The elegant Waco UEC

John Swander’s 1932 Waco UEC has an elegant yet commanding presence wherever he lands.

Swander of De Soto, Kansas, has flown his Waco about 600 hours since he completed its decade-long restoration in 1999. Throughout the years, he and his Waco have become a familiar and welcome sight at regional and national fly-ins.

John’s first memorable flight was to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh in 2000, where NC12471 was heralded as the Gold Lindy Grand Champion Antique award-winner.

Then in 2003, he participated in the National Air Tour, commemorating the early Ford Air Tours and celebrating the Centennial of Flight.

Built just 29 years after the Wright brothers’ first flight, this luxurious Waco UEC carried a price tag of about $6,000 when brand new. In today’s dollars, that’s around $123,130.

The 1932 UEC model was powered by a 210-hp Continental and had cleaner lines and a smoother windshield than its predecessor, the 1931 QDC. The UEC’s wing roots were neatly faired and the radial engine was streamlined with a speed ring.

NC12471 was owned and operated as an executive transport until 1939 by The Viking Flying Boat Company in New Haven, Connecticut, and changed hands nearly a dozen times through the decades, until John rescued it.

Mechanical Aptitude

Even as a kid, John always had an interest in mechanical things. He took to the skies when he was just 3 years old after his father learned to fly in 1954.

“Dad said I used to go for rides with him in that Taylorcraft L-2, sitting on my mom’s lap, and that I loved it except for when he’d make turns — but I don’t remember it. Then they had three more children, and the airplane went away pretty fast,” John recalled. “Then he got into racing jalopies, so as a young boy, I was always fascinated by race cars. But Dad still would occasionally go out and fly with other people. I can remember him and this other guy going for a ride in a Cessna 140, and they left me sitting in the car. Man, I wanted to get a ride in that airplane and it didn’t happen. I was fascinated by airplanes and Dad always had aviation magazines around the house.”

John bought a 1934 Ford in pieces when he was 15, and with a little bit of guidance from his father, rebuilt it by himself, along with a Ford flat-head engine. He got it running by the time he was 16, and got his driver’s license in it.

“About a year later, I met my future wife, Jodi, and we dated in that car. I still have that car to this day,” John said with a smile. “Then I got into off-road racing in the mid-1970s, doing a lot of dune buggy stuff. I started working at a Volkswagen dealership in 1969 and worked on Volkswagens all my life.”

A Return to Flying

John’s parents returned to aviation in 1974. His mother worked at Beech Aircraft and belonged to the Beech Aero Club. That meant family vacations were taken in brand new Bonanzas. He thoroughly enjoyed flying, and it wasn’t long before he departed from off-road racing and its hazards, and started taking flying lessons.

In 1978, John bought a Stinson 108 before he even had his private pilot certificate. He flew it for about four years, until he read John Underwood’s “The Stinsons, A Pictorial History.”

That inspired him to travel all over the United States, searching for a Stinson Reliant. In 1983, he bought a 1937 SR9E, powered by a 350-hp Wright Whirlwind, in Indiana. It didn’t have an interior, the charging system didn’t work, and it wouldn’t start when it was hot.

John addressed those problems and finished restoring it, but after a handful of years flying it, it became a challenge just to take care of it.

“By 1989, I decided I needed to sell the Reliant,” he said. “It was just way too big of an airplane — you couldn’t fly it or clean it or move it in and out of the hangar by yourself. A guy from Australia bought it from me at Oshkosh.”

History Revealed

While at Oshkosh, John learned of a Cabin Waco UEC for sale in Wichita. With money in hand from the sale of the Stinson, he went to look at the UEC. At first he wasn’t very impressed. It had been highly modified and worked so hard that it lacked the luster and beauty of its original glory. Then he saw some UEC photos in one of Raymond Brandly’s books on Waco aircraft and changed his mind.

By Thanksgiving 1989, he was the partially happy and partially dubious new caretaker for NC12471. He disassembled it, trucked it home, and started restoring it.

In 1995, a porthole into the Waco’s past opened up for John via a letter from aircraft historian Ev Cassagneres. Ev not only had some 1930s photos of NC12471, he had gone for a ride in it with pilot Franklin “Hank” Kurt in 1935 at New Haven, Connecticut.

“Wiley Post went for a ride in it one time because the ‘Winnie Mae’ was stranded in New Haven and he needed to get somewhere. There was a German soldier that went for a ride in it. It’s all really interesting to me,” said John. “The airplane was flown on a lot of 15 or 20 minute hops at night — people would pay to go for a ride and see the lights of the city.”

Historical photos show NC12471 in front of The Viking Flying Boat Company’s hangar at New Haven, and on Gay Head Beach at Martha’s Vineyard, where people were working on it after a forced landing.

There’s also a photo of the airplane when it was flown during a statewide air tour to promote aviation.

“It had the number 15 on it, so that’s why I chose 15 when I flew in the 2003 National Air Tour. I left that number on it after the Air Tour because it’s just part of this airplane’s history now,” explained John.

“The Connecticut 32 designation was the state registration number in the 1930s, so I had a stencil made and hand painted it on the airplane.”

Later on, the Waco earned its keep as a glider tug in Hobbs, New Mexico, and John has videos of it towing gliders in Texas.

Restoration

As it turned out, the Waco had never been completely restored before John purchased it.

“It still had the original fabric on the left gear leg from 1932, but the rest of it had all been patched up and recovered,” recounted John. “It had all of its original wood, so I could use all of that as patterns.”

John wanted to keep the project progressing, so while he worked on the fuselage and empennage, he had the wings built by Ed Sampson in Minnesota, then a gentleman in Missouri covered and painted the wings.

Fabricating the wheel pants entailed first building a wooden buck. John’s good friend, the late John Krekovich, was a world champion model airplane builder, and loved working with wood. He did all the woodwork on the fuselage, and worked with John to make the buck for the pants. The buck was sent to a gentleman in California who formed the massive wheel pants from three pieces of aluminum.

Upon close examination of Ev’s photos, John determined that the nav lights were something other than the typically-installed Grimes lights. So, starting with a hand-drawn design and the help of a friend’s whiz kid, a detailed design for the lights emerged. Aided by 3-D printing and CNC precision cutting, John soon had a set of period-correct nav lights for his Waco.

John finished the Waco in the Viking Flying Boat Company’s original color scheme, and brought part of the Waco’s history full circle when he gladly took a grateful Ev for a ride in it, some 60 years after Ev’s memorable childhood flight.

Easy to Fly

The UEC cruises around 115 mph and, according to John, flies like a round-engine Cub.

“If you can fly a J-3 Cub, you can fly this airplane,” he said. “It’s got super visibility. It’s not like the later Wacos where you’re completely blind when you’re sitting behind the panel. I can see between my cylinders because they don’t have pressure baffles.”

“It’s actually a very docile airplane — it doesn’t have a mean streak about it,” he continued. “It’s easy to land and it just jumps off the ground.”

A longtime member of the Antique Airplane Association, John has frequently flown NC12471 to Antique Airfield to the annual invitational fly-ins. He was happy to have his Waco featured among other historical company airplanes during the 2009 Corporate Wings-themed fly-in.

When he’s not flying his Waco — which, incidentally, is still immaculate after its resplendent restoration more than two decades ago — you just might see him driving one of his hot rods, such as his 1932 Ford Coupe.