By Budd Davisson, EAA 22483
This story first appeared in the January-February issue of Vintage Airplane.
“I didn’t even know what a Comanche was,” Lee Hussey said. “I’d never actually seen one until a friend who was looking to buy one wanted to sublease a hangar I’d had. I was renting and looking for a low-wing at the time, and after he told me he was looking at a Piper low-wing, I asked him if he wanted a partner. After a couple days he called and told me to go look at it. As I opened the door and sat in the cockpit, I realized it was approximately 4 inches wider than the 172 I had previously owned. Though it was in rough shape, I knew it was the one for me. I couldn’t wait to find out what the 250 meant on the side of the cowling. I was green as grass back then and didn’t even know that it meant 250 hp. Wow!”
Lee, of Martinsville, Virginia, was about to experience a radical change in his aeronautical life.
He said his initial exposure to airplanes was when he was around 12 years old at a beach house on the North Carolina shore. “There would be airplanes landing on the beach. Most were Cessna 170s or something similar,” Lee said. “That was very impressive to me, but a year or two later, I remember seeing a V-tail Bonanza and its low wing looked so impressive to me. I remember telling a friend, ‘One day I’m going to be able to fly something like that.” That’s a pretty big statement for a young kid.
Lee didn’t start to learn to fly until 1978, when a neighbor, who was a new car dealer, asked if he and his brother Les would be interesting in buying into his C-172.
“I had just paid off my first car, a used Corvette, and buying this airplane would be cheaper than the Corvette was, so I bought into it even though I didn’t know how to fly,” Lee said. “My younger brother, Les, soloed first, and I was so proud of him, I could hardly stand it! Even though I couldn’t fly it, I did own an airplane, or at least part of one, and often someone would say, ‘I hear you own an airplane,’ and I’d take them out to my hangar and show them. They, of course, then [would] ask me when could I take them flying. I replied by saying, ‘I don’t even know how to crank it, much less fly it,’ but that was about to change.”
Lee and Les got their pilot certificates in July 1978 — just a week apart from each other.
“We flew the C-172, but as the years went on, I found I was flying it less and less. I hated to admit it, but I was getting a little tired of the high wing and wanted something else,” Lee said. “Then, our original partner, who was getting on in years, sold the airplane. That was 1987. But I held on to the hangar while I thought about getting another airplane.”
Shortly thereafter, dreams of low-wing airplanes that had started with the childhood Bonanza encounter danced in his head.
“I wanted a low-wing airplane, and I was figuring on a Piper of some kind. Maybe an Archer or Arrow, if I could afford it. I still had the hangar. That’s when a friend approached me about subleasing the hanger, and I saw my first Comanche,” Lee said. “We weren’t very far into our discussions about subleasing the hangar when he asked if I had any interest in going halves with him as a partner. My half would be $8,000. So, he got a hangar and I got half a Comanche.”
That was 1988, and what Lee didn’t know was that the Comanche would rekindle his interest in airplanes in a big way.
“While I was flying the 172, I was in the air, but that was it,” he said. “For whatever reason, I never really connected with it mechanically, which is a little strange. I say that because, when I was going through my dad’s military papers after his death, I found that he had been a crew chief on P-40s in Iceland during World War II. I didn’t know that, and his related civilian occupation was an airplane inspector. He was good with his hands, and he must have passed some of the mechanical interest and the capabilities on to me. So when I started flying the Comanche, I suddenly saw it as something more than a machine. It had all these interesting systems. The constant-speed prop. The retractable landing gear, etc. Plus, it had terrific performance compared to the Skyhawk. I flew the 172 as little as 15 hours a year, but I’ve been flying the Comanche close to 150 hours a year. I flat fell in love with it. And along with that, I rediscovered flying and fell in love with the machinery involved along with the camaraderie of other Comanche owners.”
In rapid succession, Lee got his instrument rating, his commercial certificate, and then his CFI and CFII. The airplane turned out to be a stimulant to his flying, and he became borderline addicted to working on his airplane at least as much as he flew it.
“The first thing I did was put a new interior in it. On most of the projects, which became many, I’d be in there getting my hands dirty while an A&P was looking over my shoulder so I didn’t do anything wrong. At the same time, I rebuilt the landing gear, installed toe brakes and single-fork legs. I removed the LORAN and installed a GPS. Installed strobe lights, copper cables, and upgraded various instruments.”
Up to that point, although he’d been in aviation for some time, Lee had never been to a major fly-in. He corrected that by going to the SUN ’n FUN International Fly-In & Expo in 1994.
“Looking back, it’s hard to believe how little I actually knew about aviation. That trip really opened my eyes,” he said. “I didn’t even know what a showplane was, but I definitely found out on that first trip. I remember looking at a P-51 Mustang and was marveling at all of the detail work done in the wheel wells and saying to myself, ‘I can do that to mine.’”
Then, Lee found that in aviation he could be a participant, rather than just a spectator.
