(This excerpt about the Harvard Mark IV aircraft XEN is from the biography Edward Hadgkiss: Missing in Life, an aviation adventure available from Mac’s Fireweed Books in Whitehorse, Yukon.)

Ed Hadgkiss is shown in the cockpit of Harvard XEN, 1968. The red flag next to the windshield usually stayed in the up position. It was a message to airport service people that the greedy gas guzzler needed refueling. Again!
(Photo by Jane Gaffin)

Ed loved to travel and he loved to fly. Up in open space, surrounded by infinity was exhilaration for someone who loved freedom...and adventure that was not always planned adventure.

Some people are possessed so strongly with a desire to do something, they must, whatever the cost, do that certain thing and will sacrifice everything else to attain it. But Ed did not view his desire as sacrificial. To him, nothing else mattered.

Although Ed could afford his airplanes because he wanted to, supporting the Harvard was somewhat akin to a part-time secretary trying to upkeep a mansion. After paying for the Harvard, plus his other plane, he was broke.

But wild, wonderful, fun adventures, indelibly imprinted and never to be erased from the memory, made him rich. Memories and experiences were commodities not bought with money and were worth the price of staying broke to pay for them. At the same time, he was gaining flying experience in a complex aircraft.

Ed was anxious to get into the air and to fly the Alaskan coast to Anchorage, where the Harvard would be a big attraction. Wherever he flew, the Harvard drew attention, especially from American aviation buffs. And the noisy airplane was a good ice-breaker and made meeting people easy...a pastime Ed enjoyed almost as much as flying. I was invited to go along for the ride, to give the plane backseat ballast and to keep Ed company, for I too loved to travel and, involuntarily, had become attached to the Harvard.

For me, a flight in the Harvard was like an exciting step back into history. And I was willing to pattern my traveling style to the barnstormers of yesteryears and eat meals cooked over campfires and sleep under the wing of an airplane.

Ed filled my life with the unexpected. And the trip would be as exciting as taking off on the wing of a misdirected boomerang: you never quite knew where you would end up or when you would come back.

Ed organized the outfit and stuffed the pockets of the flight suits with maps, pencils, knives and a camera. Weight was critical and packing had to be done carefully. Storage space was skimpy with room for little more than two bulky sleeping bags, survival gear and a tool box.

He had to consider little things: how many tools to take in case the Harvard needed maintenance; how much extra food to take if coastal weather soured and we were grounded for days.

We tried to see the invisible delays to calculate the amount of cash to take. I mentally conjured up the worst possible scenario and went to the bank. Then we were on our way.

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The hot August sun glared off the aquamarine ice fields below as the noisy Harvard disturbed the serene air space. A mid-afternoon refueling stop at Haines, Alaska, was behind us, and we were halfway to the next coastal stop.

Ed had already switched the fuel lever from the empty left wing tank to the full one and was working the wobble pump handle to ensure a free flow of fuel to the engine. Through the headsets intoned the radio voice identifier that guided the plane into the next Alaskan fishing village. The chant was as rhythmic as African drums and produced a finger-tapping beat: YAK-ah-tat Radio. YAK-ah-tat. YAK-ah-tat Radio. YAK-ah-tat. Twenty-five miles out Ed contacted Yakutat tower operator, who gave the velocity and direction of the wind, information for an altimeter setting, temperature and the number of the runway in use for landings.

A couple of small planes, shooting touch-and-go landings, were asked to leave the traffic pattern until the Harvard was on the ground. The tower operator, who knew the Harvard's cockpit was a busy place during landing, didn't want smaller planes getting their tail feathers chewed up by the bigger, faster plane. He gave X-ray-Echo- November, on a long final approach, a straight in.

Ed parked the Harvard beside the fuel pumps with the red flag near the windshield in up position. While Ed went up to the tower booth to talk about Harvards and fishing, Israelson's gas pumps ran dry as the thirsty Harvard sucked up the 80/87 octane in one wing tank. But the fuel truck was called to finish the job.

The next day not one piece of cotton was clinging to the azure sky when Ed filed his flight plan--a ritual he performed as naturally as dressing every morning. Through the wonders of electronics, Valdez would be expecting the Harvard's landing by a specified time.

