10A • COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL • NOVEMBER 14, 2018
Off beat Oregon: Central Oregon’s pioneer aviators
By Finn J.D. John
For The Seninel
P
art of the problem with
owning and operating
the only fl ight school in
town in the 1920s and 1930s
was, every time one of your
students slapped together
some home-built piece of kit,
you’d be expected to help get
it in the air.
At least, that seems to have
been how it worked for Ted
Barber, owner of Bend Flying
Service and Central Oregon’s
fi rst commercial aviator.
“I was never one to back
away from adventure in an
airplane,” Barber wrote in his
autobiography, “Th e Barn-
storming Mustanger.” “I al-
ways fi gured airplanes were
made to fl y, and I was made to
fl y them.”
Th is was a nice general
principle, but it’s easy to see
how applying it too generous-
ly could shorten a fellow’s life
a bit.
Luckily for Ted, building a
home-built in the inter-war
years was not easy to do. Th e
problem wasn’t with engi-
neering — there were plenty
of good workable plans for
home-built airplanes, and lots
of people could and did put
them together in barns and
sheds.
Th e problem was with pow-
er. It was hard to fi nd an en-
gine lightweight enough to
get off the ground with an air-
plane attached to it. Especially
in the thin air of the Central
Oregon high desert, 3,500 feet
above sea level.
Every now and then,
though, someone would
come up with something; and
Ted would have to choose be-
tween telling the student “no”
and helping him fl y the thing.
And by “helping him fl y it,”
I mean “go fi rst.”
Th is came close to cook-
ing Ted Barber’s goose one
day in the early 1930s when
the Stevens brothers called
him over to check out their
homebuilt: a super-light
parasol-wing monoplane
with a super-heavy Ford
Model T engine bolted
to the front. Th e brothers
hoped that the lightness of
the airframe would make up
for the fact that the fl athead
fl ivver mill weighed close to
500 pounds, while putting
out less than 20 horsepower.
Ted walked around the
airplane, inspecting it careful-
ly. Other than that cast-iron
hunk of dead weight hanging
off the front fi rewall, it was
a beautifully done piece of
equipment, and he told them
so.
Th en, foolishly, he told
them he’d fl y it for them.
Or maybe not so foolishly.
Because here’s the thing —
Model T motors were every-
where. Th ey were probably
the easiest and cheapest kind
of power plant you could fi nd
in the 1930s.
If the Stevens brothers had
really done what they’d set
out to do — created a new
airplane design that could ac-
tually be powered in fl ight by
a Model T engine — it could
actually make them some
money. Nobody had been able
to do that before, and what
Ted was looking at now seems
to have convinced him that
maybe, just maybe, they had.
Ted climbed in and started
the motor up. Th e familiar
putt-putt of a Model T greet-
ed his ears. He taxied to the
edge of the fi eld and paused,
letting the motor warm up.
Th en he opened the throttle
wide, and the little homebuilt
started gathering speed down
the fi eld.
About halfway down, Ted
pulled back on the stick. Th e
little plane lift ed off , hung a
second, and dropped back
onto the fi eld. He tried again.
Same result
Th e engine was literally
about two horsepower short
of what it would take to fl y the
plane.
But Ted liked what little he
had seen of the plane’s han-
dling. He taxied back over to
where the Stevens boys were
waiting, looking crestfallen,
beside the fi eld.
“Let’s wait until we get a lit-
tle wind, boys,” he said. “We’ll
give ‘er a try again.”
S
everal days later, with a
gentle steady breeze blow-
ing along the airfi eld, the
three of them returned to
Knotts Field for a second run.
Th is time, it worked. Ted
pulled back on the stick, and
the little fl athead-four motor
roared valiantly, and the tiny
plane lift ed off and went into
a very, very slow climb as it
neared the end of the fi eld.
Th e Stevens boys cheered as
they watched it rise to about
300 feet … and then they
stopped cheering as it leveled
off and started slowly sinking.
Meanwhile, in the cockpit,
Ted was nervously scanning
the ground in front of him.
Th e Model T engine was mak-
ing just barely enough power
to keep the plane in the air,
at full throttle. He hoped it
wouldn’t quit from the strain.
