Wicked Old Birds Present Unique Flying Experience

There's nothing like the charismatic blend of vice, virtue, and vintage aircraft.

Friday, February 07, 2025 at 09:00 AM ET

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Instructor Joe Soligoy captured this image of Sam Weigel enjoying the fun of open-cockpit flying in a Stearman. [Courtesy: Sam Weigel and Joe Soligoy]

Key Takeaways:

The 1943 Boeing-Stearman Model 75, while simple in the air, is a notoriously challenging aircraft to land due to poor forward visibility and twitchy ground handling.
The Stearman was intentionally designed to be difficult, serving as a demanding primary trainer during WWII to quickly identify and filter out pilots lacking natural aptitude.
The author, an airline pilot, actively flies imperfect vintage aircraft like the Stearman to continually sharpen his fundamental stick-and-rudder skills, which he believes makes him a more complete and adaptable pilot.
Flying these demanding older planes, with their "vices" and lack of modern ergonomics, rewards pilots with improved honesty, humility, and commitment, a challenge often absent in modern, easier-to-fly aircraft.

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Over the last few weeks, I’ve been lucky enough to take several instructional flights in a 1943 Boeing-Stearman Model 75 (U.S. Navy designation N2S-3 Kaydet). This is my first formal training in anything of the biplane, open-cockpit, radial-engine, or warbird varieties, and it’s been a very interesting experience.

As World War II warbirds go, the Stearman is simple in the extreme, and there are no great procedural challenges to mastering the airplane. In the air, it is basically a big J-3 Cub, and as I have about a hundred hours in that venerable type, the control feel and response is comfortably familiar. Maneuvers and stalls are a joy, and takes all of about 10 minutes to learn well for anyone used to older ships with a lot of adverse yaw.