EAA Sport Aviation - October 2009

Most of us can still visualize the flying machine that made our hearts skip a beat the first time we saw it. Some of you may have

fallen in love with the fabric-covered biplanes

that roared across the sky during the golden age

of flight. For others it was the throaty rumble of

a smoke-belching warbird. Whatever your taste in

airplanes, one thing is sure; you never forget your

first airplane.

Jim Jansa, EAA 19739, grew up in Miles, Texas.

As a youngster, he chopped cotton on the family

farm during World War II. That’s hot, sweaty, and

backbreaking labor, but Jim spoke about his child-

hood with a smile as wide as his home state.

“I was a barefooted 10-year-old hoeing cotton in the hot sun, and I

enjoyed every minute of it,” Jim said. It wasn’t the actual work he looked

forward to; it was watching the Army Air Forces cadets in their PT-19s and

BT-13s that flew overhead and performed spins and mock dogfights with

one another. “I knew right then and there that I wanted to be a pilot when I

grew up, and I spent the rest of my childhood figuring out how I was going to

accomplish my goal,” Jim said.

The PT- 23 when first purchased in 1960 for $950.

After graduating from high school, Jim enrolled at Texas A&M where he eventually received his Air Force commission. In May 1955, Jim volunteered for active duty and began his primary flight training in Bartow, Florida. He remained enamored with the early World War II primary and basic trainers that he tracked across the Texas sky as a youth. But as a newly minted first lieutenant, Jim received what he called a dream job. He was selected to fly the North American F- 86 Sabre.

Eventually, Jim was stationed at the Plattsburgh Air Force Base in upstate New York where he transitioned from jet fighters into helicopters. Jim also became a civilian flight instructor and taught flying at the base’s aero club. He soon became fast friends with fellow Air Force pilot Harold “Hal” Warren and learned that Hal not only had flown the mighty B- 24 Liberator during World War II

but also loved to fly as much as Jim did. The two entrepreneurs decided to branch out and open a civilian flight school at a nearby airport to help supplement their Air Force income.

“We bought a couple of Aeronca Champs and started to instruct in them,” said Jim. In the summer of 1960, Jim wandered up to Bristol, Vermont, and found a Fairchild PT- 23 for sale for the lofty sum of $950. “It was love at first sight; an open cockpit and a radial engine,” Jim recalled. “The thing I liked most of all about the PT- 23 was it reminded me of my childhood, standing in a dusty cotton field watching those young men doing loops and rolls above me. I bought the PT- 23 right then and there.”

Although Jim had a genuine love and appreciation for the ex-military trainer, he did not purchase it to make it a hangar queen. Instead, he immediately put the PT to work as a banner tower. Located close to Lake Champlain with its crowded summer beaches, it was easy to convince the owners of local grocery stores and soft drink companies to pay him to tow colorful banners over the heads of the hungry, thirsty visitors.