Written as a 1000 word short story contest entry, all of the participants were 58 years of age or older at the time the events depicted took place.
A 'Mile High Club' story reject.
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In the beginning general aviation was homebuilt aircraft and more popularly bargain basement priced World War One military surplus. As the availability of surplus dried up a new age dawned with minimalistic designs seeking to optimize efficiency in order to drive costs down. The most successful of these designs was C.G. Taylor's Cub design of 1930, but there were others.
Areronca (the Aeronautical Company of America) built 164 of Jean Roche's single seat C-2s and 454 two seat C-3s between 1930 and 1935. Clearly influenced by Alberto Santos-Dumont's bamboo framed Demoiselle (maiden), it was an intermediate step between an open cockpit parasol design and the later high wing cabin airplane. In fact, the Demoiselle very much resembles some of today's ultralights. An enduring concept, it was further developed by Jean Lepage into Le Pelican, and 700 more were made in Quebec through the 1980s.
For $1200 a private pilot could buy a brand new, Department of Commerce certified, factory made, personal airplane. Albeit one with a 36 hp two cylinder powerplant, plywood bench seat, oddly duplicated rudder pedals, and a two-position off-set control stick. It wasn't dual control - the pilot sat in the middle if she was alone and on the left if she had a passenger. They didn't have an actual instrument panel, instead three widely dispersed engine gauges and an altimeter were tucked under the padded cockpit opening, a pressure gauge on the left jury strut indicating airspeed.
Somebody told Paul and George about a C-3 that had been sitting forlorn behind a rancher's barn for the last 30 or 40 years, so of course they just had to go out and see it. The aircraft's covering, which was doped canvas, varied in condition from shredded to non-existent. Its wooden wings, exposed to the weather, were ruined although still held in place by the many rigging wires. The steel tube fuselage, including a locally-made leather covered padded bench seat, had fared a little better.
The engine was missing, having been sent out for a repair that was never completed, but the ship wasn't vandalized. If one looked around in the grass near where it was parked all the pieces that had fallen off over the years seemed to be there. It had its builder's plate, and the owner's grandson had all the paperwork. George and Paul had to devise a support for the wings as the rigging was removed, and it cost far more to have it trucked home to our hangar than it cost to buy it, but we owned a piece of history.