Fairchild PT-19

My father and I had driven his ford pickup truck and trailer to a small town north of Portland, Oregon. Sitting in a dilapidated barn was the WWII training plane covered in dust slowly decaying. We paid the owner the $1800 and somehow loaded the frame, wings and parts onto the trailer and headed back to eastern Washington with what would become a five year project of my fathers.

I watched the planes reconstruction over the years whenever I would visit from college until one day he said it was ready to fly. The wood wings and tail section had been repaired and covered with new fabric. The engine rebuilt and tested ran perfect. The brakes were abit iffy but it seemed airworthy. The PT-19 was pulled out to the runway by the riding lawnmower and he climbed into the pilots seat while one of this friends hand-cranked the engine until the magnetos engaged and the engine fired pushing the large wooden propeller into a blur.  He went through his checklist and slowly the plane headed down the airstrip as I watched hoping the thing actually would leave the ground. It did! My father made several passes overhead as I jumped into another (much newer plane) with one of his pilots and we took off following him in the air. What a great day looking out of the window of our Cessna as the PT-19 flew beneath us.