Tinted by the fall air and drawn by the crystal blue dome of the sky at Cole Palen’s Old Rhinebeck Airfield in early October, I passed the snack stand and new country gift shop to the Biplanes Rides booth, reserving one of the four passenger seats on Hudson Valley Air Tours’ new D-25 standard open cabin aircraft.
My ticket, now at $ 100 and a significant increase over its 1995 price of $ 25, would secure me a space on flight HV 007, which departed at 1215. Although it is not official, the flight number was concocted from the fact that it was the seventh. ascent of the day.
I would be accompanied by a young couple, who would share the bow of the two stools, and a man with a white beard, who would join me on mine behind them. The pilot, of course, with his own cockpit, was positioned behind us all.
The sign at the departure terminal, translated “outside the amusement booth,” advised, “New standard D-25, American, 1928, Continental 220 hp engine. Purpose-built for the barnstormer, the D.25 was the Charles Day Design’s 25th aircraft. Carried four paying passengers, was easy to fly, operated in the smallest fields, and used modern construction techniques (1928). This, our first New Standard, has carried over 11,000 passengers here at Old Rhinebeck Airfield. “
It was not entirely correct. The passenger total was only accurate several years ago and their only D-25, registered N19157, had since joined a second, N176H, which would fly for the first time today, as my other aerial scenic flights of the Hudson Valley were made. in 1995, 2000 and 2006.
He settled into the field after his previous circuit, rolled into the cabin and unloaded his quadruplet of passengers, before the next four, armed with the pre-departure safety briefing and wearing helmets and goggles, were allowed them to traverse the grass to both … step “ramp” placed at the trailing edge of the lower wing. The response time of this now 89-year-old aircraft could be measured in minutes.
Following the root strip of the black-body, orange-winged biplane, whose engine spun and sputtered all the time, I entered the cockpit and entered the Golden Age of the storm. Claiming the left of the two rear bench seats (2A) and extending my seat belt, like a metal handshake, to that of the passenger next to me in 2B, I intimately interconnected with his. Shared bench seats meant shared seat belts.
The assault on the ears and nose, even with the propeller rotating idle, resulted in an instant immersion in the cabinless technology of the late 1920s. So fierce was the wake, my nostrils couldn’t absorb the air and the throaty sound of the engine was deafening. As on my other open cockpit occasions, I was hoping to experience this age of aviation through my senses. Maybe it was, and it was still on the ground no less.
If its idle position was a rerun, then throttle advance resulted in a rude awakening. Released the brake, the biplane began to race across the grass towards the threshold of the track, which, in this case, was the southern end of the field, a grassy hill, passing it and turning to its right, in a 180 turn degrees. on its tail wheel.
There was no takeoff clearance. There was no radio to provide it with. There was also no other ground traffic to worry about.
A full-throttle advance, opening the fuel arteries and pumping the aircraft’s engine with life-exploding plasma, induced the aircraft into a gravity-assisted push downhill, at the bottom of which its tail rose. in a horizontal stabilizing flight, allowing the wings to do so. the rest and generate lift.
The wake created by the spinning propeller and increased airspeed, hopelessly unrestricted by the tiny plexiglass windshield, hit my face and served as an attack on my nostrils, which ironically they did not accept, despite the overabundance of air. , the substance itself. that my lungs needed.
It certainly reached the wings, however its increased speed was inversely counteracted by its decreased pressure and allowing the biplane to jump off the rolling strip of grass. The double wings meant twice the surface area and its lift-generating capacity. Surrendering to the cold, energetic, crystal blue, he passed the line of aircraft seemingly tucked into a preserved history pocket on the port side in the form of a Caudron G.III, an Albatros D.Va, and a Fokker Dr. 1 triplane.
Overcoming the north end of the field and turning briefly to the left, the D-25 triumphed over the shrinking greenery of the Hudson Valley. Norton Road, now a tape narrower than that used for wrapping packages, passed under the port wing. Seen from a different perspective and downwards, it was the road from which I had looked up at this very plane as I approached the airfield, which was now backing up behind my left shoulder.
Having transcended the physical limits of the land, the D-25 cut through the tinted blue with an autumnal bite, its orange wings, interconnected with struts and covered in fabric, passed over the still mostly green trees and patches of farmland alone. occasionally highlighted by a lemon. sentinel.
A pause facilitated my internal contemplation, both of the four-person cabin and my location in it on previous tours in the stormy skies of Cole Palen. I was currently occupying my original seat, that is, the one where I had been introduced to the era of air travel exposed to the elements in 1995. At the front, to the right of the two seats, 1B, had sat Jose, one of my Students from the Farmingdale State University Aviation History Course and next to him in 1A, Christian, as I recall, another in our class. I replaced Jose on my next two aerial promotions in 2000 and 2006 and my mother had sat next to me on both.
Now, theoretically, I sat behind her, or at least in her seat, but since she left the physical plane about 20 months earlier, I could only include her in my current flight by getting as close as possible to the surly slip of earthly ties and lifting myself up. . his soul was now surely capable. He was here with me now, I knew it.
Cole Palen himself, founder of his famous airfield, eclipsed the line between physical and eternal dimensions two years before that initial fight in 1995, and after graduation I never saw Jose or Christian again. Well at least I still had myself.
The wind, perhaps echoing all of them, struggled with the engine for mastery of the sound, but, although the latter technically won, they both roared and howled in their own way. Could the open cockpit experience have been so authentic without them? I doubt it.
Skirting the strip of the Hudson River, a blue serpent sandwiched between green topography, the D-25 veered left before reaching the set of steel builders that resembled the Rhinecliff Bridge, signaling a return to the field too soon.
His shadow, a silhouette reflected on the ground, leapt through the geometries of the farm below like a boundless spirit and certainly bore Cole’s imprint.
Riding the invisible air currents, the biplane began a series of sharp S-turns, its wings flapping and protesting with each maneuver, and its speed fluctuations recorded as audible wind intensities.
Passing perpendicularly over the green swatch that was the devastating Old Rhinebeck airfield at 500 feet, the D-25 arched into a downward turn to the left on a reduced-power, gravity-pull approach, practically diving toward the clumps of trees that they obstructed its southern end.
As it passed over the hill, it halted its downward speed about 100 feet above the ground, abruptly burning and snatching the gravel road running through the field on its two wheels and allowing the resistance of its grass to take away its momentum.
Turning to the left with a burst of power, it rolled back to the Biplane Rides booth under the intense blue of midday.
Releasing the seat belt buckle that I had shared with the man I had never met, but with whom I had exchanged glances with occasional kindred spirits in the air, I stepped out of the cockpit of the still dripping biplane and down the root of the wing to the ground. and back to 2017.
