FLAT-ENGINE MONOCOUPE Ron Testerman flies a rare, polished beauty with a distinguished family name.
In the fall of 1977, Ron Testerman and his partner decided that they'd just wash their Cessna 150 rather than repaint it that winter. While they were soaping it down, a stranger walked by and asked, "how much?" Without looking up from his sponge, Ron barked out a handsome price and the stranger, a non-pilot, disappeared into the FBO's office. A few minutes later he came out and said he 'd take it. "So my partner and I started looking for another airplane," said Ron. Ron is a commercial real estate broker from Roanoke, Virginia who didn't even have his private license yet when the Cessna sold itself. He and his partner asked an airline pilot friend to help them find a suitable replacement that would be a good airplane to learn to fly in and, "could do a little aerobatics". Under the heading "Monocoupe" in Trade-A-Plane they found N369H at Santa Paula Airport in California and bought it over the telephone. ''{' d been to Oshkosh and admired Monocoupes," said Ron, "although I didn't know what I was looking at at the time. My partner and I flipped to decide who would accompany our airline pilot friend to California to pick up the airplane and I lost. When they got it back to Roanoke I realized that our new airplane was one of the type that I'd been admiring at Oshkosh without ever thinking that I'd own one." The Cinderella story gets a little tarnished here. Ron says, "It looked real good but it didn't punch as good as it looked." After flying the airplane for only eight hours, Ron arranged for its annual inspection only to find that it wouldn't pass the punch test. Down it came for a rebuild and Ron and his partner bought a Cessna 170 in which Ron got his license. Ultimately, Ron split with his partner who kept the Cessna and Ron took on full ownership of the Monocoupe. Flat engine Monocoupes started when Franklin engines became available for less money than the radial Lamberts that were in use on Monocoupe Model 90s. The Franklin powered Model 90 AF was engineered by Robert Nesebar in 1941. Forty-four were produced in Orlando, Florida by the Monocoupe Aeroplane and Engine corporation, a division of Universal Molded Products. The U.S. Army Air Force ordered 19 of the airplanes for lend-lease to France as liaison aircraft. The French didn't take delivery of the airplanes until 1946, however. After the war, the Monocoupe name, which had bounced around quite a bit, came to rest in Melbourne, Florida. Robert Sessler built 10 Model 90 AL-115 Monocoupes there. The Model 90 AL-115 is a Lycoming 0-235 powered, 115-hp version of the Model 90 AF and the 10 examples were built in 1947 and 1948. The post-war bust took its toll on the company, however, and the last airplane to bear the Monocoupe name was the Meteor I, a Ron Testerman in flight over Lake Winnebago at Oshkosh '88. VINTAGE AIRPLANE 13
light twin that was tested but never certified. Ron has photographs that lead him to believe his airplane was the prototype used to certify the conversion from Franklin to Lycoming power. Sales records show that the airplane was purchased by a man in Appomattox, Virginia (about 100 miles from Ron's home). The man died before taking delivery, however, and the airplane sat in Lynchburg, Virginia for several months before the widow sold it to a man from North Carolina. "I met him at a fly-in there two years ago and he recognized the airplane, 38 years after he bought it," said Ron. The numbers were changed in the I 960s and Ron was unable to get back the originals during the rebuild. The entire project was quite an undertaking for someone who had never worked on an airplane before and Ron admits that he was, "very ignorant about what was involved," in restoring a Monocoupe. He wisely sought help from an excellent source. "A friend gave me a magazine article about Bud Dake restoring his yellow 'Coupe and it said that a man named Harmon Dickerson had built him a set of wheelpants for it. I needed wheel pants so I wrote to Bud. Well, the article was wrong about the wheel pants but Bud told me that I should contact Harmon anyway for assistance. When he told me where Harmon had just moved to, it came as quite a surprise-about 12 'miles from my house, on the same road even, in Blacksburg Virginia". Ron had sandblasted and primed the fuselage and was looking for someplace to work on the 32-foot, one-piece wing so he moved the whole project over to