Greg Piehl, who lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, with his wife Debbie, spent three years restoring and upgrading their 1959 Piper Comanche 250. After 34 years, the first flight of N6494P took place at Zephyrhills Airport, three days before leaving on a trip to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in July and August, 2021.

Greg spent a good part of EAA week showcasing his restoration while parked at “Comanchetown” (in the vintage parking area) and spent another week flying the Midwest to visit his son (also a pilot).

We’re planning to chronicle the restoration — including the engine, instrument panel, interior, and exterior — in a seven-part series that will conclude in the August 2022 issue.

Airplanes are family members who come to your family in any number of ways. Sometimes they were part of your parents’ family. Sometimes you bring them in after seeing them at a local airport. And sometimes, people know you’re always looking — foster-parent style — and they wind up coming to you.

So it was for Greg Piehl, who lives in Florida with his wife, Debbie, and who is known in his locale as being willing and able to take a hangar queen and get her ready for the strip. This story will take thousands of words and literally hundreds of photos to tell, but it’s actually a fairly short one, chronologically. It took only three years of part-time work, evenings and weekends, even though it’s about as comprehensive as you can get. And never in our magazine’s history has anybody chronicled a restoration so thoroughly.

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The Evolution Story

This plane was born in 1959 (before almost anybody else in this story, actually). There were some tragedies on this journey and some miracles (perhaps too strong of a word), and certainly a happy ending.

It started with a phone call.

“In 2017, I was contacted by my mechanic, Neil Humphreys, who was visiting an airport in Turners Falls, Massachusetts,” Piehl said. “He had found a project plane for me. I’ve previously owned a Comanche in partnership with somebody else, and he knew that I wanted a Comanche again — he knows I like to do projects. And he’s an A&P and IA; he knows his stuff.

“So I talked to the registered owner’s son, and he said ‘it’s Dad’s plane, he is still going to restore her someday, but he doesn’t have long to live. That means I can’t sell the plane, but let’s stay in touch.’”

“Dad” was Charles Bohanowicz, and the son was Bruce Bohanowicz. Dad did pass away, but unfortunately, that’s not the saddest part of the story.

“In fall 2017, Bruce contacted me and said, ‘I’m sorry to say this, but Dad passed away and we can complete the deal,’” Piehl said. “We had already previously negotiated a price, so I sent him 50% of that as a deposit, and we organized it that I would come up there (to Massachusetts from Florida) the week after SUN ‘n FUN in April 2018, we would disassemble the plane, put it on a trailer, and tow it back to Florida.”

And so that was mostly planned. Piehl and his best friend Joe Cumbey would take a road trip, disassemble the plane, and drive it back home.

Part 1 (this article) and Part 2 are being made free. Join today to read the other five parts and learn more about how to restore a Piper.

Best-Laid Plans

In case you were wondering how exactly these two people were going to disassemble and haul an entire airplane, they are both engineers and “worked together in a past life as engineers manufacturing military avionics,” Piehl said. Joe is also a pilot, owning and flying a Bonanza V35B.
The plane hadn’t flown in 31 years at this point, so it couldn’t be delivered on a ferry permit. So, buddies Joe and Greg headed to Massachusetts — after they fully prepared their trailers with straps and the other devices to hold the plane’s parts.

“I also enlisted a good friend’s plane, Russ Wright of Ocala, Florida, who allowed us to measure his Comanche so I could make cradles to hold the fuselage and the wings,” Piehl said. “I spent months studying the service manuals and parts manuals to understand everything.”

That plan would have been wonderful, but it got stickier with the saddest news of this tale. Not only did Dad (Charles) pass away, but they learned that son Bruce had been taken by an untimely tragedy. “In February 2018, I got a call from the airport manager (in Massachusetts) who knew about the deal,” Piehl said. “He said, ‘I hope you have your paperwork in line for the sale of that airplane, because Bruce was killed in a snowmobile accident over the weekend.’”

And Bruce, who was an A&P/IA and well-known repair expert in the Northeast, was going to assist in the disassembly.

The family had no heirs, either. But the paperwork was in order, and the story doesn’t get sidetracked further in that regard. We’ll now tell the travel story with this photo series. It will conclude in Florida, and we’ll resume from there in the next issue.

