Brilliant Businessliner

But it was the stunning level of originality Barron Aviation achieved in its restoration that set it apart from other aircraft in its class. Few people have the knowledge, tools and…parts to pull it off. Mike and Dillon Barron have all that—and more—at their grassroots airport and restoration workshop nestled in the trees and farm fields of rural Perry, Missouri.

Barron Aviation

Mike fell in love with Cessna’s radial-engine executive transport airplane, produced from 1947 to 1954, at an early age. “When I was 13-ish,” began a typically animated story from Mike, “my dad had a [Cessna] 182 at the airport. Nice airplane, they perform well and everything. But we’re driving to the airport and I looked over at the open T-hangars and I said, ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘Oh, it just showed up. That’s Rick Hatfield’s. That’s a Cessna 195.’”

“First time I’d ever seen one, and it was an all-original survivor. It still had the original paint, still had the original interior. It was a late model, polished and yellow. I absolutely fell in love with that airplane. I tried to get my dad to trade the 182 for it because Rick was selling it. They were worth about the same amount at that time. He could have pretty much traded even up. He thought about it and hemmed and hawed. ‘Oh, radial engines, they’re not reliable. They leak oil,’ and this and that. All these excuses and he ended up not doing it. So, that’s been the airplane I’ve loved since I was a kid.”

Mike stumbled into the business of restoring Cessna 195s in 1997 when he bought a project airplane and found that parts weren’t available. “I started making the pieces that I needed and talking with other 195 owners and as I did found out that they needed the same parts too,” said Mike. “So that started it, making a few interior trim pieces and so forth. And then we started getting into the structure of it and making those, and then people needed repairs done and so forth, and it just took off from there. Didn’t really intend for it to be a 195 business when I started it.” Despite Mike’s busy schedule as an airline pilot at TWA—and later American Airlines—Barron Aviation has completed 47 Cessna 190 and 195 restorations (Cessna 190s are lower-power versions of Cessna 195s).

Mike’s son, Dillon, 28, exudes a quiet confidence. He grew up with the omnipresent family business and earned a Guinness world record for soloing in seven tailwheel aircraft on his sixteenth birthday—a Cessna 170 he’d recently restored, three Cessna 195s, two Beechcraft Model 18s, and a North American T–6 Texan. He became a third-generation A&P mechanic and a third-generation airline pilot and now owns Barron Aviation.

“My direction was going to the airlines,” said Dillon. “It was what my grandfather did, and my dad did as well, and it’s a fantastic job. So, I was programmed to go that direction. [But] it wasn’t quite the lifestyle that I was wanting. It came around to have this opportunity here that is what I know and love and have grown up around. It’s second nature to me. I saw this as much better quality of life and I can kind of make my own schedule and mess around with beautiful airplanes and make them pretty again. So, I decided to quit the airlines and take on [Barron Aviation] full force about two years ago.”

“Now Dillon has taken over the business so I can come up and annoy him each day,” said Mike with a wry smile.

Originality drives restoration

Dillon and Mike sought a restoration of 12N that was true to the original, and they had a secret weapon to achieve their goal: thousands of Cessna 195 parts—both salvaged and new old stock (NOS)—squirreled away in hangars and rafters and cargo containers at Barron Aviation Airport (MO11).

The airport started with one grass runway and a sizeable workshop where restorations take place. The workshop houses the tooling and jigs necessary to recreate any part that is no longer available. A display hangar was next, big enough to fit a Cessna 195, Cessna 170, T–6 Texan, and Beech 18, with room to spare. The display hangar loft contains a dizzying array of Cessna 195 parts, from propellers to gear legs and engine cowls. Several additional storage buildings were erected over the years to house a growing collection of airframes (we counted 19), engines and wings (way too many to count). A second longer grass runway was built to enable seven Grumman Albatross G-111s to land at the airport.

Dillon said after he took over the business, “One of the first things that we saw as a great opportunity was a project that my dad has been wanting to do for years and years that just never happened because [potential customers hadn’t] appreciated the full level of originality that we could do. He’d spent so much time and effort collecting all these parts and pieces and photos and documentation and even visited with the old Cessna test pilots. We saw this as a fantastic opportunity to do a full-on original Cessna 195. We looked through our inventory, and picked a 48 model, and we found all the supporting evidence and documentation to really do a bang-up job.”

Dillon and Mike started with a project 1948 Cessna 195 on which they had already reskinned the wings and fuselage. Over the course of a year they reskinned the flight controls, crafted a new interior (going as far as having new fabric woven to match original samples), had the engine and instruments overhauled, painted the aircraft, and completed the documentation—including a thorough picture book of the restoration.

“We have well over 5,000 hours just in labor, not including the sourcing of the parts, the research, the hours of droning through pictures and ads and documents and even just searching for paint samples left over on cowling segments or interior swatches left over from random projects that we had,” said Dillon. “All but two percent of the aircraft was completely broken down and reworked or replaced.”

