Our 1948 Stinson

The Stinson's wings and fuselage were covered with heavy duty cotton that had many oayers of paint and wax. We had the plane several years before the wings needed to be recovered. We towed the plane, minus the wings, to our house. The wings went into the basement and we enclosed the area under the deck for the fuselage.

We recovered the wings with heat-shrink nylon - we actually ironed the fabric to make it shrink to fit. After that was done, Chuck built a paint "room" where he could spray the paint on the wings. We chose bright yellow for the paint. After each coat of paint, we used rubbing compound to smooth the paint. We put many coats of paint on the wings and many more coats of wax.

An FAA inspector okayed the wings and we put those bright yellow wings on the brick-red fuselage and flew several more years. People could certainly see us coming!

We flew to Ness City and Coldwater in the summer. We even flew in to the EAA convention at Oshkosh twice. The airport in Oshkosh was the busiest airport in the country during the week of the convention. Planes would be landing long (farther down the runway) and short (touching down at the beginning of the runway) while other planes landed on the grass parallel to the runway. That was a real experience.

Some time during this period we purchased a 1949 Piper Stinson. Piper bought out the Stinson company and the planes were on the production line. The company put the Piper name on those planes. So we had the 1948 Stinson and the 1949 Piper Stinson. They were not both airworthy at the same time, if I remember correctly.

We did enjoy flying. Tony was always interested in learning to fly and soloed the day before he left for his freshman year of college. Patti was more interested in driving.