Stearman Aircraft Story

My wife and I bought “793” in 1999 after I retired from being a firefighter/paramedic for 30 years. My wife and I learned to fly in a Cessna 120 in the early 80’s. We built a home, a hangar and an 1800 ft. grass runway. We both enjoy the ‘old’ planes and we accepted the tail wheel challenge.

We followed our A&P/IA guidance totally, rebuilding the PT-17 after it sat apart in a vacant hangar for many years. We hauled the parts and pieces home in a borrowed cattle trailer. We greatly under estimated the time it would take to clean, repair, and paint each part. Once a part was finished, totally finished, it was stored until the plane could be re-assembled. Neighbors would slowly see the number of finished parts increase and celebrate our progress. After twelve years of restoration, the plane was assembled, rigged, weighed, inspected and test flown on my birthday in September 2011. The plane is based at our home known as Square Air at McKinney, TX.