The Gold Lindy is a cherished reward for the effort, but not the sole driver for Dillon and Mike. “We get asked a lot of times, why do we take a project to the level that we do?” said Dillon. “We love history. We have a sense of pride in discovering things, how things were done. And while you’re researching, trying to figure out how they did these things way back when, when there’s not as much documentation anymore, it’s essentially a treasure hunt. So that’s fun. That’s intriguing to us. We have a passion for just anything vintage: motorcycles, cars, airplanes.”

Stately flying experience

It’s sunrise, and Dillon preflights 12N. Fittingly, he uses a 1940s-vintage Jeep to pull the 195 from the display hangar by means of a large V-shape tow bar that connects directly to the main landing gear. As soon as the polished aluminum Cessna exits the hangar, it reflects the sun with a brilliant intensity.

Dillon describes flying the Cessna 195 as very similar to a Cessna 182, apart from the lack of semi-Fowler flaps. While on paper they may have similar specifications, the experience could not be more different.

12N is powered by a 300-horsepower Jacobs R-755A2 radial engine. Cessna 195s also came with a 275-horsepower Jacobs R-755B2, but Dillon said, “Realistically, on the dyno, they’re very comparable. But there’s a lot more of the B2s out there, so they’re a little bit more popular.”

The oil tank holds a whopping 20 quarts and has a dipstick that is neatly concealed by a flush mounted oil door. Dillon pulls the propeller blades through four times to ensure no oil has collected in the lower cylinders, which could cause hydraulic lock and bend a connecting rod on startup.

Preflight complete, we open the aircraft door—there is only one, on the passenger side—and a footstep swings down from the fuselage to ease entry. Depressing a button recessed in the door frame cleverly pops open the baggage compartment door.

The rear seat was intended for three adults in the late 1940s, but only two would fit comfortably today. You feel like a VIP sitting in the back of the airplane, with high-end interior appointments and a great view. The long fuselage and high deck angle while on the ground gives the impression of the pilots sitting high above your head in front of you, as if you’re in a miniature Douglas DC–3.

The climb to the pilot seat is part of what makes flying the 195 so endearing—and intimidating. You sit high above the ground with a good view out the lower left corner of the windshield, an extremely limited view to the right, and the radial engine blocking any forward view.

Starting the radial engine is a favorite part of the Cessna 195 experience. Four shots of primer, engage the starter, and after four blades of engine rotation turn on the magnetos. The engine slowly barks to life—one cylinder firing, then two, and soon all seven—while excess oil in the cylinders burns off with an impressive cloud of white smoke.

It takes training and experience to safely taxi, take off, and land this airplane with its limited forward sight lines. S-turns while taxiing are a must. “The 195 just has a special feel and when you get in and look left to right, see either way, that’s when you appreciate it,” said Dillon. “It’s a lack of vision. It’s a cool rumble. It’s unique; the sight picture.”

Ground roll during takeoff is 1,000 feet lightly loaded or 1,200 feet at maximum gross weight. Once the tail comes up and the airplane is on its main gear during takeoff, visibility over the nose is great. Cruise is smooth and relatively quiet with the huge propeller turning a leisurely 2,100 rpm.

“We typically see 140 knots of cruise at 12.8 to 13 gallons an hour,” said Dillon. “This one’s exceptionally fast. They’ll hold about 75 gallons of fuel. So, you’re looking at about four hours [of endurance], give or take a little bit. It gets you pretty much anywhere you need to go.”

Turns require surprisingly little rudder pedal input for a tailwheel airplane—certainly less than lighter tailwheel airplanes such as the Cessna 140. Control movements feel rock solid—borderline stiff—but Dillon tells me the control cables will loosen up as the newly restored airplane accumulates more flight hours.

Steep turns, slow flight, and stalls are really nothing surprising if you’ve flown a Cessna 182. The lineage from 195 to 182 can be felt in how both aircraft are stable, predictable, and easy to fly both slow and fast.

Approaching the airport to land, we slow to 110 miles per hour as we turn base. Dillon describes the Cessna 195s electric flaps: “These are a split flap, basically. Maybe not a true one in that it’s forward from the trailing edge, but they’re just a flap that sticks down. It’s basically an underwing speed break. They change your pitch attitude a little bit, so it makes your visibility coming in to land a little better. And when you pull the power off, it slows down quicker.”

We slow to 100 miles per hour on final and, “over the fence, 90, but slowing down to about 80 because I kind of prefer to wheel land,” said Dillon. “That’s the age-old debate. What do you do? Wheel land? Three point? They’ll do both. They’re great at it. It’s kind of your personal preference. It stalls about 45, 50.”

“The 195s characteristics flying are very docile,” said Dillon. “Very similar numbers to the Cessna 182. It’ll haul just about anything you want to. It gets you where you want to go in a pretty reasonable amount of time. It’s reasonably efficient. And just look at it. My dad and I both discussed, if there was just one airplane to have, this airplane, the 195, really does it all.”

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