Restored to Life: Saving classic airplanes from the junk heap

Andy Estes has a graveyard behind his workshop.

It is filled with skeletons and body parts of aircraft that died decades ago. They have been stripped down to the bone. One was a 1934; one a 1930; another saw its prime in the ‘40s.

Estes’ passion is to give these airplanes new life. That would seem highly unlikely for a pile of rusty metal in the tall weeds.

It requires only a look inside his Desert Rat Aviation workshop at the Ak-Chin Airport to understand what is not only possible but also probable for the aeronautical remains.

Estes restores old airplanes, repairs and maintains newer aircraft and does some flight instruction on the side.

A 1972 Piper, practically modern compared to the corpses out back, is being rejuvenated in the shop. Other planes of various ages are in various stages of repair.

A 1937 WACO YKS-7 Estes worked on alongside owners Bill and Joyce Wold was the Grand Champion Restoration of the 2015 Copperstate Fly-In at Casa Grande Airport in October.

“It’s hard to believe, when you see what it was,” says Virginia Estes, Andy’s wife.

It was the first WACO Estes worked on. It won’t be the last.

“I love the history,” he says. “It was from back when aviation was romantic.”

The workshop at Desert Rat has space for mechanical repair, woodworking, metal work and painting. When Estes gets his hands on what others would deem a pile of junk, every facet of the shop is put to use.

He starts with the frame and whatever original parts might still be available. Then he finds other parts that will fit a project – “We’ve used a lot of car parts,” he says – and then makes everything else he can’t find.

“Andy can make a sheet of metal into anything,” Joyce Wold says.

Estes purchased the pile that had been a WACO in 1998. In 2009, he sold those pieces to Bill Wold, who was reigniting his love affair with flying after retiring. Off and on for nearly seven years, Wold worked with Estes to restore the plane to a semblance of its former glory.

Joyce Wold stepped in to recreate the upholstery and work on the exterior paint. She is also a history buff and happily did research on the WACO model. The WACO Aircraft Company built planes in Troy, Ohio, from 1919 to 1947.

Joyce Wold says some of the blueprints they used to rebuild the plane came from the Smithsonian Institution.

The Wolds’ 1937 WACO, which last logged a flight in 1962, finally returned to the air on May 2, 2015.

Having the Wolds involved with the labor vastly cut expenses, Estes says, though it still was not cheap.
“They’ll never get out of it what they put into it, but that’s not why they did it,” Estes says.

Estes also found Wold to be a quick study. He showed Wold how to create a couple of wooden ribs, and then Wold meticulously worked six months to complete all the ribs. He picked up other projects just as quickly.

The Wolds came to Estes when he still worked out of a Quonset hut near the tracks in the Heritage District. Shortly after, he set up Desert Rat Aviation on Bud Road next to the airport.

Virginia Estes points out that was right when the economy was starting to tank. Aviation in particular took a hit as an unnecessary indulgence for many pilots. Andy Estes said others in his line of work went out of business.

Desert Rat stuck it out, and Estes built a reputation around the Valley. The ongoing project with the Wolds could not have come at a better time.

“Bill made my payroll for a week,” Estes says.

Estes has been putting together airplanes since he had toy models as a kid. He says he was never impressive in school because of a learning difficulty, but when he was tested at age 14 he was found to be “really good at mechanical stuff.”

That teenager landed a job at Falcon Field in Mesa, where he swept up and worked at bits and pieces. He also got a look at some restoration work on a B-17 and knew what he wanted to do.

Estes bought into the Arizona Aviation Flight School, working there for 28 years before he and his partner decided to go different directions.

Andy and Virginia Estes moved to Maricopa in 1996. They have three children. Tina manages Desert Rat. Joy manages Great Clips in Casa Grande, and Andrew is career Army, aspiring to the rank of sergeant major.

As the Wolds prepare to take their WACO to a national fly-in next summer, Andy Estes has projects in his workshop not to mention the skeletons out back waiting to fly again.

“I just love the feeling of it, the three dimensional feel of what you can do and what they did then,” Estes says. “People can do amazing things.”

DesertRatAviation.com

This story appeared in the Winter Edition of InMaricopa The Magazine.

Biography of a Plane
July 27, 1937        NC-17734 completed at WACO Aircraft Company in Troy, Ohio
1937-49    Provided non-scheduled charter flights between Mt. Prospect, Illinois, and Princeton, West Virginia
1950-62    Changed private owners several times in Montana, Oregon and California
June 2, 1962    Last logged flight
1962-75    Disassembled for restoration and passed through more owners in California
1976-97    Owned by Howard Douglas of Tucson
1998-2008    Owned by Desert Rat Aviation of Maricopa
2009-present    Owned by William and Joyce Wold of Casa Grande and restored at Desert Rat
May 2, 2015    First flight in 53 years