Ask questions of Greg and other members. Click here.

Part 1 (this article) and Part 2 are being made free. Join today to read the other five parts and learn more about how to restore a Piper.

Photo Gallery: Part 1, Disassembly & Transport

You can either click on a photo for a popup slideshow, or simply scroll through all of the photos.

Crossing a river in South Carolina en route to Massachusetts. “My wife made some ‘twin engine’ sugar cookies for us, and I made a hole in one of them. I stuck it on the antenna; it made it about 50 miles!” 
Comanche owner Jim Antes, who lived in the Turners Falls, Massachusetts, area, and is based at OB5 with his beautiful Comanche 260, learned both owners had passed away and taped up all the windows to keep water out of the airplane and try to preserve it. It was sitting outside and had three flat tires when Piehl and Cumbey arrived.   
Bruce Bohanowicz was a very well-known A&P in his area, and a lot of people around the Northeast used his shop. “He was going to help us disassemble the airplane, with his shop and his tools.” Piehl and Cumbey had to round up the shop’s jacks to start disassembly.
“I’ve started some disassembly. The stabilator halves are off, which was fortunately easy, because that can be a bear to get off if there’s any corrosion on those torque tubes. The rudder is off also, so now we can walk around it. The hangar was not heated, but we had a working area.”
“This is a picture of the main landing gear. I was getting a picture of the condition. The plane had been painted once, some time in its life, and I noticed that when they painted the landing gear, they just shot everything white in place. It was in really old condition.”
“This documents how the main spar comes apart. This is directly below the back seat, and it is a plate that joins the spar; the vertical piece is where the spars meet. There’s a top plate and a bottom plate. There are about 18 nuts and bolts on the top and 18 on the bottom, and it goes through the center also — it’s very sturdy.”
“We worked all day, starting at 7 in the morning. We worked on removing the wings all day. We had fuel lines to disconnect, we had electrical lines to mark/tag/disconnect, we had spars to unbolt to separate the wing halves. You can see the cradle holding the fuselage there; it’s a welded metal frame with carpet slings that held it perfectly.”
“After 16 hours, this is Joe Cumbey at 11 that night. We removed the left wing, and he’s standing next to it. In the other photo, that’s me standing at the wing.”
“I had designed some cradles to transport everything, in addition to the metal-formed cradles to hold the fuselage. I cut up a bunch of wood and used carpet, and I made wing crates. You can see the wings in a crate, hanging in carpet slings. I had zero damage because of these, transporting it 1,200 miles.”
“The fuselage, minus the left wing, sitting in the homemade cradle. We’re going to transport it right on this cradle.”
“The left wing is now in a crate; this is the right wing in the cradle. So both wings are off now.”
“Both wings are crated up, and you can see how I took large zip ties and 4-inch foam rubber and I wedged it in between the crates and the wing. The wing cord is very thin, so with the crate and the foam and everything, it was only a foot wide.”
“This is Jim Antes, he’s got one of the very nicest 260 Comanches there is, and he was really interested in our project. He would stop by every day. He’s creative and hands-on, and he brought a 12-volt winch to help get the plane up on the trailer.”
“Now outside the hangar, the wings and the fuselage are strapped onto the trailer with nylon straps.”
“You can see that the propeller is also strapped down, so it doesn’t start spinning at 70 mph.”
Joe and Greg back home in St. Petersburg, Florida. They left Massachusetts on Friday morning and got home early Saturday morning. “I remember telling Joe, the neighbors had to be thinking, ‘what’s Greg doing now? He’s got an airplane in his driveway.’”
“Paul Sotrop helped me for most of the next year. He’s working with Joe (behind) to unstrap the plane from the trailer.”
Rolling the plane off the trailer.
“It’s now the end of April 2018, and I’m a little burnt out. Three and a half months later in August, I decided to begin the restoration process and take the engine out. I took the cowl off, and this is that first view.”
“I lifted the engine out, unbolted it, disconnected everything. We took the engine into the shop.”

This article will contain six more parts. The ensuing parts will not be free.

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