Dave Kennedy heard the Harvard coming and waited beside his gas pumps, rubbing his hands in mock greed. The owner of Kennedy Air Service was a good Alaskan ambassador. He made visitors welcome and comfortable, for he knew Valdez weather and that the Canadian flyers would be staying longer than they intended.

Without asking our intentions he donated hotel accommodations: a wind-damaged, doorless hangar, occupied by a derelict amphibian, complete with running water and a sturdy outhouse. All had withstood the devastating Good Friday earthquake that had struck four years before.

Besides Alaska king crab and a thousand-foot railroad that employed one person fulltime, the main attraction was Old Valdez, riddled by the earthquake and was a display of tired and burned buildings, cracks in the earth, split trees and shattered glass.

Back inside Kennedy’s Hilton Hangar, Ed whipped up a supper of pancakes, sausages, eggs…and held out a cup of his famous coffee, strong enough to peel the silver plating from the teaspoon. The brew was accepted by Dave Kennedy, who had returned to spin Alaskan yarns for the Canadians. Inside, the doorless hangar glowed with a warmth of armour against the bone-chilling coastal rain.

When the fog crept out as silently as cat paws, the Harvard was on its way to the heart of the Matanuska Valley, a salad-green oasis of farms, sprouting with fruits, vegetables and grains.

A huddle of men, who had heard the Harvard coming, waited as it rolled along the airstrip and taxied off onto the grassy parking area.

Ed unravelled the headset cords, hooked the earphones above his head, and unbuckled the shoulder harness, stowing the straps neatly behind him. By the time he had unlatched the canopy handle and let the well-oiled mechanism of the greenhouse affair slide back, a large crowd had gathered.

The curious onlookers kept their distance and waited for him to step over the side of the cockpit onto the wingwalk and hop to the ground. He sauntered toward them in his blue flying suit, looking boyish next to the older men.

The banter immediately got down to shop talk about cruise and top speeds, Pratt & Whitney engines and gas mileage. The gasman had already run the pumps dry. Then the conversation easily switched to the bad economy, the poor growing season and the Good Friday earthquake, still on everybody’s minds and nerves.

A pilot, who owned a single-engine Bonanza that looked like a pink butterfly, offered a jolty blue flat-bed International stake truck for our convenience. And we drove to Sutton to accept an invitation to spend the night with the Baims. We had met Chuck in Valdez and spent a night on his fishing boat, the Alba.

The next morning we drove back to the airport, planning to make the short flight to Anchorage and spend a leisurely Friday wandering around, exploring.

A half dozen airport regulars were standing around the Harvard’s nose and watched solemnly as Ed approached. He sensed something amiss as he bounced toward them with purposeful, brisk steps.

But one man was impatient to pass on the bad news.

“Hey!” he called. “Ya gotta blown jug!”

The nine cylinders, rimmed by the bright-red cowling, were set in a radial configuration and designed to fire in a specific sequence, each one given a certain amount of work to do.

If one was not functioning properly, the others could not carry the extra load. If what the man said was true, the airplane could not fly with an engine that was incapacitated by a bad cylinder.

Ed did not change his gait as he walked straight to his antique friend. Helpful fingers pointed upward to the bottom of the cylinder, positioned left of top center.

Stretching full length, Ed reached up and swiped his finger across the metal as though examining a gigantic tooth that might need extraction. He briefly glanced at the black goo on his finger than stuck it in his mouth.

“Yeah,” he said, after a taste, emphasizing the word with a jerk of his head. “She’s slobbering oil alright.”

His statement was as casual as though he had noticed he was down to his last pair of clean jeans and needed to do a laundry.

There were immediate offers of advice from the men who felt obliged to pass on sage wisdom to the young pilot. There’s nothing can be done, they said, except change the jug that may have had an undetectable hair-line fracture and cracked while flying at heavier sea-level pressure. One of those things. Harvards cost big bucks to operate. If you can’t afford ‘em, shouldn’t fly ‘em.

They talked in hushed tones, giving instructions, telling how long it would take to find and order a Harvard cylinder. It had to be a Harvard cylinder; no other would fit. Hard to say how many hours would be needed to take this one apart and replace it with the new one. It could be days. It could be weeks. Lots of hours. Expensive. Maybe a thousand U.S. dollars.

Ed listened politely while studying the scuffed toes of his boots. His forehead furrowed deeply; his front teeth sucked at his lower lip. Occasionally, he glanced up from under dark brows.

