Frank's Storch is an original German machine fitted with Morane metal wings. As originally equipped, it had a mount for a flexible machine gun sticking backward out of the top of the rear canopy glass. It was manned by the third passenger kneeling on the back of his folded seat. Frank didn't have the third seat installed. Because of the way the side glass is angled out, all passengers have a nearly unobstructed, straight down view of the ground

The rural runway measured just a tad over a thousand feet, most of which was a narrow path whittled through the trees. The wind was gusting crosswise, so I decided to put off the actual flying until the wind figured out which way it was going to blow. While we were waiting, Frank gave us a tour of his farm/workshop/Tiger Moth-ranch. I envy him his ambition and geographical location. How many of us have dreamed of a little place in the country, the feel of autumn closing in as we walk out to our workshop to do a little more doping or rib-stitching on our latest project!

A few hours later, we ventured forth and decided it was time to go Storching. Except for taking a long time to get the cylinder head temperature into the green, the inverted Argus V-8 started and preflighted just like any other engine, only it had a definite Teutonic sound. More of a growl than anything else.

I’ll have to admit that as I rumbled through the grass to the end of the runway, I couldn’t have felt more out of place if I had tried. There was nothing about the airplane that was even vaguely reminiscent of anything else I had flown. You sit so high with so many tubes and frames cutting through your view that for a brief second, I had the feeling that I was perched well up in the branches of an old apple tree. And I was about to fall out.

You’re sitting there, your hand wrapped around an impossibly tall stick while your feet are spread wide and held to the aluminium foot prints by straps. I pointed the nose into the cut in the trees and decided it was time to find out what the Storch was all about.

Frank said on takeoff to keep it on the ground until I had 40 knots indicated and then to yank like crazy. He said to forget about finesse. It called for brutish control applications. Aside from the size, he said, it flew like a Cub. I disregarded the Cub analogy and locked onto the 40-knot figure. I started the throttle forward and the exhaust tone of an old circle-track stock car rumbled over me and the airplane lunged forward. I pushed forward with the stick in an effort at raising the tail, but nothing was happening. At first I thought the tail must weigh a ton. The stick pressures were enormous. In fact, I found I could barely move it with one hand, so I wedged my shoulder against the seat and really gave the stick a shove. The tail sagged into the air but even as the tailwheel left the ground, 40 knots showed up on the clock. I relaxed just a little and suddenly found myself above the trees moving vertically, indicating 60 knots, which was the top of the white arc and 20 knots above climb speed. At that point, the elevator pressures had disappeared, so I guess the takeoff position marked on the trim indicator is what's needed for climb out. The trim control changes the angle of incidence of the entire stabilizer, which is gigantic, so it’s really effective.

I cranked the 20 degrees of takeoff flaps up and turned downwind to try for a landing. Only then did I realize how tiny a runway looks when it's only 1,000 feet long and two-thirds of it is a narrow slash going through a dense forest. If this was a STOL airplane, we certainly had the place for it. As I reduced power to crank the flaps out, I had to really watch my nose attitude and airspeed, because dropping the nose just a little sent the airspeed sky-rocketing up to 50 knots or more. As I found later, I should have been more worried about getting too fast rather than being afraid of slow speeds.

I turned final at the recommended 35 to 40 knots and saw that I was going to land miles past the point I wanted, so I cranked the rest of the flaps down. I was doing 35 knots, with 400 yards of flaps hanging out, and it wouldn't come down! Finally, it began STOLing and started falling for a point about a third of the way down the strip, right where the runway made a 20-degree dogleg to the left.

I was thinking the Storch had better be as good as everybody says it is, or I'm in big trouble. I turned the corner while flaring and got straightened out just before I hit. The bagel-size tires didn't soak up much shock, but the long oleos sucked up any bounce it had in it, and I nailed the brakes immediately. The gear had touched down right next to the start of a fence, so it was easy to judge how far this mongoose had rolled. I swung around and could hardly believe that the first fence post was less than 100 feet away. The Storch (a name I now revered) had rolled three airplane lengths at the very most and I had been too hot with zero headwind to help.

I must have made at least 15 takeoffs and landings, all of them incredibly short and none of them where I wanted them to be. On takeoff, I soon found that even with the correct trim, I couldn't yank hard enough to come even close to stalling it. As soon as I had a minimum of 35 knots, I could pull back all I wanted and do nothing but climb. I had absolutely no head-wind component and still my initial climb angle was nearly 45 degrees. This is one of the few airplanes around that really will leap off the ground. Taking off three-point in a headwind, I doubt that it would need more than 20 feet to get off, although I was using close to 100 most of the time.