PHOTOGRAPHY BY RUSSELL MUNSON

Cole Palen, the founder of the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in Rhinebeck, New York, was passionate about seat-of-the-pants flying. The joyful pranks, the camaraderie, the sheer pleasure of flying and showing the crowd that antique biplanes actually do fly, are evidence that the aeromaniacs at the Aerodrome still carry the torch for Palen, eight years after his death. A refreshing innocence emanates from these dedicated flying clowns who sustain their link to Cole’s Aerodrome.

James Henry “Cole” Palen, a combination Dr. Doolittle and a modern day Eddie Rickenbacker, had the mechanical skills, savvy, grit and adventuresome spirit to create the country’s old-est aircraft aerodrome. Palen’s goal was to rebuild, preserve and fly antique biplanes while captivating airplane aficionados with humorous entertainment.

Palen’s infatuation started with a short hop in a New Standard biplane at age 10. He thought airplanes were magical and wor-shipped the pilots who flew them. By the time Palen was trained and licensed as an aircraft mechanic at Roosevelt Aviation School at Roosevelt Field in Long Island, he was given an opportunity to bid on the World War I aircraft when the field was slated to become a shopping center. Palen spent his life savings in 1951 to purchase the six aircraft. By 1959, he bought a 100-acre farm with his job as a Texaco mechanic, and he manually constructed wooden hangars from used lumber to house, restore and rebuild the airplanes. Today the collection has nearly 80 machines—about 50 have been completely restored.

Watching the “History of Flight Air Show and Golden Age Biplane Fly-In,” the legacy of Cole’s spirit is pure, undiluted by corporate sponsorship. Every weekend from June through Oc-tober, not far from the east bank of the Hudson river, the Great Waldo Pepper is conjured up in flying acts of mock combat. The Aerodrome’s pilots relish viewing the changing scenery between the wings and wires of a biplane, which feeds a sense of adventure and a lasting kinship with Cole and the early barn-stormers.

A beautiful, pristinely restored old blue, white and yellow- striped Bücker Jungmann, considered the world’s best aero-batic plane in its day, lands in the field and rolls up to the fence that marks its border. A spectator leans over the fence and asks,

FLYING/FEBRUAR Y 2001 65

No VOR, GPS or brakes on these

biplanes—just the throttle, some

controls and maybe a compass.Jim Hare, above, Rhinebeck’s emcee,

addresses the weekend crowd. Saturday show flight

line formation, below. Opposite top, S.P.A.D. VII.

Opposite bottom, Caudron G.III.

AeromAniA AeromAniA

BY ELizABETH J. MURRAY

Lives!Lives!

“Is it a Bücker Jungmann?” “Yes,” comes the reply as the grinning pilot, Bob Bailey, drops down from the wing. “Wow.” Bailey chuckles and says, “It took 17 years and one wife to restore it!”

As each airplane lands during the morning biplane fly-in, the diligent volunteer ground crew escorts the airplanes to the fence, where visitors can lean close and gaze at the beau-ties, and pilots can describe what it’s like to fly them. Hospitality is second nature here—from the escort airplane parking service, to topping fuel tanks to chatting with grinning fliers and curious visitors who are astonished that the things actually do fly.

The weekend shows have continued faith-fully for over 40 years. Saturday is the “History of Flight Air Show” and Sunday the “World War I Air Show.” At all shows, Jim Hare, the ebullient emcee, takes his place atop a 15-foot wooden tower with microphone in hand. Around 2 p.m., this carnival barker heckles the crowd and provides encyclopedic, historical com-mentary on the antique airplanes and the an-tics played out on the field and in the skies above. Palen didn’t want people to simply come and stare at polished museum-ready replicas; he wanted the crowd to smell the cas-tor oil, watch the agile airplanes swoop, turn and alight on a clover-laden field. An “enfant terrible” to museum curators, Palen believed that an airplane simply wasn’t an airplane un-less it could fly.

A Belgian Stampe with its inver ted four-cylinder inline engine, two large open cockpits, a steel-welded fuselage and wood-ribbed wings rolls by. The entire frame,

FLYING/FEBRUAR Y 2001 67xx

Visiting biplanes, like the

Bücker Jungmann, opposite

top, are welcome visitors

before noon on weekends.

A Pietenpol Air-Camper,

opposite middle. Opposite

bottom, a 1945 Stampe,

a nifty airplane. The Fokker

Dr-1 Triplane, left, flown

by the evil Black Baron in

Aerodrome shows, was

inspiration for the Peanuts

cartoon, Snoopy’s Red Baron

flying ace. One of the premier

fighter airplanes of WWI,

the Sopwith Camel, below.

