Ghost from the past

Air Classics, Feb 2001 by Konantz, Walter

n May 1940, while still a senior in high school, I purchased my first plane for $400. It was a 1929 Monoprep powered by a Velie M-5 radial engine of 65-horsepower. It had no brakes, only a tail skid which served as a brake on grass fields. During my first day of ownership I flew it seven and a half hours, making many trips to the local hay field with five-gallon cans of gasoline.

In looking through the airplane's log books, I found that Martin and Osa Johnson, noted African explorers and photographers, had learned to fly in this same airplane during the 1930s at the Chanute, Kansas, airport (see the mention of Martin Johnson in our Boeing 247 article).

The former owner of the Monoprep had pointed out its solid one-piece wing and husky struts and said it was virtually indestructible in the air. Having had no dual instruction in aerobatics, I read books on the subject and went up alone to practice the maneuvers I had read about. I once took it up to 8000 feet, rolled over inverted and practiced precision 90-degree turns while gliding down to 2000 feet. The engine would not run while inverted and, when the practice was completed,

I had to look out the sides for landing

as the windshield was covered with oil from the vented oil filler cap just ahead of the windshield.

A year later, the old Velie engine was getting tired so my brother and I removed the wing, set the tail in the back of a pickup truck and brought the Monoprep to town to the back yard of my parents' home. This was a funeral home and we lived upstairs.

We ordered a set of piston rings for the Velie and removed the cylinder heads for a trip to the local machine shop for valve grinding. When the overhaul was completed, we put the wing back on, fired up the engine and ran it three or four hours at slow speed. During this process we taxied around in the back yard of the funeral home, blowing all the fallen leaves out of our yard into the neighbors' yards. Instead of removing the wing and towing the plane back to the hay field, I taxied the plane up the city street one block to the two-lane highway then taxied east about a mile on the highway until I came to a straight stretch with no overhead wires or roadside obstructions.

There was, however, a low concrete bridge with railings about three feet high and as I taxied over it I carefully checked the wing strut clearance over the bridge railing. If I stayed within four or five feet of the highway center line, the wing struts would clear the railings.

My brother and a friend were at each end of my "runway" with flashing lights on their cars to block traffic. I opened the throttle for takeoff and as I crossed the low bridge, I wasn't more than a couple of feet off the center line of the highway and the old Monoprep soared into the air once more.

Not yet having a private pilot's license, I enrolled in the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPT) at Joplin, Missouri. This was a government program designed to attract students into military pilot training. I was the first to graduate from the class as I already had about a hundred hours of flying time. I had previously made my first solo flight in a 1937 Piper J-2 Cub of 40-horsepower back in the days when you could rent a Cub and an instructor for six dollars per hour.

During my three years of Monoprep ownership, I had eight forced landings. One was a catastrophic engine failure when the number four cylinder blew off the engine and struck the wood propeller. After gliding down to a wheat field, the cylinder was found swinging under the engine, still attached by the spark plug wires. The probable cause of the engine failure was due to flying in 15-degree weather with summer weight oil still in the oil tank. I never thought of that possibility at the time.

After a 30-minute warm up prior to takeoff, the oil temperature had risen to only 120 degrees. An hour after takeoff the oil temperature slowly cooled down to the bottom peg. A short time later I heard a loud metallic clank and the engine rotated about 15 degrees in its mount, then bounced back to its original position. A rapid clank was audible with each engine revolution so I cut the switch and looked for a place to land. I called my parents to bring stakes and ropes and to take me on to Columbia to register for the second semester at Missouri University. I don't think the college officials believed my excuse for late registration.

The next weekend, my college room mate and I drove 100 miles to the airplane with tools to remove the engine and haul it back to Columbia in the trunk of his car. We put the engine in the basement of our rooming house and I started removing broken parts and ordering new or used ones from an aviation supply company that still advertised Velie engine parts. A new propeller was made for it by Ole Fahlin whose shop was in Columbia. Ole was a Swede whose wood propellers were nationally famous for their quality. A month later, the repaired engine and the new propeller were hauled back to the plane, only to find it lying on its back. A rainstorm had softened the ground, allowing the high winds to pull out the tie down stakes and flip the plane over on its back.