We're standing up at Owl's Head Museum again and we're with Carl Erickson.
We wanted to come back and feature him on Hangar Flying because this guy has got stories
you wouldn't believe.
When did you start flying?
Well, when did I start flying?
1982.
1982?
Yeah.
How old were you?
Nineteen.
Nineteen.
Yeah.
And you've got a family story that you found fascinating.
Tell us about the Rhine back and what's all about and how you got started with that.
Well, I actually grew up on a little airstrip in the back yard so my grandmother, my grandfather,
and my dad were flying so we had a little thousand foot trip in the back yard and had climates
down there and everything.
I was within 20 miles, 30 miles of the old Revec Erickson so we used to go down there
and I knew what I wanted to do at this age.
So I started flying down there not too long after.
These days, can you imagine getting the variants in your community?
Oh, it would never happen today.
What he did, the coal did was amazing.
Yeah.
What kind of planes were you flying?
I was flying the oldest thing in the United States.
I was flying the 1909 Blario and I was doing the Pioneer stuff and my own airplanes.
You went back to the Roots.
Yeah, I was flying the Henriels and Curtis pressures and all that stuff.
Yeah.
Early stuff.
I like the early stuff.
Yeah.
So to you, anything besides an altimeter is cheating.
Yeah.
You literally see the pants and your ears and your senses.
Nice.
You get your senses flying.
That's beautiful.
What's the best experience you've ever had in the year?
Wow.
Best experience?
I don't know.
I suppose the things I've seen, the sunsets, the fog or the rivers flying in the moonlight,
you know, beautiful.
I guess it's hard to say.
I mean, there's so many good things.
Right.
You ever had one of those bad moments?
Oh, sure.
Yeah, worries someone.
I had a propeller come off once and upside down in the swamp.
Yeah, yeah.
Get out of here.
Yeah, I had the whole propeller come off and it went upside down in the swamp.
But, you know, it didn't hurt anything.
These airplanes are so slow and they're so safe.
Yeah.
It's just wonderful.
Where'd you bail just before you hit the ground?
No, I don't know.
My hand, I don't know.
My belt.
My belt.
At least it was a swamp.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I don't push, you know, I don't push weather.
You know, so my cross country is basically around the field all the time.
Yeah.
So, you know, you're constantly thinking where you're going to go with the engine equipment.
Yeah.
It's right there.
Do you fly any modern equipment or are you just not interested in it?
Not really.
No, I don't.
The Cubs above it.
That's the newest thing is the Super Cub.
We tow banners with that.
Yeah.
And do that kind of thing.
Yeah, you say the newest thing.
We'll give you a shot of that.
It's anything but the newest thing.
Yeah.
It's an old design.
1978.
Old design.
Really?
Yeah.
It's just a high-powered Cub.
I mean, the Cubs, they built in the 30s.
Yeah.
It's just a bigger engine.
How do dads own it?
But it's the basics.
Same airplane.
Geez, I should buy that.
Oh.
That's a wonderful airplane.
Yeah.
Wonderful airplane.
Well, there is something to be said for being able to open the windows and just be out in
it, right?
Yeah.
The same vibe that folks get from motorcycles.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
It's really fun for me because, you know, I'm just starting my experience as a student
pilot.
So, you know, this is all fresh to me.
And it's so nice to hear, you know, hear the stories from guys like you.
It's just a crush.
Yeah.
I think there's things I'm learning every day.
Yeah.
You're learning the rest of your life.
I keep hearing that over and over again.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
It's the license to learn.
Yeah.
And you'll gain, and you'll learn from it.
And, you know, you get it from older people.
Oh, you know, the people who've been in the game can't equal experience, right?
Right.
So, you'll always learn.
And it's a great thing to learn.
You know, it's amazing because a lot of my life is, you know, martial arts.
Right.
It's a martial arts.
You've learned so much from doing martial arts with the pilots, right?
That sense of curiosity and continued development.
Oh, yeah.
You know, you're challenging yourself.
Yeah.
You know, that's a pride thing.
How to land an airplane, three-point, you know what I mean?
Right.
It's a pride thing.
Yeah.
And no one ever wants to get their license up.
The mind is on the side of that point to do it.
Right.
Still hard for the pilot to put up.
For those folks that have never done anything but that tricycle gear.
What's the difference between that and that?
What is the difference?
The flying is the same, of course.
I mean, it depends on the airplane.
The flying is the same, but it's on a crosswind on blacktop,
that's a whole different thing.
