Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
The End of an Era (and the Beginning of Another)
As I write this, I am sitting in a cut-rate motel near Lakeland, FL. I have finally seen, in person, my new airplane. It is lovely. It is a biplane. It is a Marquart Charger. I'll take a test flight tomorrow, and sign all the documents to make it mine.
I knew when I bought Norbert the Champ that it wouldn't be my airplane forever. I knew it was something of a starter plane, though I didn't have a specific path forward in mind. I kind of figured I'd end up selling it to get an IFR-capable plane, so I could get my instrument license to facilitate flying down to visit my parents more often.
The thought of replacing it with a Charger is pretty damn cool.
But it brings to mind all the neat stuff I've done with Norbert. We flew to Oshkosh, spending three weeks traveling most of the way across the country, and seeing the world's biggest airshow. That was 2019. Before that, in 2017 and 2018, we did two big trips to California, one of them to visit my brother in LA, the other to visit my cousins in the Bay Area, and my friend Alex in Humboldt.
I've taken Norbert up to the San Juan islands more times than I can count. I've flown many friends (though not lately), taking them up for a little trip somewhere (out to the northwest tip of the state, at Quillayute, or up to the islands, or down to Olympia to pick up a friend just so we could go up to Port Townsend for pie). So much pie. I have eaten so much Spruce Goose Cafe pie because of Norbert.
In many ways, it is an ideal little plane for me. It's small and unimposing. It's slow, but also docile and forgiving, and kind when the pilot might not be the most coordinated klutz in the sky. It's classy looking, in its way, with the poorly conceived but very attractive black and green dope (lovely to look at, but exactly the same colors as the scene of a crash in so many places around the PNW where there are trees, making perfect camouflage; the opposite of what you want in a rescue situation). It's very well-equipped, now that I've had my nefarious way with it: a new ADS-B transponder, a new radio, and a new engine monitor, plus it's been well kept up and stored in a very protected hangar. I like to think, even electronic toys aside, that I'm selling it on better than I found it.
For that is the final calculus: I must sell Norbert the Champ. I'll have a for-sale page up soon. I can't afford to keep two airplanes, so the old one has to make space for the new one. It's been a very good plane for me, and I will always regret letting it go, but I would also regret letting this new Charger get away, and it offers me a great set of new opportunities, chief among them having an actual living, breathing Charger to examine to see how it's built; and giving me the opportunity to build up hundreds of hours on a Marquart Charger, making the first flight of the Charger I'm building much less of an Event than it might otherwise be.
So it is with great fondness that I consider this to be the final days of my time with Norbert the Champ. We've done wonderful things together, and I know you will go on to the next owner who will discover all the wonder and happiness to be had by puttering about the sky at a leisurely 85 MPH.
Posted at 17:49 permanent link category: /aviation
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater