A prop-er adventure

By Gretchen Ammerman

Oregon Coast TODAY

One frustrating thing about museums is the lack of price tags. You can’t wander through a colonial history museum, for example, see a cute writing desk from which Martha Washington penned letters and think, “Ah, that’s exactly the piece my office needs to tie the room together.”

That’s what so great about the plane owned by Dana and Tammi Andersen, a 1929 TravelAir bi-plane that spends part of most years in aviation museums like the Pearson Air Museum, the Tillamook Air Museum and the Western Antique Aeroplane and Automobile Museum. The rest of the year, it can be found in public airports like, currently, the Siletz Bay State Airport just east of Gleneden Beach.

“It’s a really rare model so the museums really want it,” Dana said. “A lot of these older planes that are privately owned live stored away in hangars and are flown maybe once or twice a year so no-one gets to see them, much less ride in them, and it’s really a shame.”

Dana and Tammi, both native Oregonians, come to the coast each summer to take people for rides in this impeccably restored piece of history.

Dana caught the flying bug from his father, Rodney Carl Andersen, known as Ramblin’ Rod to fans of his popular kids show, “The Ramblin’ Rod Show,” which ran from 1964 to 1997.

“I learned to fly from my dad who learned here on the coast,” Dana said. “I’ve had a private pilot’s license for over 30 years but I’ve been flying my whole life. But my dad was definitely the one who started the whole flying thing in the family.”

Dana described a bit of his dad’s childhood in Pacific City, which sounds almost like it was taken from the movie script of a biopic about Ramblin’ Rod.

“My dad and his friends befriended the local airport guy and learned to fly from him,” Dana said. “They would fly in little planes like cubs and take off and land on grass strips.”

About 20 years ago, Dana and Rod, who has since passed away, decided to look for a classic plane roughly Rod’s age that was worthy of giving people rides in.

“He was born in ’32 and this is a ’29,” Dana said. “So, this was as close as we could get to his birthdate.”

Professionally, Dana is an aircraft maintenance technician, the kind of background you want from someone who built a plane that is going to take you more than a thousand feet above the ground.

“An aircraft of this vintage is a full-time tinkering thing,” he said. “When we first got it, it was in a pile of parts and hadn’t flown since 1939.”

The project yielded a few fun surprises.

“When we were restoring the engine, we found signatures of the original mechanics,” Dana said. “They were all dated August 13, 1929, so we knew we had the real thing.”

Attempting as faithful a restoration as possible did have its challenges, though, especially since he was flying without a map.

“I couldn’t find examples of planes in original condition since so many of the planes of that era became crop dusters and there was no attempt at keeping original parts or adhering to historical accuracy,” he said. “There was no manual, no instruction booklets; I was just figuring it out as I went. It was a crazy challenge but really enjoyable.”

The TravelAir company was a leader in the industry in the early 1920s, spawning such well-known names as Cessna.

“These planes were extremely sought after and won a lot of races,” Dana said. “Unfortunately, the company got taken down by the stock market crash. But their planes were just about the best money could buy at the time. This one actually had electrical controls, which was very modern then.”

One of the first things to go when planes evolved was the open cockpit, which Dana said is not the experience you might expect.

“It’s really not as windy as everyone thinks it’s going to be,” he said. “It’s not that different from riding a motorcycle; believe it or not sometimes it’s even less windy than that. We have had bikers come by that have driven Harleys up and down the whole West Coast and they said they were surprised by the lack of wind.”

Another group that regularly prop themselves up in the front seat of the plane (the pilot flies in the back) are kids.

I interviewed the Andersens’ grandkids, nine-year-old Kaleb Jordan and seven-year-old Austin Jordan, who were visiting the airport, and they were as chatty as kids that age always are when a grown up they’ve never met starts firing questions at them.

“Have you taken a trip in your grandpa’s plane?” I asked Kaleb.

“Yup.”

“Is it scary at all?” I continued.

“Nope.”

I made one last try.

“Is it fun?”

“Yup.”

See what I mean? The kid just wouldn’t clam up.

Stranger-motivated shyness aside, Kaleb and his brother were absolutely charming when I asked if they’d be willing to be my models, and smiled and waved as I left saying “Thank you.”

Adorable.

“They love to ride in the bi-plane,” Tammi said. “I suspect they’ll both learn to pilot when they get a bit older.”

Dana and Tammi have been married about seven or eight years but been together about 20. Airplanes were not what brought them together.

“She got kind of thrown into the airplane thing,” Dana said. “She’s learned to pilot but she’d rather go fishing on the ocean. I guess that’s okay since she does all the hard work of running our business. All I have to do is fly the plane.”

Tammi does the bookings for the flight trips, and says they try to be as flexible as they can, especially since it doesn’t pay to be rigid when you are doing an activity as weather-dependent as small plane flights.

“We are pretty laid back and welcome walk-ups,” she said. “We go up whenever the weather is right for it; we get the most walk-ups in that space between when the weather is really great and the weather is really bad.”

They do try as hard as they can to adhere to some parameters, though.

“We usually won’t start flying until 9 am and stop by 6 pm,” Tammi said. “We strive to be courteous to the people that live near the airport.”

Something else the couple are rigid about addresses a more recent issue.

“We want people to know that we very thoroughly sanitize everything guests would come into contact with after every ride,” Tammi said. “Including the helmets. We take that very seriously.”

The couple have been flying almost exclusively from the Siletz Airport for more than 10 years.

“The runway here is a little bigger than others we’ve tried like the Newport Airport, which works for the wingspan of this plane,” Dana said. “Also, it’s not very busy so I don’t get in anyone’s way. I’m so slow that it’s hard sometimes to get out of the way of the modern planes. In 1929, though, this thing was fast.”

To find out more about NW Plane Rides or to book a trip, go to www.nwplanerides.com or call 503-701-7590.