Vintage biplane soars through skies the way people were meant to fly

The whole plane shudders as smoke pours from the engine. As we taxi down the runway, the pilot can't see in front of him; the nose of the plane is slanted upward, cutting off his forward vision.

These are not good signs for someone conditioned to the ease and luxury of modern air travel. Not good at all.

Being used to sitting in a pressurized tube for a few hours, calmly reading a magazine and drinking a soda, I was skeptical at best that this wooden propeller, spun by a 1930s-style engine, would actually be able to lift this 1942 open-cockpit biplane thousands of feet in the air.

"Where's the jet engine?" I thought as I mentally planned my will, lamenting the Eastern European capitals I would never see.

As Seattle and other airplane-obsessed communities mark this year's 100th anniversary of powered flight, anyone with a credit card can get into the spirit of aviation's early days by taking a ride in a biplane built when Orville Wright was still around. The plane about to take me airborne offers rides every weekend from Tukwila's Museum of Flight.

I had to wonder: Does it always smoke like that?

Why pilots like golf

I started asking the pilot, Ken Horwitz, aloof questions in the name of good journalism. "Do other passengers ever get nervous? Just curious."

Wearing goggles and aviator helmet, a brown leather jacket, and khaki pants tucked into boots, Horwitz, the owner of Olde Thyme Aviation, looked the part. "A humble pilot survives; a bold one dies," he coolly responded, moments before liftoff. "It's a lot safer than driving a car."

I assumed Horwitz was the humble type but didn't want to inquire further. Sometimes it's best not to know.

Assuaging my poorly-masked fears, Horwitz elaborated on safety, explaining how his engine and plane are meticulously inspected and approved for commercial use after every 25 hours of flying. A stockbroker who decided to learn to fly 10 years ago on his 40th birthday, he spoke about how, as a pilot, he's always searching for the next emergency landing spot, pastures or roads, just in case.

"Pilots love golf courses," he said with a reassuring smile.

I was starting to feel a little better, even though I was pretty sure there aren't any golf courses in downtown Seattle. With 2,000 passengers annually, and only one or two admitted complaints in Horwitz's flying career, I figured I was safe.

He continued with the lesson, teaching the aeronautics of a biplane — the double wings provide more lift so the biplane can get off the ground much quicker than single-wing airplanes.

Cleared for takeoff, the open-cockpit 1942 Waco biplane plodded down the runway. Despite the underwhelming speed, within seconds the plane was floating above the ground, getting off much quicker than a modern commercial aircraft, just as Horwitz had promised.

Where spirits soar

Slowly, we climbed to our cruising altitude around 1,500 feet, more than 30,000 feet below the altitude of most passenger jets. With the wind slashing at my goggled face and the trees and buildings unfolding so close below, the neurosis I had been feeling quickly evaporated, suddenly replaced by the awe and excitement I now felt for flight.

As we flew at about 100 mph and headed northeast, to our right was Mount Rainier, on our left were the Olympics and the islands of Puget Sound, and straight ahead was downtown Seattle — an incredible 360-degree panorama from the sky.

The plane moved like a roller coaster with its sudden and dramatic turns. Seeing that a companion and I were enjoying the ride, Horwitz climbed higher for more fun and pulled an impromptu wing-over, juking left then quickly turning the plane 90 degrees to the right and on its side — an old dogfighting trick to make the approaching plane blow right past.

It was meant to be

Communicating through a headset, Horwitz explained how the plane works, the raw mechanics of flight. Unlike a modern airplane, overwhelming to the layman with hundreds of knobs, switches and dials, the dash held only a handful of dials.

"The beauty about flying these vintage airplanes is they're very, very basic; all the way back to the beginnings of flight," said Horwitz, who flies by feel, not by the technical data and computers that guide pilots in modern aircraft. "This is the way people were meant to fly."

We touched down for a stop on Vashon Island, where even the runway was like going back to a different era. Cruising over the island, Horwitz did a fly-by of an old grass airstrip, hidden from ground view by rows of large trees. "If you had this airport in the 1920s, this would've been considered New York City," he said, steadying his approach to the beautifully manicured runway.

Nearly scraping treetops on the approach, he made a few "S-turns," wagging to the sides to see ahead around the upturned nose. Touching down with his back wheel first — that's why they call these planes tail-draggers — he negotiated a silky landing on forgiving grass.

We taxied on the runway for a few moments, and then I gave the thumb's up for more. Horwitz revved the engine, and with a puff of smoke we were off to the skies once again.

Just as the man said, this is the way people were meant to fly.

Jason Margolis: 206-464-2145 or jmargolis@seattletimes.com