The Fairchild 24. Story by Elmer Carlson I taxied into an area near the threshold of the runway to check out the instruments before starting my takeoff run. While I was doing this, my mind wandered back a few weeks to the start of this adventure. My friend Dennis had called me and said, “I’ve found the plane I want to buy”. I replied, “That’s great, what kind of plane is it?" “A Fairchild 24, but I need your help to get to Enumclaw.” Actually the Fairchild 24 was not my favorite plane and I had never seen one. However it was on my wish list of planes to fly. The first Fairchild 24 was built in 1932, designated Model C8. It was a two place with side-by-side seating. A 95 horsepower American Cirrus Engine was used for power. There was only one built that year. By 1936 the design had evolved into an airplane that seated four people and was powered by either a Warner Super Scarab or inline Ranger. In my mind’s eye I could vision this one as a really neat plane with a maroon finish trimmed with buff and powered by the Warner Super Scarab. Dennis and I decided to drive over and inspect the plane before flying it to Enumclaw in case it needed some repairs. It was located at a small airport on the bluff just off the west end of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Although Dennis did not know how to fly, he had made a hobby of going to different airports and photographing various airplanes. He had quite a collection of airplane photographs. I’m sure that is how he happened to find this one. He planned to rebuild it later. On the way to the airport Dennis told me that he had put ten gallons of gas in the tanks and had managed to get the engine started. It had a 145 horsepower Warner Scarab five-cylinder engine with a wooden propeller. He was smart enough to, “pull it through” at least 5 times to get any oil out of the bottom cylinders so they wouldn’t blow off. My first thoughts when I first saw it were, “This is not the beautiful maroon and buff plane that I had imagined.” It was the only plane on the field and looked very lonely. We parked alongside it and got out and walked around for the first time. Frankly it looked like it would never fly again. Although the fabric on the wings looked fairly good... at least none of it was falling off, there were pieces of fabric falling off the bottom of the fuselage and the stabilizer looked terrible. To say that this plane had seen better days was an understatement. I grabbed the stabilizer and shook it as hard as I could and it seemed strong enough, but the fabric was in pretty bad shape. We both reached up and pulled the wings up and down with vigor and they seemed to be fixed fairly well. At least there wasn’t any thing real loose. The interior, however, was a pleasant surprise. The controls were free and moved like they were on ball bearings. Which of course they were because all of the pulleys have ball bearings from the factory. So we knew it would run and that the control surfaces moved like they should. We decided we needed some masking tape and a ferry permit to make flying it to Enumclaw legal. Dennis said that he would go down to the FAA to get a ferry permit since he had the logbooks. A ferry permit is a document the FAA issues to airplane owners so they can legally fly their aircraft from point A to point B if the plane does not have a valid airworthiness certificate. Then if you crash they can say, “I told you so”. After Dennis got the permit, we took it to the FBO at Enumclaw for him to sign. This was one of the requirements to make the flight legal. He read it and said, “go ahead and fly it over here and if you make it I'll sign it”. No problem! We went on with our plan to bring it to Enumclaw. A few days later on September 10, 1967 we went back to get it ready and fly it out of there. First off, we put strips of masking tape along the leading edge of the stabilizer about every three inches back to the rear spar. It was new tape so we knew it would stick well. That seemed to hold the fabric, and then we cut off all the fabric hanging down from the fuselage and fastened the rest of it up with masking tape. Since the bottom of the fuselage didn’t have any lift we figured we could cut down on drag by taping it. It only had to last for about a half hour in the air. After putting an extra five gallons of gas in the tank for a safety margin we tried starting the engine. Dennis knew how to do this so with me in the cabin and Dennis handling the propping, it started rather easily. It sounded pretty good sitting there idling away. Our original plan was for both of us to fly it to Enumclaw, and then I would fly him back in my Cessna 140 to get his car. But Dennis decided at the last minute to drive the car while I flew the plane and then we could meet up at the Enumclaw Airport later. I didn’t care one way or another so I climbed into the cabin and started taxiing to the East end of the runway. I came out of my thoughts and said to myself, “Well it’s now or never” and pulled out to line up with the runway. As I increased power to gain speed for the take off a little adrenalin started to flow and I could feel myself getting excited about this flight. I was surprised at how fast it got airborne. It was no problem keeping it straight on the runway and after the tail care up just a slight backpressure on the stick and I was in the air. I dropped the nose slightly to gain additional speed and then started a climb. Since I was headed west, after climbing to 500 feet, I started a slight turn to the left. The plane responded perfectly, I could not detect any vibration or erratic motions. I thought to myself, “This is a piece of cake.” I came around a full 180 degrees and headed due east to Enumclaw. I could see Puget Sound directly under me and both left and right. The Narrows Bridge was to my left, Tacoma was directly ahead, McCord airbase and Olympia to my right. Snow caped Mt. Rainer was slightly southeast and was really beautiful. All in all it was a spectacular scene. The ferry permit stated that the flight must be over unpopulated areas. I thought to myself, “If I do what the permit says, I’ll have to fly half way to Portland and I don’t have enough fuel for that.” After thinking about it for about five seconds I continued straight over Tacoma. I didn’t notice any traffic straight ahead so I just kept it on cruise throttle and bored on. In about five minutes I noticed a couple of cargo planes taking off from McCord field. Their course was straight toward me and I wasn’t going very fast, not as fast as I would have liked anyway. I held my course, watching intently as they got nearer, because I wanted to make sure where they were going before I started any evasion action. They held their course and it looked like they were going to invade my airspace. But finally I could see that they were going to climb over me so I relaxed and began to enjoy the flight. I thought, “This is certainly a nice airplane. I would sure like to fly it after Dennis gets it rebuilt." By this time I was past Tacoma and over the grassland between Tacoma and Enumclaw. I could feel there was now a slight vibration coming from somewhere. The entire instrument panel checked out as well as it should. Gently moving all the controls produced the desired results. I thought that I was imagining things and kept it going straight and level at about 1500 feet. Then it started really shaking. There was nothing I could do except try to keep it level. Then the shaking quit. I thought, “I hope that doesn’t happen again.” This action repeated itself about twice more before I got to Enumclaw. I was certainly glad to line up with the runway and start an approach to land. That plane glided and flared out like it was on a rail. I taxied up and parked it in one of the tie downs and sat there for a couple minutes, debriefed myself on the flight, and thanked the Lord that it was over. I climbed out to look things over and find out where all of the shaking was coming from. I discovered that a lot more of the fabric was missing from the fuselage. If I had known that was all it was I would have stayed up a little longer and gotten more familiar with the plane because it really did fly smooth. The next time I saw it, Dennis had taken the wings off, pulled it home and parked it in his garage. As far as I know that’s where it still may be.