“Radials at Rest” Vintage Biplanes at Blakesburg 20 x 30 in

A late summer afternoon on the grass at the Antique Airplane Association’s annual fly-in. A red Waco biplane sits in the foreground, its polished cowling wrapping around the exposed cylinders of an air-cooled radial engine. The sculpted exhaust stacks and streamlined wheel pants, pure 1930s styling, hug the airframe close to the grass. Beyond it, a row of Boeing Stearman trainers in their unmistakable Navy yellow stretches across the field. Built in Troy, Ohio, the Waco F-series defined the look of American sport biplane flying in the early 1930s, and surviving examples remain among the most coveted aircraft in the antique community. The Stearman Model 75 that fills the background came a few years later, designed in 1934 to become the primary biplane trainer for the United States Army Air Corps and Navy in the years leading into the Second World War, and tens of thousands of American military pilots learned the fundamentals of flight in its open cockpits. Each Labor Day weekend, surviving examples of both gather on a grass strip in southeastern Iowa, where the antique airplane community has met since 1971 to fly, to display, and to keep these machines in the air rather than behind museum ropes.