AOPA Pilot Magazine - September 2017 - 57

OLD RHINEBECK AERODROME

holds its collective breath. A couple of tries
later, smoke belches from the exhaust ports
as the engine rumbles to life. The crowd
applauds and yells.
Cassens pulls back on the power and
lets the engine warm. Once the young man
removes the chocks, Cassens advances
the power and the radial resumes a deep,
throaty roar, and the Spirit of St. Louis rolls
forward. The crowd yells more, like taxiing is a huge deal, and yells even louder
when the airplane turns right and taxis
before us, its tail skid bouncing on the turf.
It rolls onward, finally disappearing behind
a grassy knoll. When the engine grows quieter, cheering turns to excited chatter,
then waves of concern roll over the crowd.
He's going through the run-up. The engine
gets louder. Then quieter. Then louder. It
remains loud. And it grows louder still.
The Spirit of St. Louis breaches the knoll.
The wheels break with the turf tantalizingly
close; the long wing flashes barely 20 feet
overhead while the engine drowns out the
crowd. "What you're acutely aware of is the
sound," said Dan Taylor, WCBS-FM radio
personality, airplane historian, and longtime Rhinebeck volunteer. "You're hearing
1927 and seeing 1927. It's the exact smokestack, the same engine. You hear the same
thing that someone fishing at St. John's,
Newfoundland, would have heard flying
overhead," he adds. "That sound as he flew
it down the runway, that's the sound you
would have heard in 1927."
The Spirit of St. Louis banks gently left, climbs steeply, starts circling the
field, reaches pattern altitude, and continues climbing, finally forming up with the
Curtiss Robin for a photo session. A few
orbits later it breaks formation and dives
into a low pass down the field. The crowd

VISITORS TO the Old Rhinebeck

Aerodrome take a step back in time
to the Golden Age of aviation at the grass
field in New York's Hudson River Valley.

It would seem impossible to believe that a replica of
something so iconic as the Spirit of St. Louis would
be just one of the amazing sights at New York's Old
Rhinebeck Aerodrome, but when you see a woodand-fabric aircraft from 1909 start up and hop into
the air, you catch your breath. How could such a
contraption fly-and who would want to try such
a thing? But that's the beauty and amazement of
Cole Palen's aerodrome. These old aircraft are the
precursors of all modern aviation. And they still fly.
The collection of vintage aircraft includes more than
60 models, such as a 1918 Fokker DR1 Triplane, 1917
Curtiss JN-4H, 1911 Curtiss Pusher Model D, and a
1910 Hanriot reproduction-and 15 to 20 of any of
these fly regularly at any given time. The aerodrome
is open May through October, and each weekend
beginning in June visitors can see the ancient aircraft
flying, enjoy old-fashioned barnstorming shows, and
take a ride in a 1929 New Standard biplane.
-JSW
WEB

www.oldrhinebeck.org

roars, then the Spirit climbs again. More passes follow, showing off the top of the wings, the bottom of
the wings, the speed, the noise.
A NEW SPIRIT

The sun starts setting behind rain clouds. The Spirit of
St. Louis carries no landing lights, and Old Rhinebeck is
an unlighted aerodrome. After one final pass, Cassens
lines up, pulls off power, and crabs the nose to the right
until the wheels touch the grass-on the centerline,
if the field had one. The airplane straightens and the
skid drags it to a stop, then it taxis back to center stage.
A couple of minutes later the engine dies cleanly and
Cassens emerges feet first, smiling and waving to the
flappers and swells cheering the first public, nonstop,
solo test flight of the new Spirit of St. Louis.
"I got a little bit off the centerline, but I straightened out once I got going. That was my first flight
taking off from that direction," Cassens says. "The talk
about it being very unstable is overexaggerated. If you
compare it with a Piper Cub or Cessna 150, yeah, it's
relatively unstable, but as far as the older airplanes go
it's relatively stable." The Spirit of St. Louis came before
harmonized controls, so it's all relative. "You have to fly
it constantly, but it's controllable and docile through
the stalls, so it handles pretty good," he adds.
Cooling off quietly on the grass, the nose of the
new Spirit of St. Louis turns pale amber. Like it would
have after Lindbergh's initial test hops in the original
Spirit of St. Louis. Before two nonstop cross-countries. Before the solo transatlantic hop. Thirty-three
and one-half hours that changed the world, which
turned it solid gold.
AOPA
PHIL SCOTT is an aviation writer and pilot living in

Poughkeepsie, New York. AOPA Senior Features
Editor Julie Summers Walker contributed to this story.
www.aopa.org/pilot AOPA PILOT | 57

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - September 2017