When explosions of ruby, auburn, gold, orange and yellow trees rise from the ground at Old Rhinebeck Airfield, something will surely fall from the sky on the weekend of October. fall and the end of its 2013 season.
When the crowd claimed the bench seats at the start of their “History of Flight” airshow, the blankets of brown and gold leaves beneath them gave off the sweet scent of seasonal decay.
With a ritual movement of the black and white checkered flag from the umbrella “control tower”, Al Loncton, the announcer of the day, ushered in that show.
The clouds, like package wrappers, peeled off, revealing the soft blue content of the still warm day, toward which the first aerial player would strive, as confirmed by the throaty swallow of his Anzani engine.
Whipped by the water from the propeller, pilot Herb Gregory centered the helm of the Bleriot XI, while Mike DiGiacomio and Steven Lopresti dug their heels into the grass, clinging to its rear fuselage to keep it from rolling. Despite its initial serial number (56) and its centennial age plus four (104 for those with math problems), this mostly original English Channel hopper and the second oldest still flying, still he had enough fight to win, and he did. , walking past the audience while releasing a burp or two.
A short jump, now from the north, was followed by a virtually vertical descent into the grassy field, proving that the old bird could still fly.
Of equal age (about a year or two), the Curtiss Model D walked, like a model strutting in her yellow dress, down the catwalk (at least the walkers who participated in the action with their legs) and turned to the spectators to demonstrate their unconventional flight surface actuation methods. Of course, at this point in aviation history (1911) the standards had not yet been set.
And, if the well-kept field could have been considered the surface of the sea, it could have supported the floating Hanriot, with its mahogany hull / fuselage, resembling a racing skiff, the third in the airfield pioneer parade.
Long in the air before the plane, the pilot’s scarf fluttered behind him, washed by the propeller’s wake, which subsequently provided the necessary lift to his monowings to allow him to mimic the short aerial arc of the previous Bleriot, its replacing blip switch. the throttle by fueling or depriving your engine of fuel. Equally devoid of brakes, he used the southern hill of the field as an innovative substitute.
If the Andes Mountains, instead of that hill, had risen before the Caudron G.3’s rotary engine, which is currently coughing and coming to life, it would have carried the plane over them, as the test pilot of Caudron Adrienne Bolland in 1921.
Responding to its own incessant beeping, the two-tailed biplane rolled, turned, and tested, but an altitude of five feet was all the Andes it would traverse today, leaving the air saturated with the smell of burnt castor oil in its wake.
The day ushered in a World War I duo of coaches, namely the De Havilland DH.82A Tiger Moth piloted by Dave Fox and the Fleet 16B piloted by the President of the Old Rhinebeck Air Show, José Millares.
The former served in the Royal Air Force in England, while the latter performed the mirror image role across the Atlantic for the RCAF in Canada as the Finch. Based on the Feet 10, the tandem seat biplane evolved after entry into military design and was employed in the British Commonwealth Air Training Program.
The toilets would be installed on state-of-the-art aircraft, but the pilots of the two current ones apparently relied on the aerial type for their comfort, dropping rolls of toilet paper at which they were thrown to cut them with their engines. (You could only wonder what else they released.)
The pilots went from trainers like these to fighters in which they hoped to win victory for their respective countries, as two now took to the skies of World War I: the Fokker D.VII and, following its tail, the Spad VII. , its guttural. engines that drive them with determination.
Sporting its nearly tapered fuselage and square wings interconnected by thin, minimal-strength bracing struts, the former offered the epitome of German performance, climbing to 10,000 feet in less than ten minutes. Although it appeared in its greatest numbers in 1918, it did so too late, and the sheer number of advanced Allied types proved too formidable to outmatch.
One of them now demonstrated its maneuverability. Powered by a Hispano-Suiza engine and piloted by nearly all the Allies, the Spad VII, with its synchronized Vickers machine gun, was the most famous of the French fighters and, together with the Royal Aircraft Factory SE5a and Sopwith Camel, delivered the decisive blow. for the Germans on their constantly retreating front.
Blowing trails of smoke behind it as it spun through the sky, the D.VII practically hung from its engine, but the Spad, glued to the tail, seemed determined to bring it down – at least it would have done so nearly a century ago during the Great War. .
Deviating from its pre-show and post-show passenger flights, Old Rhinebeck’s New Standard D-25, with standard seating for four in its forward cabin and considered the airfield’s “passenger plane,” headed skyward after that the fighter pair had realigned with half the complement of people. although today, during the month of October Halloween, they looked less than human. A ghoulish, bright orange face and skeletal head stared out into the audience as the black-bodied giant clambered up the northern end of the field.
As the sun ripped through the all-morning cloud cover, orange bombs, known generically as “pumpkins” and “lanterns,” cascaded through the cracks, as if they had fallen from a Vickers Vimy bomber on the Western Front, towards the green field, gently sloping. Bombarded with each pass, this no-man’s-land absorbed each other’s silent blast, releasing an ooze of intestinal meat.
Approaching the south side of the field, the New Standard skidded sideways and briefly bounced on its left wheel before settling down and vomiting bomb-dropping pumpkins. Unmasked, they returned from Halloween skies as Carol Harklerod and Patrick Walker.
World War I gave way to the Golden Age of flight and Old Rhinebeck, always an aerial historical reflection, did not lower his mirror today, when a trio from that era entered the scene.
Had it not been for the dominance-seeking sound with Al Loncton’s loud commentary, the first of them, the Curtiss CW-1 Junior, might have been mistaken for a glider as it was developed from one.
And if the day’s viewers needed a bath after spraying themselves with castor oil, the fuselage of the second of them could have easily passed as a bathtub. Squat and squat, it belonged to the Aeronáutical Corporation of America’s Aeronca C-3, a high-wing tail tractor powered by a horizontally opposed 36-horsepower two-cylinder E.113 piston engine, built during the 1930s. like a light airplane. designed for personal and flight instruction use. With a curb weight of just over 550 pounds, he himself sported an appearance reminiscent of a glider.
The third to come out was the quintessential private jet and trainer, the Piper J-3 Cub. Based on the Taylor E-2, the high-wing tandem seat type, sporting frown-free bare cylinder heads, was as basic as it looked. A mainstay of the World War II Civil Pilot Training Program, it was built in several military versions, varying little from private ones, but whose performance, as expressed by one of its designations, “L-4 Grasshopper”, was demonstrated with precision today as the Old Rhinebeck example virtually jumped off the lawn in a near vertical orientation. With such a short take-off and landing (STOL) capability, it was ideal for the medevac role it played during the war, hitting any postage stamp-sized field.
More like a plane he carried than flew, the Piper Cub served as Stan Segalla’s partner in his Flying Farmer act in Old Rhinebeck for years.
It was an icon of general aviation, leaving the factory in numbers that exceeded 19,000.
Hovering over their heads as if speed had been disconnected, the trio, a virtual poster of Golden Age aviation, seemed suspended over the field. In fact, the tape that came loose from one of them, and was intended to be a target to be cut competitively, floated faster than the winged, sizzling opponents competing for it.
Landing and rolling past the crowded benches, the orange CW-1, the gold C-3, and the yellow J-3 reflected the fall-colored trees that line the airfield, while the falling leaves, like those of airplanes ancient, they landed. for one of the last landings of the season.
