This is the story about a man, well, two men actually, and their common love for a particular airplane. The story spans 15 years and has an ending that not even Hollywood would try to promote because it's too remote, too maudlin, too unlikely. There are those who will argue that an airplane is just a mechanical device, like a refrigerator or a record player, and certainly nothing to get worked up about. There are even those who maintain that airplane aren't your friends, that they will turn on you when you least expect it.

They call these people non-aviators...

But to Linn Gore and Denis Arbeau, their shared love for a handsome little polished aluminum Swift, circa 1946, is not something which can be explained logically. Can a man's love for a "device", be it automobile, boat, or airplane, ever be satisfactorily explained?

Denis Arbeau doesn't try to, he just keeps polishing his little plane, remembering that day 15 years ago when, as a 14-year-old kid hanging around Santa Monica airport, he first spotted N3307K. "Linn let us come in the hangar and look at his airplane, let us touch it, didn't chase us away from it", Arbeau recalled recently. We put fingerprints all over the damn thing and he said, 'Okay, now you can polish it off'. And in return, he'd take us for rides. he would take us to San Diego, or down to Montgomery Field, or to Santa Barbara or Bakersfield." Arbeau found himself at the airport every weekend with his buddy, polishing the Swift and (good naturedly) fighting his friend to see who would get to ride with Gore.

Through persistence and love of the airplane, Arbeau outlasted his friend and pretty soon, he had a couple of hundred hours in the airplane. Eventually, he began taking formal instruction and was allowed to fly the Swift, doing landing, takeoffs, and flying VOR heading. "When I got my instructors certificate out at Santa Monica, he soloed me in it one day," Arbeau said. It was kind of a shock because it turned out I was only the fourth or fifth person ever to fly the airplane."

Soon, Arbeau was flying the Swift during the week and Gore used it on weekends. Until that fateful day when his friend suffered a stroke. "The first thing he told his wife when he came to was, 'Tell Denis, tell him to take care of the airplane.' So I did and he recuperated to the point where he could come and work with me, in his wheelchair. I took him for a couple of rides, then he suffered a second stroke."

The airplane sat idle for a couple of years until Arbeau decided it was time to see if fly again. He contacted Mrs. Gore. "I hated to see someone get it who really didn't know the history behind the plane, know how special it was to him." He convinced Mrs. Gore to sell him the airplane. "I talked to her and told her how much I wanted to have it and take care of it," Arbeau said. She consented to the sale and Arbeau felt whole again. It's the very first airplane I ever flew. It's the first airplane in which I ever had my hands on the controls, and it pretty much shaped my life because I don't know where else I would have ended up it it hadn't been for the fact that on weekends I had a place to go. I had some place I wanted to be, at the airport polishing that Swift and going flying with him in it."

According to the well-maintained logbooks, the Swift has accumulated 4,000 hours on the airframe since Gore bought it new. He went through four engines (it now has a 145 hp Continental O-300) and apparently used each oneuntil it expired. "there are a couple of entries," Arbeau smiled, "where in the remarks section it just says 'engine failure'. That's all, no explanation. The next entry is like three months later."

Arbeau, who flies for a living as an instrument, multi-engine and aerobatic instructor at San Val Aviation in Van Nuys, says it's a treat for him to spend his off hours in the Swift. Like all who have flown it, he praises the design for its lightness of controls, aerobatic capabilities and extra strong airframe. If you ask, he can reel off the specifics: 500 to 700 fpm rate of climb, 130 to 140 mph cruise and eight to nine gph fuel burn. During a 45 minute flight, he demonstrated his airplane's superb roll characteristics. Just pull up a little from cruise, turn the yoke and over you go with almost no lateral G forces.

But it's not necessarily the performance specifications which engender the love Denis Arbeau feels for his airplane, as anyone who feels the same about their "machine" can understand. Perhaps it is best summed up by the plaque he had specially made for the panel. It says simply:

"This aircraft maintained in airworthy condition in loving memory of Linn A. Gore, original owner."

This Love Affair Has Stood The Test

This Love Affair
Has Stood The Test