Bad picture (I have another, in flight) of it. Grandad and his friend did airshows starting circa 1929.
I’d never thought about looking up the N-number til I made that post.
Found the owner, a delightful lady only a few years older than I that owns it. Her husband (I didn’t ask but sounds like he may have passed) rebuilt it a while back. Assuming I read the registration details correctly he rebuilt in in 2010 I believe.
AND it’s on loan to the N. Dakota Air Musem. My eyes aren’t what they used to be but it may still be flying, in a sense:
Contacted the museum. Apparently NC5132 has its own exhibit. They are going to take pictures and send to me. Lady I talked to said it was used to do an Air Mail 100 airport in 100 days celebration flight in 1980. Perhaps she meant 60 years, thus 60 flights? (think airmail started in 1920).
I think about how this was only 25-ish years since the [very short] flight of the Wright Brothers. My grandad was born about that time. 25 years in my mind, in my 60’s, seems like last week. .
So we start with baby steps via this Wright Flyer contraption to not long after a couple of 'buds getting together and, "Hey, this looks like fun, lets give it ago (what could go wrong?)).
I never learned how he learned to fly; he went on to be an IP in the Army Air Corp - a ‘field’ promotion to officer (he left school after the 8th grade) - to corp. pilot when he retired. That was all between the mid 1920’ to the mid 1960’s. With the Great Depression thrown in during his thirties.
A story just came to me: his first job, flying for a US oil company, was in a piper cub (or similar) along the pipeline. When spotting a stanchion/union that was being ‘compromised’ by woodchucks (seems they would dig in under it). He would land, take his lever-action 22 and dispatch them. I still have that rifle and used to shoot with it all the time[1].
[1] Myself and friends would pack the rifles/shotguns into our ‘off road’ vehicles (made so by having shovels, carpet, and scrap lumber in the trunk), leave it all in the school parking lot (high school) and set out after the last bell for an ‘adventure’ with our game tags in the glove box.
