2015 - Volume #39, Issue #2, Page #08
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Farmer's Sideline Job Requires Death-Defying Maneuvers
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“I started flying when I was 6, sitting on my dad’s lap,” Edgren says. “I was ready to solo when I was 8, riding in a custom-made seat with control extensions so I could fly the plane myself.” In the ensuing 35 years, Edgren has flown more than 150 makes and models of airplanes. He’s worked as a flight instructor, as a corporate pilot, he’s trained pilots for a combat school, and entertained thousands of people with carefully calculated rolls, loops and smoke swirls. Since 1997, he’s also been a fulltime Iowa farmer.
“I grew up on a farm and had absolutely no interest in that occupation as a youngster,” Edgren says. “My dad was a farmer and a pilot, but flying was my passion. I really looked up to Dick Willetts, an Iowa flying legend who had his own show. I rode with him when I was 13 and was hooked.”
After graduating from high school Edgren briefly attended college, then concentrated on flying. He bought an old Cessna 310, rebuilt the motor with a friend and earned flight ratings. He taught flying in the Midwest and later was a co-pilot on a corporate Learjet in Michigan. In 1996 he returned to Iowa to take over the family farm. Edgren says the decision to return was easy. “I gave up earning potential for quality of life. The divorce rate among airline pilots is staggering. I always wanted a family and there’s no better place to have a family than on a farm.” He met his wife Stephanie in 1997 and they now live with their son John on the farm that’s been a part of their extended family since before the Homestead Act.
“Farming is my job and family legacy, and I really enjoy it, but flying is my passion,” says Edgren, who logs more than 100 hrs. a year, most of them in the seat of his brilliant red 1939 Taylorcraft fixed wing airplane. It’s such a striking and memorable plane that a model airplane company sells a replica.
He participates in air shows around the Midwest each summer as a character called “Hobie Washburn”, a slightly unsteady performer who wears a tropical shirt, carries a large margarita glass and wears a beach-comber hat. “People really don’t know what to think when they see me crawl into the plane, and they’re even more concerned when I perform an unusual takeoff, sometimes on one wheel with a wing almost touching the ground,” says Edgren with a laugh. “My show is part humor and part acrobatics, and it’s all planned out.”
Edgren has his surface level waiver so he can perform inverted maneuvers at ground level, which is a crowd-pleasing act. He builds a sequence of maneuvers into each show, with some gaining speed and energy, and others losing energy, like a mid-air stall in the midst of a plume of white smoke.
Edgren’s Taylorcraft airplane, which has 30-ft. wings, weighs just 830 lbs. and carries only 24 gal. of fuel. It’s capable of flying two people, but in his show setup he sits in the center, steering with a stick rather than a wheel. The small 85 hp engine can push the plane to speeds of 125 mph, and up to 160 mph in dives, which is more than enough to thrill airshow crowds.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Erik Edgren Airshows, 2716 Queens Ave., Oskaloosa, Iowa 52577 (ph 641 660-5338; www.erikedgrenairshows.com).
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