“That same year I entered the Sun 60 Race,” he said. “I didn’t expect to win anything, but it looked like fun. Miraculously, I actually came in third with Curt LoPresti, flying one of his dad’s highly modified Comanches, coming in first. He did right at 220 mph, and I managed 202 mph. I met the legendary airplane modifier Roy LoPresti, and he became a friend and a mentor. I learned so much from him it’s hard to believe. Plus, I had won my first trophy. It was no big deal, but to me it was a huge deal, and I think it affected much of what I did to my airplane from that point on. I looked at everything like a judge would, concentrating on the smallest detail. It was fun!”
Increasingly, with all the work he put into the airplane, Lee began to think of it as “his” airplane, not one of which he only owned half. His partner agreed, so in 1994, he bought him out.
“I had the engine and paint done in 2003 and took that opportunity to detail the firewall forward,” Lee said. “I did everything as if I was preparing it for a show. I’d removed and painted or polished every part I could get to. Then I started on the wheel wells doing the same thing. It seemed to pay off.”
In 2008, Lee’s Comanche won Outstanding in Type at SUN ’n FUN.
“I loved that, but said to myself, ‘I can do better. I can do more,’” he said. “And I found myself removing screws to polish them. I took the rubber strips off the Adel clamps to polish the metal. Every connector was polished. What I couldn’t polish, I painted until it shined. I couldn’t stop myself and didn’t try. The result was I got Best Custom Contemporary the next year at SUN ’n FUN. That really got me excited, but there was so much more work to do.”
Although it sounds as if Lee was obsessed with building a winner, that was actually tangential to his flying the socks off the airplane. At no point did he put it down for an extended time while rebuilding this or that. It was an ongoing project that he enjoyed flying between modification stints.
“In 2006, after thinking of the airplane as a show machine, I consciously decided to do nothing but fly it and enjoy it,” he said. “I did put in an S-TEC autopilot with a Garmin 430, which I regard as the best money I’ve spent on the airplane at that time. It made going places really easy and enjoyable.”
Another upgrade that improved cross-country travel was the fuel capacity.
“One of the trips my wife and I made a lot was to see her mother in Florida,” Lee said. “I couldn’t make it in one leg and always had to stop for gas. I don’t believe in pushing my fuel limits and always land with plenty just-in-case fuel. But, in 2013, I decided to eliminate that pesky fuel stop by installing Osborne tip tanks that held 15 gallons each and gave me another two hours of fuel for 90 gallons total. Aircraft Engineering Inc. in Bartow, Florida, made that possible, and I couldn’t be happier with their craftsmanship. I could make St. Pete, Florida, easily with fuel to spare.”
Lee said that making upgrades to the Comanche became almost habitual.
“It seems as if once I start working on the airplane, I have a difficult time stopping myself,” he said. “A few years after I did the tip tanks, I was looking at the panel and said, ‘Oh, the heck with it! I’m going to do something about it.’ The panel had been driving me nuts for years. Although I’d put in a little new equipment, it was still an old-fashion panel with the 1960-style arrangement: the radios on the far left of the panel. This was 2016, and I remembered that 1988 radios were much cheaper back then than the new stuff today. But, I had been active in the Civil Air Patrol for years and was a check pilot in their 182 that was equipped with a Garmin 1000 glass cockpit. And I love it. However, the G1000 wasn’t available for older airplanes. It was only sold to manufacturers building new airplanes. They did, however, have the Garmin G500 that was designed for retrofitting.
“By this time, I was moving into the 60s age group. That’s a time when we’re supposed to understand the value of a dollar and don’t do financially foolish things. But, this panel had been on my bucket list for far too long and I decided, it’s now or never, and said, ‘I don’t care what it costs, I’m going to do it,’” Lee said. “I knowingly ignored the fact that doing the panel would cost more than I had paid for the airplane, and I’d have far more tied up in the airplane than it was worth. But I didn’t care. I was only going to live for just so long, and I wanted that panel. This airplane is going to stay with me for the long haul, and you’ll know it’s for sale when you see my obituary in the paper.”
Carolina Avionics & Aircraft Interiors in Salisbury, North Carolina, did the avionics honors including fabricating a thoroughly modern panel that held just about every new piece of equipment Lee could find. This included the Garmin G500, a GTN 750, GTN 650, a GTX 345 ADS-B transponder, L3 ESI-500 for the backup instruments, and a JPI EDM-930, which gave Lee all the engine instruments. When he was done, the only round face in the panel was the S-TEC 30 autopilot control head and a chronometer; he put a square bezel on top of those two items.
“When we were done with the airplane, it was exactly what I had envisioned in my mind. I absolutely couldn’t have been happier with it,” Lee said. Of course, I became even happier when it was awarded the trophy for Grand Champion Custom Contemporary at SUN ’n FUN in 2017 and followed that up with Reserve Grand Champion Custom Contemporary at [EAA AirVenture] Oshkosh a few months later. 2017 was a terrific year for me and my old airplane. Now I can settle down and just enjoy it. However, Reserve Grand Champion isn’t Grand Champion. I wonder if I. …”
It has often been said that aviation is an incurable, progressive disease. Obviously, we don’t have to search very far to find examples that prove that.
Budd Davisson, EAA 22483, is an aeronautical engineer, has flown more than 300 different types of aircraft, and has published four books and more than 4,000 articles. He is editor-in-chief of Flight Journal magazine and a flight instructor primarily in Pitts/tailwheel aircraft. He is a regular contributor to EAA’s magazines.