#21 - DHC1 deHavilland Chipmunk

I am an unabashed fan of the whole deHavilland Corporation fleet.  What sort of mad brainiac names their planes after land dwelling mammals?  What says ‘load carrying beast’ better than Caribou?  Is there a better name for a plane that opens up the back woods than Beaver?  I don’t know what it could be.  But the Canadian naming guru who came up with the moniker for the company’s first big post World War Two military trainer deserves a special prize.  How better to convey the thought that this plane is the stepping stone to the Spitfire, Fury and Meteor than by naming the airplane after that speedy, agile, hostile rodent – the Chipmunk.  It is genius and nothing else.   No Texan or Valiant for those sardonic Brits and Canadians. No, they would strap on the Chippie and learn the aerobatics and control that would allow them to immediately transition into a single seat fighter with about eight times the horsepower.  Amazing. 

John getting in first to prevent me from leaving him behind

I love pilots…they are just the most fascinating, friendly and eccentric group of people I have ever come across. My friend John is a UFO (United Flying Octogenarian), and former professor of family medicine who commuted to work in a float plane.  His wife clearly shared his passion for aviation but embodies the sensible half of their partnership.  She laid down the rule that John could only have two airplanes at a time.  His main ride is a Cessna 180 but that second plane has cycled through a bunch of really neat types.  He has had part of a Breezy, a Hatz and the J5 Cub medevac airplane that I flew on an earlier occasion.  Since he has a lease to buy operation going with the J5 he has a free spot in the hanger and of course it was going to be filled with another taildragger.  Apparently the Chipmunk (DHC1) had been a long time dream and, after an amazing false start that makes the current Chippie technically his second, he is the proud owner of a genuine British ex-warplane.

John’s schedule has become more and more constrained with his flying time largely devoted to getting cancer patients off, then back on, the island for treatment. Though he had offered to take me up in the Chipmunk sometime, I assumed it would be a treat for the distant future.  However, the fates aligned in the form of an air show, a former DHC1 owner and a grass strip John had never flown into.  He offered me a ride in the back seat, and after looking to make sure there were controls back there, I jumped at the chance.  It made for an unforgettable Saturday morning.    

We met at the fuel dump and headed over to the plane.  Our destination was Meadow Mist, a 2000 foot long grass runway at a fly in community.   John carefully briefed me on how to get there because my job was to navigate.  He had one of those paper sectional things and planned for us to head to a VOR (despite not having a NAV radio) and then turn due south for 2 miles.  I expected him to scoff when I pulled out my iPhone, fired up Foreflight and told him that the airstrip was 16 miles away along that magenta line, and we could fly that if he wanted to.  Without even a headshake over the loss of skills in the kids flying today he said that the iPhone sounded just fine. The pressure was on though…those sectionals never run out of batteries or lose the signal, and to tell you the truth I am not sure how well I could have dead reckoned to this airfield.

Our little archipelago is made for flying

The Chipmunk is a fascinating airplane.  It has a metal fuselage and leading edges, but the wings, aft of the main spar, are fabric.  Like the planes it was designed to prepare students for, it is a low wing tail dragger.  The engine is a Gipsy Major with four cylinders, in line, hanging down from the engine (inverted).  This particular plane is painted with British  insignia and bears the markings of an airplane that has been used to teach plane anatomy and repair as well as flight.  The cockpit houses two seats, one behind the other and is covered with that wonderful greenhouse like canopy that so many fighters had.

The seating is just awesome.  I am used to squeezing into place, cheek by jowl with the other fellow, but here each seat is roomy, with plenty of space to put your feet, and your elbows have some room to get into trouble.  I have worn several types of harness before, but this particular five-point model is certainly an early test of a pilot’s coordination.  Two shoulder straps, two leg straps and a crotch strap meet at the groin.  Four tabs must be fit into holes and then the whole face of the buckle is rotated to lock the tabs in place.  There is not a hint of friction getting the tabs into their holes and they are stabbed into the central disk at every sort of angle.  In turning the disk to find one hole, a previously filled one is apt to spit out its tab.  When you rotate the face to lock it all in, there is a one in three chance that all the tabs will engage.  I gathered rather a lot of evidence to support this one in three proposition.  My advice is to pretend that you are avidly engaged in reading a complicated check list.  Also, be sure to lengthen the straps before trying this trick, or you will dislodge all the tabs every time you sigh in frustration. 