When the men finished what they had to say, they drifted back to whatever they had been doing.

Ed turned to me. I had been mentally counting money. Between us, we did not have half the amount estimated to cover the cost of one cylinder. A thousand dollars was about a third of what the entire plane was worth.

Ed, who sensed my concern, had that knowing twinkle in his eyes.

“Nobody’s touching that plane except us,” Ed said. He knew I knew as much about changing a cylinder as I knew about performing heart surgery. “Let’s drive to Anchorage.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“It doesn’t cost any thousand dollars to change a cylinder,” he said. “And I’m not buying a new one. So you’ll have to find one from another big plane. If you can’t find one from a Harvard, an Otter cylinder should do.”

“What if I get the wrong one?” I was near panic, although I knew Ed was in control of the situation. But he had a special personality trait that turned things around and looked as though the other people were actually doing whatever was necessary to solve a problem. “Then you’ll just have to take it back and get the right one.” It was the teasing glint in his eyes and the angle he held his head that told me he was not going to let me make a mistake.

Anchorage was a hot, suffocating, concrete oven of of tall buildings. Before going shopping, Ed drove around to familiarize himself with the lay of the land.

Every Anchorage resident must have owned an airplane. All shapes, colors and sizes of airplanes were parked everywhere, even in back yards. Planes lined the runways in tiedown areas at Merrill Field, Anchorage International and dirt strips. Planes were lined up wingtip to wingtip as they crowded for position along Lake Hood’s shoreline. Heavy equipment dug out ground for more tie-down spaces.

Ed started his quest with the yellow pages, then telephoned companies for leads. As he made the rounds, he explained the problem and asked what was possible in interviews with airmotive people, who had no financial interests to be gained from the project. Ed’s first stop was at Northern Consolidated where a led was gained to a Mallard. At Air Power Overhaul he looked at the Mallard and latched onto a new lead for an Otter. At Sea Airmotive he found a cylinder.

Back to Air Power Overhaul. The cylinder needed repairs and did not pass its test. He returned the cylinder to Sea Airmotive.

Ed made a few more telephone calls but could not connect with the key people until he contacted Reeve Aleutian Airways. The encouraging voice on the other end said they had plenty of cylinders and might have something suitable.

There is a special camaraderie among aviation people, especially in the North, when a fellow pilot is in trouble. Ed was young, in trouble in a foreign country, and obviously broke if he was trying to support a Harvard. Ed, an easy person to like anyway, struck an immediate friendship with the Reeve man.

But the Reeve man was not going to do the work. He waved Ed and me to the back parts room where we worked among the endless rows of metal racks that displayed hundreds of gleaming cylinders in all shapes and sizes.

In the the cool dimness, we checked each one, from floor level up to the top shelf, then over one row, then down to the floor, over. Up. Over. Down. Over. Up. Over. Down. We touched, looked, poked, measured as we snail-paced along the shelves.

I found an Otter cylinder. But when lugged from the shelf, I noticed the defect on one side. The cylinder had a history. The Reeve man said the several rows of bent fins were souvenirs from falling off the shelf during the 1964 Good Friday earthquake. Ed thought it was a prize and asked for a price.

“You can have it,” said the Reeve man, confident the cylinder, which was not worth much money, would check out.

The price to change the cylinder had been reduced lower than Ed’s greatest expectations.

Back at Air Power Overhaul, on the other side of town, the cylinder passed the check test, except for being undersized by a miniscule amount no thicker than a line made by a pencil. The machine shops were closed for the weekend and could not work on the cylinder until Monday. No problem.

Ed bought a dollar’s worth of gaskets and sand paper. If he were willing to spend the time, it was possible to precision hone by sanding. But even if the walls were not perfect, the important thing was honing it down to a proper size.

The average person would be exhausted, hungry and want a night’s sleep before starting a heavy mechanical job. Not Ed, who did not procrastinate over projects he enjoyed.

Eager to tear into the engine, he pushed to get back to the airplane before the jaws of night clamped shut over the daylight.

A crunch and grind growled from the right rear wheel as a spring snapped on the brake shoe. With few simple tools, he repaired it. But during the delay the sky darkened, along with his mood, and erased his chances to work that night.

