In the cockpit profile: Spartan executive

Flight Journal, Feb 2000 by Blankenburg, Kent

1939 opulence viewed from the cockpit

When rumbling along at 8,500 feet, it's sometimes difficult to describe how I feel as I look across the Spartan's wide cockpit at Sandy, my wife. The same thought inevitably crosses our minds at the same time: we feel as though we're living a dream. Looking past tier at that wonderfully shaped wing, I picture how we must look from the outside. We're in a high-speed, silver sculpture from another time when styling meant curves and grace and-most of all-class. On the one hand, it feels as if a tremendous privilege has been granted us; on the other hand, that privilege comes with huge responsibilities, and that thought never leaves us. Owning and flying a 1939 Spartan Executive isn't to be taken lightly. The machine is one of America's ultimate artifacts, and we view ourselves as its caretakers, which is an awesome responsibility.

The Spartan is one of those airplanes that has haunted me almost from the very beginning of my long love affair with flying. I have to admit, however, that it wasn't until Sandy started urging me to "live" my fantasy that I actually considered buying one. The Executive is my fourth "real" airplane (I don't count my first airplane, a Cessna 175 one of that total). I can't say when I became aware of my love of round motors and art-deco styling, but apparently it has always been there because even as a student pilot, I found myself wildly attracted to a derelict Cessna 195 on the held. Shortly after the C-175 "experience," which taught me a lot about the nuts and bolts (figuratively and literally) of airplane ownership, I launched into what became a familiar drill of looking for the best 195 available. That's when I bought what I consider to be my first real airplane. Then came a Luscombe 8E, a Republic Seabee and then our beautiful Lockheed 12A.

When Sandy talked me into buying the Executive, we looked for the "right" airplane in the same way as we had when looking for the other airplanes. We first tried to locate all the Executives in existence: six flying and six that might be restorable. Considering that only 34 had ever been built in the first place, and some of those went overseas when new, that's a pretty fair survival rate for what was then a 55-year-old airplane. When looking for airplanes, my tastes, skills and common sense dictate that I find the best airframe in the best possible condition because I don't want to do complete restorations. The Cessna 175 also taught me the value of an airplane with great log books that indicate a high level of continual maintenance. This is especially true of the bigger airplanes. It takes a major, bolt-by-bolt restoration to even begin to offset a half century of indifferent maintenance and repairs. A good, clean, well-cared-for airframe, on the other hand, is a pleasure to work on and doesn't require the special skills needed for a total restoration.

The first step was going out and physically laying our hands on as many Spartans as we could find, whether for sale or not. Through this process, we began to understand the airplane and what we were actually looking for. In short order, our airframe checklist became quite specific. Over a year and a half, one by one, we eliminated various airplanes either because they weren't available and couldn't be pried loose, or because their airframe and/or log books weren't clean.

Those who knew what we were looking for would continually say, "You need to find Malcolm Jacobs' old airplane." Jacobs was a well-known aircraft salesman/broker in St. Louis who, among other things, is reputed to have sold something like 300 Staggerwings, which obviously means he handled the same airplanes three or four times. He had owned the same Spartan Executive for 34 years, and it was rumored to have been nearly perfect to begin with, but Jacobs had spent 17 years restoring it and then flew it only a very few hours. We kept hearing the tales but didn't have a solid lead on the airplane's whereabouts. Then we got a call from two of our "Spartan acquaintances" in Texas and New Mexico who told us the Jacobs airplane was in the Lone Star Museum of Flight in Galveston, Texas.

We wasted no time in calling the museum. What we didn't know, however, was that during a meeting on the night before, the museum's board of directors had voted to sell the Spartan because it no longer fit their goals as a predominantly military museum.

We immediately sent them a deposit check, contingent on the airplane's fitting our criteria, and we prepared to fly to Texas. But there was still one detail: we had to hop on a jet to Chicago (it was January and not a very pleasant trip) to look at one other Spartan. We couldn't commit to buying the Galveston airplane until we had eliminated the Chicago Executive. Buying airplanes isn't as easy as just writing a check.

When we arrived at the museum, we found the airplane was everything we had been told, and it fit our goals exactly. Besides having spent 34 years in the loving hands of Malcolm Jacobs, the airplane bad always been cared for. Its first owner was Claude Drilling of Oklahoma, but it was soon pressed into WW 11 military service-RAF, to be exact. What the RAF used the airplane for is unknown, but it never left the States and was based at one of its training command bases. Most important, the airplane was never damaged at the hands of a low-time student.