He didn’t have enough
power to try any turns; he’d
have to go straight ahead
and hope for the best. Scan-
ning his memory of the local
geography, he remembered
that there was a fi eld a cou-
ple miles ahead — but it was
strewn with lava rocks. He’d
for sure hit one, and break the
plane.
But fi ve miles beyond that
was a big open fi eld. Could he
make it?
He glanced over his shoul-
der to see how much ground
he’d covered since leaving the
airfi eld — and that’s when he
really became nervous.
Because hanging in the air
behind the little airplane was
a great billowy contrail of
steam. He was two miles into
a seven-mile fl ight and the en-
gine was already overheating.
Would it make it? Would he
make it if it didn’t?
Ted focused on the task.
Th e little airplane droned
on, its engine getting hotter
and hotter. Sooner or later it
would seize up ….
Th en the fi eld was in front
of him, and he was touching
down, and bouncing to a stop.
Th e steam poured out and
surrounded him like a fog
bank as he climbed grateful-
ly down from the plane. He
probably felt like kissing the
ground.
As a side note, it’s inter-
esting to speculate on what
the Stevens plane could have
done on an airfi eld in the Wil-
lamette Valley. It’s pretty like-
ly that if he’d been taking off
from, say, the Eugene airport
— elevation 374 feet, more
than 3,000 feet lower than
Bend — he would have been
able to do a lot more with the
little plane.
W
ith another homebuilt
that Ted was supposed
to try out, he was saved from
having to risk his neck by the
builder’s impatience. Eddie
Campbell of Prineville had,
in 1930, got hold of the plans
for a homebuilt design called
“Th e Storms Flying Flivver,”
a tiny high-wing monoplane
powered by a Ford Model A
engine.
Th e Model A engine was
roughly the same size and
weight as the Model T, but
made twice as much power.
And Eddie worked at a Ford
dealership’s repair facility, so
he had access to the equip-
ment necessary to soup it up
a bit.
Ted was out of town for a
week when Eddie fi nished
his project, and not expected
back for another four days.
Eddie, already a fairly experi-
enced glider pilot, grew impa-
tient. Plus, it was his plane; he
wanted to be the fi rst to fl y it.
So, he pulled it out and fi red
it up and pointed it down the
fi eld.
It would not take off . He
tried it several times; at the
proper speed, it simply would
not leave the ground.
Eddie looked it over,
scratched his head, and decid-
ed the problem was that it was
“nose heavy.” Getting his tools
out, he took the wing loose
and moved it a little bit for-
ward. Th en he climbed back
in to try again.
Th is time, the plane came
off the ground, all right. It
went straight into a steep
climb, completely ignoring
Eddie’s attempts to control
it; stood on its tail, trying to
hang from the prop, about 100
feet in the air; then stalled and
pitched forward and slammed
down into the ground, nose
fi rst, ending up in a tangled
heap.
Eddie’s friends gaped at the
wreckage. Nothing moved in
it. “Eddie’s killed!” they shout-
ed in horror, then raced to the
scene.
T
hey found Eddie slumped
motionless amid the
wreckage. Fearful of a fi re
breaking out, they each seized
one of his shoulders and start-
ed trying to drag him out.
“Hey, you guys!” Eddie sud-
denly called out. “Take it easy,
will you? … My feet are stuck
right through the fi rewall.
You’ve got to get a saw and cut
me out.”
Th ey did so, then hustled
him to the doctor’s to get
checked out. His skull was
cracked, and he later learned
that one of his leg bones also
had been cracked; but overall,
he came out of the experience
not much worse for wear.
Th e same couldn’t be said
of the Storms Flying Flivver,
though.
[Sources: Barber, Ted.
Th e Barnstorming Mustan-
ger. Bend: Barber Industries,
1987; Anderson, Jim. “Pio-
neer Pilots of the Sagebrush
Country,” Little Known Tales
from Oregon History, Vol. 1
(Geoff Hill, ed.). Bend: Sun
Publishing, 1988]
Finn J.D. John teaches at Ore-
gon State University and writes
about odd tidbits of Oregon
history. For details, see http://
fi nnjohn.com. Contact him at
fi nn2@offb eatoregon.com.
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