By Joseph Thalman, EAA 570237
To celebrate 50 consecutive years of fly-in conventions in Oshkosh, we’re featuring Stories of Oshkosh told by attendees remembering their special moments at EAA’s long-standing home. If you or someone you know would like to share your own Story of Oshkosh, email editorial@eaa.org.
My father, Bernard (Bernie) Thalman, EAA 11495, first attended the EAA fly-in convention in Rockford, Illinois, in the early 1960s and has not missed one yet. I’ve only missed one show in my 52 years.
My father met John Thorp and really liked what he was talking about. When the plans came from John for the T-18 my father got to work. He built N2911 in four years and it first flew in 1967, which was the year I was born. He attended all of the Rockford conventions with that Thorp. I was lucky enough to join in for the 1970 show in Oshkosh although I don’t have much in the way of memory of it.
Bernie worked as a young man at Allen Aircraft Radio but became a fireman with a number of friends. He worked a side job as an avionics technician at Palwaukee Airport (now Chicago Executive Airport) in Wheeling, Illinois, mostly to get access to discarded radio parts. In the 1970s he built N14BD, a BD-4. Both the Thorp and the BD were the envy of all due to the avionics, including radar altimeter and LORAN.
Bernie was EAA Chapter 89 president for many years. He would fly the Thorp to other chapter meetings, land, take the instrument panel out of the airplane, bring it into the meeting with a power supply, and show everyone how to hook up, install, and use the avionics. Then he’d reinstall it in the plane and fly home. He still loves doing this at 84 years old.
We were involved in a crash with that Thorp T-18 in 1978 in Bristol, Wisconsin. There were only minor injuries but substantial damage to the aircraft. The reconstruction entailed rebuilding most parts. So, every time he made a part he made two. He figured if he ever damaged the aircraft again, he would have a ready stock. In 2001 he decided the parts needed to go from the basement so he bought an engine and, with some left over avionics, he created N2912. We now have two nearly identical Thorp T-18s.
The BD-4 was sold but we still have the two Thorps. I grew up flying them and got to fly them to college where I enrolled in ROTC. I became an Air Force F-16 pilot, instructor pilot, test pilot, combat pilot, and was privileged to bring the aircraft to the EAA Oshkosh 1995 show for the week. I spent 10 years in the Air Force and 2,000 hours in the F-16, and the past 20 years at United Airlines now flying the 777. In the past 30 years I’ve flown dozens of aircraft to and in the AirVenture shows including Chuck Greenhill’s P-51s, Lou IV and Geraldine. I now fly my homebuilt that I completed in 2011, a Murphy Rebel N2913. The current joke is we can’t build another aircraft until N2914 comes available.
My father is excited (as much as an 84-year-old can get) at the prospects of spending time during the week of AirVenture 2019 in front of his airplane at the Brown Arch. He has done this many times before. My father and I will be flying to AirVenture 2019 in the Thorp T-18 that we flew to the EAA Oshkosh 1970 so many years ago. The only differences will be that we’ve swapped seats and the Dynon SkyView system, which was not even a dream in 1970. I can’t imagine there are too many father and son combinations that can say they flew the same homebuilt airplane to the 1970 convention and the 2019 EAA AirVenture Oshkosh.