Once sitting securely in the front office, and with all the straps and the form fitting seat it does feel secure, your attention should wander to the instruments and controls. I was sitting in the back seat since John likes me, but he wisely only trusts my ability to land an airplane he is not sitting in.  The only difference between the front and back seats seemed to be the ability to tune the radio and the view.  I had throttle and mixture in a single quadrant by my left hand, a trim wheel low at my left hip, and magneto switches and lighting just above my left elbow. The brakes are differential with an interesting twist.  The amount of braking (and the parking lock) are on a red lever on the left side, while the amount of left versus right is controlled with the rudder pedals.  A giant, impossible to read, compass sat squarely between my feet and a flap lever with two positions was at my right hand.  The stick had a push to talk button and at its rearmost position it was not close to my belly, though full left and right required some adjustment of my legs.  The gauges are endearingly simple.  A horizon, turn and bank, a vertical speed indicator, and an altimeter and engine RPM gauge that were surprisingly easy to confuse.  Perhaps it was the large size of the RPM gauge or the fact that it was at 2200 most of the time, but I certainly congratulated myself on holding altitude when in fact I was holding RPM. For the non-pilot, holding RPM is a tad easier…resist the temptation to mess with the throttle and you are golden.

I had watched this plane take off several times and it impressed me how much it looked like it wanted to fly.  I was very interested to see whether my 210 pounds would make it look a little less like it was levitating and more like it was laboring into the air.  Nope, the throttle went forward and we were in a very flat decked climb within 700 feet or so.  The oddest thing, was that because the Gipsy rotates the opposite direction than most engines, you have to hold a little left rudder rather than right rudder in the climb.

At altitude John raised his hands above his head and said something incomprehensible into the headset.  I swear, when I get a little money I am buying him noise cancelling headsets. I was not sure what was going on, perhaps there was spider up in his area.  In any case the plane was not flying as well as it had been so I found myself sneaking my hands and feet into position.  After all, perhaps it was a dangerous spider.  Turns out that must be the universal signal for ‘your airplane’. I wonder how well it works when the fellow in back in these tandem jobs tries it, but in any case I was now really flying. 

Before I am allowed to buy another airplane, or even floor mats for an airplane, my spouse gets a long arm quilting machine with an automatic stitch regulator. It is good that this was somewhere in my mind, because after a single steep turn it was painfully difficult not to ask John whether it wasn’t time for him to do another lease to buy program and get a different second airplane.  I have already said that the DA40 is my favorite plane, and I suppose because it has four seats it will remain atop the heap. But, I have never flown anything that was as smooth and harmonious as the Chipmunk. 

The controls are so well balanced, and there is so little cross talk between axes, that it truly feels like the plane is wired in to your brain.  What a total gas.  The plane zips along at 100 knots and the landings, both three point and wheel, were very straight forward.  John kindly demonstrated the resilience of the gear on one landing and I am confident that even I would have a hard time beating it up too badly.  The benign deck angle and good forward visibility meant only gentle s-turns were necessary, and it also made landings a very calm event.  Good visibility down the runway goes a long ways towards making a taildragger feel good as you line it up to touch down.  Even in the three point flare we were not looking at nothing but nose the way you are when you solo from the back seat of a cub.  I swear in that plane I wanted to punch a hole in the front floorboards to see the center line.

We had a great flight over to Meadow Mist, the iPhone and Foreflight did not let us down, and once there we met Paul, an 86 year old pilot of remarkable versatility.  The hanger where John and Paul discussed spare Chipmunk parts housed a Stinson L5 (WWII observer) and two fabric jobs from 1931.  The first was a pretty, but pretty conventional looking American Eagle Eaglet.  The second was a bright red plane of dreams, the Curtiss Wright Junior.  Sporting a pusher prop powered by a teeny French radial with a single magneto, the pilot sits so far out in from that she is practically dangling her feet off the end of the plane.  It looks like a blast to fly. The airspeed indicator is a paddle that sits in the wind connected to a wire indicator that sits in either the red or white depending on whether you are too fast, too slow, or just right.  It was a banner day for airplanes, airplane people and airstrips.  I owe John a huge debt of gratitude for type #21.