The oldest flying airplane

in America, the Bleriot XI

(1909), bottom.

vidual—he worked so hard on this place for 33 years,” says Taylor. “It’s only natural for diehards like us to want to pre-serve it; we’re here to preserve the dream.”

The first crowd of 25 came to watch the airshow in 1960. Palen’s magic was infectious from the start—the show has grown into a virtual living museum. Gene DeMarco first visited Rhinebeck as a boy with his father and now devotes six months a year to flying the Aerodrome shows and keeps his own Stampe SV4B (1945) in a hangar at the field. He says there’s something mysterious about flying dif ferent biplanes, a challenge and thrill in getting to know each one’s idiosyncrasies and relying on intuition to feel the airplane’s rhythm. “Where else can you find a one-of-a-kind opportu-nity to fly this plane?” says DeMarco.

Palen wanted to fly the vintage airplanes, not just tinker with them. The Bleriot XI (1909) is the oldest flying aircraft in the United States and flew in the great circuit races of Eu-rope—and, what would be to Palen’s delight, is still being flown over the cow fields.

“Whenever anyone reached an obstacle with a plane,” says Taylor, “Cole’s response was, ‘No problem, it’ll fly!’” Now the col-lection of vintage and recreated airplanes is a museum, regis-tered with the state of New York as a not-for-profit educational institution and managed by a board of directors.

The airplane bandits remain magnetized to the airstrip at the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, continually testing their skills by flying the vintage airplanes and keeping Cole’s spirit alive in the process. With the tenacity of a bulldog intent on preserving aviation history, Palen never lost sight of the sheer joy of flying antique aircraft. The freethinker wanted to continue to fly and laugh while he was at it. An old-fashioned man, Palen believed anything was possible in America, even making the past come alive. As he put it, “If it ain’t fun, why do it?”

For more information, driving directions and logistics for flying in, call 845/752-3200 or visit www.oldrhinebeck.org.

originally covered in Irish linen, is now stretched with ceconite, an inorganic aircraft fabric woven of polyester fibers and then shrunk with heat to fit the frame. After the prop has been pulled through the recommended number of rotations, the engine barks to life. The Stampe wheels down the field, whizzing past the peanut gallery and ascending slowly like a heavy bumblebee. The fact that these airplanes are actually airborne is still a marvel to see.

Pure absurdity is the staged event. Cole’s flying circus has grown from ’60s pulp magazine ideas to the full-bodied slap-stick humor of today. One minute a Pietenpol Air-Camper stolen by an “escaped convict” rolls down the grassy strip, dis-appearing over the treetops, while at the other end of the field, a German Fokker D.VII (1918), a biplane fighter renowned for its speed and maneuverability, and a Sopwith Camel with a Gnome rotary engine, have been hand-propped and gassed for the next act. After climbing to about 700 feet, the airplanes crisscross one another, cutting a floating Charmin toilet paper roll with precise aim . . . the magic of barnstorming is recap-tured. This act, originally known as the Delsey Dive, allows fliers to assess the visiting crowd.

The passionate zeal comes from “flying by feel, unlike cor-porate flying, which is done by numbers” according to Ken Cassens, the Aerodrome’s chief mechanic and an ex-crop-duster. Cassens says the open-cockpit airplane is the real deal. Floating out in the slipstream with a hand on the stick of a leg-endary flying machine, these aficionados find it irresistable to fly a Davis D1W, a Curtiss “D”, a Hanriot (1910) or a Bleriot XI monoplane (1909). As Cassens put it, “On these planes, if you covered up the instrument panel with a sheet of paper, you’d still be able to fly.”

Dan Taylor flies the Curtiss “D” Pusher (1911) while wearing his vintage costume. The whole point of the shows, says Taylor, is to glorify the airplanes, not the skills of the dedicated pilots. “Cole Palen was such a hardworking indi-

FLYING/FEBRUAR Y 2001 6968

The Curtiss Wright, Jr. has a three-cylinder engine,

opposite top. The pristine Davis D1W, opposite middle.

A 1910 Hanriot, powered by 50-hp Franklin engine,

skates before taking off, opposite bottom. Above,

The Curtiss “D”. Right, the famous Albatros D.Va.

The Bleriot XI has a wicker seat and uses wing warping

for control since it has no ailerons, bottom right.