The Spirit of Adventure - Michael McCafferty

adventure, but I had no idea how I was going to do it. The first challenge was getting my
biplane over there.
The Waco, the type of biplane I owned, was designed for the “sportsman pilot”
according to the original factory literature (1935). It was not designed for long distance
flights. To fly the Atlantic, my Waco would need major modifications that would take a
lot of time to design and build, so I had to find another way. Plan B was to disassemble
the biplane, pack it into a shipping container, put it on a boat to Europe, then reassemble it
to go flying. When the summer was over, I'd reverse the procedure.
Of course, this would be an enormous logistical challenge as well as a paperwork
blizzard, and I hate paperwork, so I looked for someone else willing to handle all of those
details for me. Luckily, I worked out a deal with the Waco factory. They wanted to
display a Waco at the Paris Air Show, which worked perfectly into my plans of flying my
biplane in Europe. I agreed to let them display my biplane in the show if they handled all
the details and logistics involved in getting it there and back, including disassembly and
re-assembly. My sole responsibility was to cover the cost of shipping. It was a win-win
situation. We both wanted a biplane in Europe in the summer of ’97, and I was the lucky
one who was going to be flying it. The Paris Air Show was in June, and I was looking to
stay in Europe all summer, until it got too cold to fly. This was shaping up to be huge!
To get my biplane to Paris in June, I would have to fly my open-cockpit biplane to
Lansing, Michigan in the closing days of winter! As I now type these words, it seems like
madness, but at the time I was very enthusiastic about this first leg of my European
adventure. That flight took 10 days and I was the coldest I have ever been in my life. The
worst of it occurred in La Mesa, Texas when I was forced to land in 30 mph winds due to
rapidly deteriorating conditions. Safe on the ground, I was fascinated to witness my first
sighting of multiple tornadoes, up close!
Once the biplane was in the capable hands of the factory craftsmen, there was
nothing more I could do for the next two months except wait until it arrived in France.
This was a difficult time for me, because I had to endure several weeks of perfect spring
flying weather in Southern California without my biplane.
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