!
Saturday, August 15th, 2009
I recently visited my Ford 4AT Tri-Motor project going together slowly in Michigan at Great Lakes Aviation. It had an interesting history and was flown by Island Airways to haul school kids and mail from Port Clinton, OH to a small island in Lake Erie. They owned several Fords over the years and this was the first one they purchased and the last one they sold as it had smaller and more fuel-efficient engines for what they needed it for. I acquired the aircraft in the late 1980’s and flew it back from California to Florida in only 4 1/2 days!
Unfortunately, this was one of my aircraft that was highly damaged by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The day before the Hurricane, I flew it down to the Homestead Airport about 20 miles away and put it in a big concrete hangar with many other aircraft looking to dodge the storm. That night it hit landfall as only one of two Catagory 5 Hurricane’s ever to hit our country with sustained winds of 165 mph, gusting to almost 200! After several days of disbelief and digging out of the collapsed hangar at the Weeks Air Museum, I borrowed a small plane and flew down to check on the Ford. I was in shock when I got there. The hangar doors had all blown off, an 18-wheel semi-tractor trailer fuel truck had been blown over on its side, pushed all the way across the hangar floor by the wind, and then smashing into the Ford! The fuselage was twisted in half aft of the passenger door and both wings had been ripped off!
Right Outboard Wing - Check out those Multiple Spars!
It had been several years since I had seen the project and great progress had been made on the center-section and wing panels. It has been somewhat of a slow restoration because I have another Ford 5AT Tri-Motor to fly at Fantasy of Flight. On one of my early visits, while the fuselage was going together, I happened to notice they were riveting the skins on with AN470 Universal head rivets. These rivets became popular around WWII but the Ford had been built in 1928. I questioned this and asked, knowing full well the answer, “Didn’t they use round head rivets originally?” The owner replied, “Yes, but when the aircraft had been damaged previously in an accident it had been repaired with the later rivets.” I made them drill all the rivets out and replace them with the original round-style head!
When completed, it will sport a washroom with a wooden toilet complimented by a small sign, “Don’t use the toilet over populated areas!” It will also be the only airliner in the world I know of where a passenger can slide their window back and hang their arm out the side!
Kermit
We hosted our second Splash-In event as part of the Sun ‘n Fun Fly-In on Thursday, April 23rd. It was a great success! Last year we had 85 seaplanes and this year we had 101! The weather was perfect and I got a chance to fly the Grumman Duck for everyone. We are beginning to plan and promote our own Seaplane Fly-In during the last weekend of September of this year so keep your eyes peeled for more information. With our great shoreline and seaplane ramp, we have the potential to create one of the premier Seaplane Fly-In’s in the world!
Of course, during the Fly-In I get to meet many new and old friends. One of the more interesting new ones were Lt. Hong My and Dan Cherry. The first time they met was in the skies over Hanoi, Vietnam where Dan Cherry flying an F-4 Phantom shot down Hong My in his Mig 21. They got reacquainted 37 years later and have since become friends, visiting each other homes and doing special events. They happened to be over at the Sun ‘n Fun Fly-In and I was asked to fly them over and give them a tour of Fantasy of Flight. I picked them up in my Ford Tri-Motor and gave them both the opportunity to try their hand at flying it. It was very interesting to say the least because you hardly use the rudder in a jet except to steer on the ground and the Ford is very much a rudder airplane. I think it was a bit of a shock to both of them to watch the slip ball swing from side to side as they tried to wrestle the Ford around the sky. After landing, I gave them a grand tour of our facility!
Another person that came by for a visit was an old acquaintance but new Head of the CAF (now Commemorative Air Force). I gave him a tour of Fantasy of Flight and explained my Vision as to where we were headed. He seemed deeply influenced by some of the things I was proposing as well as some of the things we were currently doing. I let him sit in the cockpit of the Polikarpov Po-2 while he listened to the Audio Experience about the Night Witches. When we climbed out of the cockpit he said, “I HAVE to play this to my Board of Directors . . . this is exactly what they need to hear!” The next day he brought by several of his staff to show them the facility and listen to some of the Audio Experiences. Not a bad testimonial!