Three men and

An airplane

 

One mans dream brings two brothers together again

 

Mike Bauer EAA # 774197

 

My father always dreamed that someday he would be able to build and fly his own plane.  But it seemed that things always got in the way.  The first was my brother, and then ten years later, me.  By the time 1970 came along things had settled down a bit, and he finally got to finish getting the one thing needed to start to make his dream come true, his pilots license.  After a few years of renting planes and flying for one hour at a time, he found a good deal on a Stits Playboy.  After a nervous check ride, and a few times around the pattern, money changed hands and N2961C was his. For the next 7 years my father flew the wings off that plane, until another major event in his life happened, he retired.  After selling the plane to a friend, my mother and father moved down to Florida, Bartow to be exact.  But the dream just wouldn’t die, in fact it got a whole lot stronger, and after several years, and countless hours of studying plans and descriptions of countless aircraft, my father settled on one, Van’s RV-3.

 

I remember the day that the crate arrived with N87LB in it.  One look at the box and I said, is that it?  We popped the top on the lid and started to inventory parts, 2 days of inventorying parts, but it was all there. For the next 2 years 8 months and 15 days, my mother was an airplane widow.  My father worked tirelessly on his baby. He even built an addition to the carport to build the fuselage in.  That’s where the Tri-pacer was parked, but that’s another story.  Finally the big day arrived, January 9, 1989, the plane was signed off, the taxi tests were complete, and nothing left to do but fly.  And fly it did.   There was another red letter day, The April 1991 issue of Sport Aviation.  There it was, on page 80, his baby.  My father logged 545 hours in his plane over a 10 year period. In 1997, the color was changed to red because as you can see in the picture, the brown color matches the dead grass really well, and it was difficult to see in the winter time.

 

Shortly after the plane was painted, my father’s health began to fail, he had always been plagued with bad lungs, and now it was final, he had C.O.P.D.  On the days that he felt well enough, he would fly, but that got to be less and less.  Finally after witnessing a few bad episodes, I called and had a long talk with my brother.  Ah yes, my brother.  We hadn’t really spoken for about 30 years, even though we lived about 60 miles apart. Why? Don’t remember, and not really important now, the important thing is that we did start to talk. Sadly our father went to fly with the angels on January 22nd 2004.

 

Now my brother and I share an interest in N87LB.  And it was agreed that the plane needed a complete overhaul.  So we upgraded the avionics, and put in a Lowrance Airmap 2000, so we could find our way around, and replaced the engine mount due to several small cracks that were discovered.  This process took just over two and a half years, (sound familiar?)  During this time my brother and I worked whenever possible on our plane.  And I can say with all sincerity, that they have been the best two and a half years of my life.  I got to re-discover my big brother, and he found out that I’m not so bad either!  Finally we are ready to go, but both of us have a big problem, neither of us has any tail time.  After about 2 months of looking, we found what we were looking for, in the person of Jan Bussell.  After 6 hours of Whack and smacks, better known as touch and go’s, the big day finally arrived, January 13th 2006.  Yes, it was on Friday.  After doing the engine run-up and closing the canopy, it was time.  Line up on the center line and slowly add throttle, keep it straight, lift the tail, and after 16 years and 4 days from the first flight, we flew again.  I say we because my father was there with me, enjoying the flight just as much as I was.

 

 

I owe a great deal of thanks to a lot of people, the first being my father who gave me the love of flying.  The second is my brother, who taught me that no matter what, brothers are still brothers.  There were times when I felt that the project was just too much to handle, but he would calmly say, “just take it one project at a time and we’ll get there”.  We can’t get the 30 years back, but we can make the next years all the better.  The third is Jan Bussell, a very patient man who helped me knock the rust off, so we could continue our father’s dream..

 

 

 

 

N87LB as it appeared in the issue of Sport Aviation

 

N87LB as it appears today, fully re-vamped and re-painted

 

My brother and me, I’m the good looking one on the right

 

Contact information;

Mike Bauer

863-670-0385

rvaitor@verizon.net