Early Saturday morning,Ed was refreshed and ready for the day’s challenge.

The sandpaper, a yellow-handled screwdriver and the Otter cylinder were placed on a brown blanket spread in front of the hangar door. My tedious job was to sand down the cylinder walls by a fraction and to straighten the bent fins.

Ed was perched on a stepladder, removing the bad cylinder. At various intervals, a dozen men strolled by to see how we were coming along with the work.

The men tried to talk sense to the pilot who had listened without hearing. They did not know it was not wise to tell Ed something was impossible for him to do and there were others for hire who could do it better. That would rile him to prove the impossible was possible.

Ed had served time learning the rules so he knew how and when he could bend and break them. Changing a cylinder was as simple a task as changing a bedsheet. And he had done his homework with the airmotive people about replacing the cylinder with one from another aircraft engine.

The men, who did not know Ed’s background or mechanical abilities, turned their appeals to me, presuming they could shatter my confidence and that I enough influence over the pilot to make him stop this folly.

They told me a cylinder could not be honed properly by hand. It needed to be done by machinery. It would never fit. Bent fins could not be straightened by hand and expected to cool the engine properly. The engine would overheat and blow before it finished a ground run-up.

I smiled. I had no knowledge of such things, other than what Ed had explained. I had confidence in his mechanical knowhow.

Besides, I was not the owner, the pilot nor the mechanic. They were silly to think I would tell Ed he did not know what he was doing and should hire someone else to do the job. I had agreed to do a job, and until he told me otherwise, I continued.

Occasionally,Ed interrupted his work to measure the cylinder. When satisfied, he polished the inside with fine-grade sandpaper then bent the fins straighter so the injury was not detectable.

Ed had worked all day and half the night while there was still lots of light. Finally, he slipped the good cylinder into place and was ready for a ground run-up.

Inside the cockpit, he set the mixture control, throttle and other levers. And the big prop started to swing as the engine leaped to life, then settled into the smooth sounds of one returned to mint condition.

He was satisfied with the run up and that the cylinder-head temperature, oil pressure and that all other needles behind the glass cages pointed where they should. The ground run-up had been successful.

Now the consensus was the Harvard would blow the jug when throttled to full power for take-off down the long gravel runway. But they gave the edge and conceded the Harvard might get airborne without blowing the engine but would never make the short flight to Anchorage. And for certain the engine would never hold together for the long flight to Whitehorse.

Ed and I had never discussed whether I would go or stay. It was naturally assumed that I would be on board. But the airport people tried to persuade me to stay behind. On Sunday, Ed went through the check, ran up the engine, checked the magnetos, waggled the controls tick and watched the aileron movements, pushed the rudder pedals, and checked the flaps. Ready to go, he notified flight service by radio. Increasing power gradually, the Harvard thundered down the runway, a proud and faithful machine.

Ed had become proficient on the rudders to overcome the tendency of the tremendous engine torque to pull the nose left. Too much overcompenstion on the touchy controls would send the capricious aircraft into a groundloop. He had learned to handle the Harvard with finesse and became a part of the cockpit.

The plane reached flying speed and the ground fell away. The watchers below grew smaller until they were colorful dots, then vanished from sight.

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On the final approach to the Whitehorse airport, Ed released the landing gear and the wheels came down that had been folded beneath the plane’s like a crane during flight. The rubber tires kissed home turf and ended a holiday that had extended four days longer than scheduled.

And the cylinder with a history remained in the Pratt & Whitney engine for the rest of the Harvard’s life.

Ed Hadgkiss feasts on Alaska King Crab in Valdez, Alaska, 1968. After a long flight he heated the crab and melted butter on the Harvard’s hot cowling, then invited the control tower gang to supper.
(Photo by Jane Gaffin)

The Harvard: Cylinder with a History is an excerpt from Jane Gaffin’s illustrated, northern adventure book Edward Hadgkiss: Missing in Life. It is available from Mac’s Fireweed Books in Whitehorse, Yukon, by calling the toll-free order line 1-800-661-0508 or visiting http://www.yukonbooks.com.

Author contact is jane@diarmani.com or visit her at http://www.diArmani.com. See related excerpts: The Cessna; The Percival Prospector; The Super Cub; The Harvard: Built to Crash; and The Harvard: Rock of Eternity.

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