Don
Funke attaches the rudder to the reconstructed fuselage of the 1918
Thomas-Morse S4 Scout airplane that The Ithaca Aviation Heritage
Foundation is restoring. The plane will will be on display Sunday at the
Cortland Airfest at the Cortland County Airport.
PHOTO CREDIT: SIMON WHEELER
DRYDEN — In an anonymous, commercial-grade building just outside the Village of Dryden, history is being remade.
Since 2010, a group of volunteer aviation enthusiasts have been busy restoring a Thomas-Morse S4 Scout, more affectionately known as a “Tommy.” More than 600 of the planes originally rolled out of the former Emerson Power Transmission facility on South Hill between 1917 and 1918, back in the days when that building was known as the Morse Chain Co. and Thomas-Morse Aircraft Corp. plant and Ithaca stood at the forefront of aviation manufacturing.
The single-seat “Tommy” was used to train pilots for aerial missions in World War I, but never saw active duty itself. Only a dozen or so have survived, and those exist mostly as museum pieces. The restoration has been a painstaking, but educational, experience for the Ithaca Aviation Heritage Foundation, which spearheaded the project a decade ago.
“We’re learning as we go,” said IAHF president Don Funke. “It’s not like we’ve done this before. So everything you touch is research.”
The plane’s fuselage has been almost completely restored and will be displayed publicly for the first time from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at the Cortland Airfest at Cortland County Airport.
“It’s virtually completed,” Funke said. “But the detail work has to go into that yet, fitting cables, fitting the engine, fitting the controls. Rigging. A tremendous amount of hours. What I call finish stuff. It’s not going to look a whole lot different after it’s got another few thousand hours put on it.”
The Tommy utilizes a “wood, wire and rag” construction, hence its current skeletal look. Once all the components have been restored, the plane will get its skin: the original grade-A cotton cover.
“The bare bones without a covering on it, that’s beautiful,” Funke said. “I think it looks better.”
While the fuselage in its current state may look and feel frail, Funke maintains the Tommy was a sturdy ride.
“The way that it’s trussed together, much like a bridge, is what really gives it its strength,” he said. “Typically, the wood holds things apart. There’s not too much structural integrity in the wood itself.”
The tail feathers will be added next. The rudder and vertical stabilizer have been restored, while the horizontal and elevators are still being worked on. The ailerons, which are the flaps that control the roll of the airplane, are being laid out now.
The plane did not have its original vintage wings when it was donated by Dr. William N. Thibault of San Diego, so a new pair were made from scratch. Funke aims to keep 98 percent of the original components, with the rest carefully fabricated after meticulous research.
Facility space for the restoration in Dryden was provided by Albert “Skeeter” Heidt, an avid collector and restoration buff, after Emerson Power Transmission closed its South Hill Plant in 2010. When the plane was moved to its current location, the IAHF was able to take some of the original equipment used to manufacture the planes to the new facility.
Three generations
A core group of a half-dozen people work on the plane two full days a week and are assisted by dozens of community volunteers. Machinists, mechanics, metal fabricators, artists, woodworkers, engine and propeller specialists, suppliers, electrical experts and upholsterers are just some of the resources involved in the effort, with a number of local businesses fabricating custom parts. And IAHF actively seeks to bring area teenagers into the restoration process because it’s through them that Ithaca’s aviation history will live on.
“That was one of our goals when we set this program in motion 10 years ago. We want three generations. We want teenagers, we want their parents, and we want these old (guys) like myself,” Funke said with a laugh. He said few Ithacans are aware their city was one of the largest suppliers of aircraft for World War I.
“We’re living in a time when that heritage and that history is being lost,” he said. “And what we hope to accomplish here is preserve that and restore that and bring it on to the next generation.”
On Wednesday, 12-year-old Chris Smith, of Cortland, spent his morning rendering and routing the bottom of the plane. He’s been working on Tommy for a month now, building up his varnishing and sanding skills. The work has gone hand-in-hand with his interest in history.
“With history, when you go back through it, you always find something new that you haven’t seen before,” he said. “And it’s just like digging in a mine and finding new jewels every time you dig in the same spot.”
Chuck Wynns just moved to Newfield from Oregon a couple of weeks ago. He immediately leaped into the restoration thanks to his friendship with IAHF board member Jim Rundle. Wynns is the first to admit he has no practical knowledge of how to restore an airplane. What he does have is curiosity, enthusiasm and candor.
“I’m learning from scratch,” he said. “I can add, subtract, multiply and divide, and I know how to work with fractions. That’s it. And I’m terribly afraid of losing fingers and thumbs. Fortunately, Don is very safety conscious.
Wynn has been helping build the carlings that will fit underneath the plane.
“A lot of this is very creative work,” he said. “How are we going to draw these angles? How are we going to construct them? This is not automatic stuff. You don’t just feed the wood in and it comes out right.”
Looking for daylight
Funke, at 77 years old, said he was a late bloomer himself, having gotten his pilot’s license after he retired, when he was almost 65.
He estimates Tommy’s restoration will be finished in two to three years, just shy of the plane’s 100th birthday, and by the time it’s completed, it will have taken more than 10,000 hours of volunteer labor.
“A lot of that is research, learning and just having fun doing it,” he said. “We are enjoying the journey.”
His ultimate hope, though, is that this Tommy will once again take to the sky, even if only briefly.
“Just one time I’ve got to see that much daylight underneath the wheels,” he said, spreading his thumb and index fingers a few inches apart. “Then I’ll say mission accomplished.”
Story and Photos: http://www.shreveporttimes.com
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