the Stinson Story

The Stinson Story

I was up early that morning. I had a cup of coffee and breakfast. I then did a quick mental check. Let's see: cash, check: expense money, check: pistol loaded and in the holster, check. I never travel carrying that much cash into a strange area meeting strangers without protection. Kissing the wife good-bye, I was on my way. I was about to embark on a mission. I was about to buy my first airplane, a 1947 Stinson 108-2.

Quickly leaving the house I stopped at the local Starbucks for my usual traveling 5 shot 20 ounce latte. As I stepped out of my truck at the Starbucks store I closed the door and quickly became aware of a crunching sound. I opened the door and saw my seatbelt buckle had been broken by being left in the door. Not a good start to the day, I thought to myself. I got my latte and was soon on my way.

My next stop was at a local rental shop to pick to pick up the car trailer I was going to use to haul my prize back home with. I had arranged to rent a dual axle auto trailer and upon arriving at the rental shop, I was rudely informed that the trailer I had arranged to rent was too large for my truck. I tried to explain to the owner that I had rented the same trailer previously to haul some automobiles. No good said the owner of the rental shop. I was out of luck and had no choice but to take a single axle trailer about half the size I wanted. So, with trailer in tow I stopped to pick up my best friend Dan, whom I had convinced to come along to help with loading and unloading.

I had to drive about 70 miles north to get to the airplane owners home and when we arrived it was 10:30am. We were right on time. We then followed the owner about 10 more miles to where the airplane was located.

Upon arrival where the airplane had been stored for what looked like a millennium we were faced with another problem. It seems that the airplane had been stored in a large old barn however the barn had been built on to and we were going to have to be carpenters to get it out. So with much grunting hammering and cutting of boards and maneuvering we managed to extract the airplane from the barn.

Outside in the sun it became quite obvious that this Stinson is going to need a lot of TLC. This much to the amusement of the owner who was quite busy himself poking and prodding various parts of the airplane extolling the virtues of everything he could touch. He said, "Why with a little wiring and some oil here and there this baby will be flying in no time".

We then began to decide how to load the airplane on the smaller car trailer. One problem which became obvious right off was that the trailer was only 6'6"wide the center to center track of the Stinson landing gear was approx. 7'3". The plane was too wide for the trailer. After a bit of brainstorming we found a 2x12 plank about 10 feet long and decided to lay it across the back of the trailer for the mains to set on. We then pulled the airplane on to the trailer backwards so the wheels could set on this plank. After the mains were on the board we cut off the excess board to keep the width legal. We then let the tail wheel set in the back of my truck and loaded all the rest of the stuff from the airplane under it on the bed of the trailer.

We spent the next three hours loading the airplane and tying everything down. Then it was time to pay the man. I reached into my pocket and removed a brown envelope filled with cash. I removed stacks of 100 dollar bills and started counting it out. I counted out the agreed upon amount. The owner gave me the papers and with a gleeful wave from him we were on our way.

As we proceeded along the back roads headed for interstate 5 we encountered our first towing problem. I noticed that the trailer seemed to want to make my truck sway left and right and was not towing well at all. It was making the truck fishtail. I initially blamed the poor handling on the unimproved back roads we were traveling on and believed that as soon as we were on the freeway we would be in good shape.

We were soon ready to get onto I-5 and proceeded down the onramp to the freeway. As I started to get on the freeway I noticed that as we accelerated the fishtailing on the truck was getting worse and worse. We were up to almost 40 mile an hour when we lost control of the truck. The truck slid first left then right. I was panic stricken. We were totally out of control and I could just see the truck and airplane in a big nasty accident on the freeway. I struggled with the wheel, let my foot of the gas, stayed off the brakes and tried to steer a straight course. I don’t know how I did it but I managed to keep both the trailer and truck from hitting anything. Fate was with me and we finally got the truck under control and pulled over to the side of the freeway.

Now we are in a hell of a fix. We can't move more than 25 miles an hour and we can't turn back on the freeway. we had to proceed to the next off ramp on the shoulder at 25 mile an hour. Fate was smiling down at us again as we had not traveled more than a mile and a half when we observed a freeway sign that said," rest area 1 mile". We continued on the shoulder and pulled in at the rest area.

After stopping and getting out to look, we could see at a glance what the problem was. In our rush to load the airplane we failed to take into consideration basic weight and balance. We had loaded the airplane on the trailer backwards which placed the majority of the weight on the rear of this single axle trailer. the resulting out of balance condition was actually trying to lift the back of the truck up into the air. This was not good for stability of the truck. After a discussion with my best friend Dan we decided that the only choice we had was to completely unload the airplane from the trailer and reload it with the airplane weight on the front.

We then proceeded to spend the next 2 1/2 hours Unloading and loading the trailer and truck. We had a whole lot of spectators while we were doing this as it is not a regular occurrence to see an airplane unloaded and loaded in a rest area. After all was said and done and after a few volunteers helped to unload and load the airplane on the trailer and get the weight and balance set we were then able to resume our trip south. This time the trailer towed behind the truck as it should and the ride home was uneventful. By the time we arrived at my house it was real late and we were too tired to unload the airplane again.

The is an underlying bit of advice here. Never purchase an airplane sight unseen and when moving something big on a trailer always think about weight and balance.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope you found it enjoyable reading. Looking back I really did enjoy this little trip as it was a life learning experience, although once in a lifetime is plenty enough.

Rip Van Winkle
Stinson N9265K

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