Harmon's place. He says he spent many a night there as he, "got Harmon to do about the whole thing and I assisted him". There was nothing seriously wrong with the airplane, according to Ron, although he did rebuild one aileron from scratch. All the wood was found to be in questionable condition and was replaced, as well as one piece of tubing near the tail post and the tailwheel mount. Basswood had been used for the noseribs and three or four had broken and were floating free. All were replaced with aircraft plywood. The leather for the seats came from a furniture center in Hickory, North Carolina and the instrument panel was built from antiqued aluminum by, "an ex- California drag racer holed up in a little rural town in North Carolina". Changes to the airplane include 14 SEPTEMBER 1988 Custom-designed instrument panel is set up to fly. Cleveland brakes and wheels and the l50-hp, 0-320 engine and metal prop. The engine had been converted from the l15-hp 0-235 to an 0-290-E2 of l35-hp with an Aeromatic prop when "It took 26 coats on Ron got the airplane. The l50-hp modthe fuselage ification was made from a field approval on Bud Dake' s yellow Coupe and 22 on many years before. The change is on a form 337 and is not an STC but a the wings." one-time approval. The stainless steel exhaust system is from a Decathlon. Ron says the Monocoupe represents Water off the Monocoupe ducks' back. Anyone know the origin of the logo?
Ron Testerman at the controls of his rare Monocoupe. about 3,000 hours' labor. He says, "They're very labor-intensive planes, especially with a deep finish." Ron's airplane is covered with cotton from a mill in South Carolina that he says is the only mill producing it. He used a butyrate dope in International Harvestor truck yellow. Ron says he, "did it 'til it looked right, which took 26 coats on the fuselage and 22 on the wings." Toward the end of the project, Harmon's wife, who was a professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State "Ron has put more than 400 hours on the airplane. " The profile looks a lot different without a round engine. University, took a position with the University of Missouri. They trucked the fuselage and wing to Bud Dake's home airport in Creve Coeur and assembled it there. Creve Coeur is an antique and classic hotbed with no less than six Monocoupes listed among the airplanes based there. Ron's Monocoupe was assembled in the last half of July 1981 and wasn' t quite ready for Oshkosh that year although he did fly it to the Fly-In at Blakesburg, Iowa. "It still had a few raw edges," he admits. Since then he has flown it to Oshkosh several times and as far as Oklahoma. Since 1981, Ron has put more than 400 hours on the airplane so it's no hangar queen. He says he flies it almost weekly from April through November or December but then there's always a few month's of bad weather, "Just when something needs fixing is when it usually gets cold," he says. The Monocoupe indicates 130 mph at 2,400 rpm and has very good shortfield performance. It holds 28 gallons of fuel in two wing tanks and has gas gauges from an old Ford, as do many airplanes of that vintage. Automotive parts were readily used on airplanes because of their availability. The Monocoupe does have flaps but Ron says that the lever is hard to reach so he seldom uses them, preferring to simply slip it in. Ron discounts horror stories about the ground handling and says that anyone with Luscombe time would have no problem. Ron himself is a 500-hour private pilot. Would he do anything differently if he had it to do over? Ron says, "I was under pressure to finish so I'd have something to fly. That's not the best way to build." To support his point, Ron mentions that he has had plans for a Skyote since 1977, the same year he bought the Monocoupe. In 1985, he made a materials list and in January 1986 he began collecting what he needed. He took a machine-shop course last October and has started cutting steel for the airplane. With poignant understatement he says, "I knew that if I never started it, it was for certain it would never get done." Ron has set aside Wednesday evenings to work on the airplane but sometimes gets up a little early, "to work for a half hour or so before I have to get out in the real world." That's an excellent endorsement for the pure joy of building. Coupled with the satisfaction of flying his rare and beautiful Monocoupe, Ron's aviation experiences couldn't get much better. VINTAGE AIRPLANE 15