That's when you earn your keep right there.
It's when you can put this thing on blacktop
and not ground loop it, that means it spins around
and takes the gear off and goes on its back.
So the trick is to landing, yeah, yeah, which is,
if you land on grass and we land on nothing but grass,
grass is very forgiving, these airplanes are meant for grass
and they have to land on grass
because they have tail skids and no brakes.
So they're meant for grass,
but if the wind's quartering across,
it'll turn into the wind.
So to maintain that control, which is very hard,
it is a pride thing.
That's the hard part, the flying is the same.
That sounds like it's something
that every pilot should aspire to.
Oh, absolutely.
But if you don't use it, I mean, it's one of those things,
if you never have a reason for it, but supercars,
they're used every day in Alaska.
Right, right, right, right.
So that's a tail wheel design.
It's a fatter airplane than a nose wheel.
You know, they're landing on rocks as big on, you know,
sandbars, so this design is a stronger design.
So you need to be able to fly like on an airplane.
Yeah, yeah.
I know you have an affinity for the plane
that's behind us right here, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Go ahead and tell us about this a little while.
Well, this airplane is a Fokker C-4 built in 1924
in Holland, built in Holland.
And Tony Fokker himself had his hand on this airplane.
They're all hand-built airplanes back then.
Yeah.
They're all assembly lines like they are today.
But this is the only one left in the world.
It has a Rolls-Royce V12 geared engine,
the only one running in the world today.
But it's very reliable.
It has four magnetos and four carburetors,
and it's an extremely reliable engine.
So you know that it's probably,
it's going to keep running on.
Nice.
But it's a wonderful flying airplane.
This has no brace wires, it's a very clean airplane.
It's internally cantilevered, braced.
It has hardly any brace wires, so it's very clean.
So it's hard to land it.
You got to really slow it down
because it just wants to keep on floating.
So, but it requires a lot of manpower
to get the same office dolly to get it running,
to get it turned, to get it in the whole back
to run up and vice versa.
So it is like flying a big airliner.
But you know, it lands at 35 miles an hour.
It lands as slow as a cup.
I'm glad you mentioned the airliner thing though,
because this was transformed
into an airliner of sorts, right?
It was.
The pilot was still wearing his keep.
He was on the outside.
Which everyone agreed, you know, you had to,
back then you had to hear the wind for your speed.
You had to feel, you had to,
which side of your cheek the wind hit.
You knew if you were skidding.
So pilots for a long time agreed that, you know,
the pilot should be out in the open.
It took a long time before that changed.
Middle 30s, yeah.
The only glass in this thing is on the window.
Yes, yes, I agree, man.
That's just amazing.
And we should tell folks,
we're sitting in the restoration workshop, right?
And this is where the nuts and bolts
of Isle's head takes place, right?
Right.
You work on the aircraft specifically here.
Right.
This is where all, yeah.
Everything gets done.
The maintenance is done in here.
The restorations, we have a restoration project,
the SC-5, we're trying to finish up.
In between every other thing we have to do,
we have to maintain,
well, we have 15 airplanes that are maintained
for the shows.
We keep flying on the shows.
Right.
But we try to do restorations during the summer
and all the annuals.
We spend all winter doing the annual inspections
for the spring.
So you don't always find something even though
they fly every show.
There's only three hours on the airplane,
but still you have to go through the entire airplane
and find the stuff.
It's a great place.
All volunteers, I've been doing them volunteers.
They're everything.
They love it.
I mean, everybody I've met,
they just love doing this.
Well, it's a living museum.
That's a nice thing.
So when they know, when they're working on something,
they know they're going to see it fly.
Right, right.
It's not just going to get shoved back
and hang or collect dust.
And one thing we can't give you on video yet,
you know, the aroma in here.
Oh, no, just everything.
This smells like history.
I mean, it's just incredible.
So, hey, we're going to go out and fly something, aren't we?
We're going to fly the Waco in 1943, what's about that?
Well, it's one of the first airplanes in this museum.
Back in their middle 70s,
it's a pretty rare Waco.
We sell rides in it.
We have rides in this airplane, that in the Stearman.
It was an aerobatic airplane back then.
Yeah.
And this airplane actually, it was on floats
as a surface by the 1950s, I think that's cute.
So it's been, we restored this airplane totally,
six years ago, and it's all for actually ranging.
It's a beautiful airplane, so just a great airplane.
I am Jack.
I love my job, man.
Thank you so much.
All right, we're going to go fly.
There you go.
