As the red Outer Banks biplane taxis toward the hangar, Rosman cuts the engine, rolls a few more seconds and then slews the craft into a perfect parking spot, hitting the brakes after coming out of the 180-or-so-degree turn.

“People love that, without a doubt. It’s fun to do,” Rosman says with a smile. “A tailwheel airplane’s goal in life is to do a ground loop, so to come in and spin around like that is easy because that’s what it wants to do.”

Just because Rosman makes it look easy doesn’t mean it is. It’s just that the owner, pilot, and mechanic with Barrier Island Aviation owns decades of experience and thousands of hours in his logbook. During busy summer days, he might make 15 flights out of the Dare County Regional Airport in Manteo, hopping between his Cessna 172s, Cessna 206 or – his favorite – “Big Red.”

That’s the distinctive Outer Banks biplane that can be seen buzzing across the sea as folks take in the scenery from the open-air cockpit.

“It’s not like any other airplane,” Rosman says. “It’s like flying a convertible. That’s really the best way to put it. You know, if you like driving in a convertible or riding on a motorcycle, you’re definitely going to like that.”

While some companies offer rides in a replica, Big Red is the real deal. The shiny biplane is a Waco (pronounced WAH-co rather than like the city in Texas) UPF-7 built-in January of 1942. It was a trainer in the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) that helped prep Americans for potential military pilot programs during World War II.

The plane – coincidentally given a tail number of NC32159 long before it ventured to North Carolina – flew more than 3,500 hours in its first three years of training in Owensboro, Kentucky, before settling into a more sedate life.

“That was a lot of flying. They must have been flying it all day, every day during the summer months,” Rosman says. “Since then, there’s maybe 4,000 hours on it, and like 2,500 is mine. I’ve been flying it for 12 years now. And in that 12 years, nobody else has flown it.”

Big Red is HIS airplane. He’s let kids sit in the cockpit. But other pilots? Heck no. Go hang out in one of the Cessnas.

This biplane was rebuilt in the 1990s. Rosman considers it a “very simple airplane” that is easy to maintain and – perhaps surprising to hear – find parts for. That’s because the hundreds of Waco UPF-7s and the thousands of similar Boeing Stearman trainers from the 1930s and ’40s used the same Continental 220-horsepower engine.

“All this excess military stuff was around after the war,” Rosman says. “You can actually get brand new cylinders for these that are still in the wooden crates. I bought seven one time.”

Being easy to maintain doesn’t make the biplane all that easy to fly. Rosman had three biplanes at one point: one for parts that he bought after someone else had an accident in it, and another as a backup plane for the business.

“I tried to get some people checked out in it, but they were a little faint of heart, you might say,” Rosman recalls with a laugh. “When you first start doing it, it’s kind of messed up. It’s tough for you.”

The challenge in a tailwheel aircraft, or “tail-dragger,” is all about visibility on the ground – or the lack thereof when compared to nosewheel planes. When taxiing, the pilot makes little left turns to see down the right side of the plane and right turns to see down the left side. When taking off and landing, the pilot relies on peripheral vision since the runway isn’t visible. Landing in a crosswind can lead to some white-knuckle moments.

Still, “Once you get an airplane up in the air, it doesn’t matter if it’s a tailwheel airplane or not, it just flies,” Rosman explains.

Specifically with the Waco models, “They’re the sweetest flying airplane. And the most forgiving airplane. It’s built as a training aircraft and usually, they’ll build that type of aircraft to have ‘no bad habits,’ be a very stable platform.”

Barrier Island Aviation offers flights as short as eight minutes and as long as an hour. Some visitors specifically request the open-air cockpit experience, while others prefer the enclosed cabin of the Cessnas. The Waco models had conversion kits to turn the front seat into a bench seat, so two passengers can fly in front of Rosman as long they don’t exceed the 400-pound weight limit.

Big Red cruises at 85 mph and soars at 1,000 feet over the houses and 500-600 feet over the ocean. Highlights within the 25-mile radius of the airport always include seeing the Wright Brothers Memorial, the Bodie Island Lighthouse, plus marine life and shipwrecks when the water is clear. Sometimes Rosman has to point out some of the scenery. Most of the time, though, he sees his passengers peering over the side of the cockpit and soaking in the view.

“Those are the really fun rides for me because I look up and I see the smiles,” he says.

Some of those smiles get bigger and bigger with each passing year.

“We get a lot of people that come back every year. One little girl, she took her first ride, she’s this big,” Rosman says, holding his hand about waist high. “We have a picture of her and her dad in front of that airplane. Every year they come back and now she’s in college. I go out to dinner with them. He ended up getting his pilot’s license. So that’s kind of nice.”

Flying, after all, is a bug that can be hard to shake once it grabs hold of you. Rosman first took flight when jumping out of planes. After years of skydiving – working in Florida in the winter and his native New York in the summer – he got a parachute rigger license to pack chutes, then an aircraft mechanic’s license, then worked his way behind the controls.

Rosman found his way here when a company he was working for in California sent one of its planes to the Outer Banks for a month of science flights. Then working as a mechanic, Rosman stayed in South Nags Head for a month and decided to move to the beach a year later, in 1999.

After flying seaplanes for a few years, Rosman joined with Paul Shaver to start Barrier Island Aviation in 2005 to tow banners. Their partnership was cut short, however, when Shaver died less than a year later in an ATV accident. Today, in addition to its sight-seeing rides, the company continues to fly banner planes, has a charter license for its five-seater 206 that allows for longer flights when needed, and even does tracking for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s red wolf program.

“It’s not unusual for me to get out of this one, go into that one, go into that one, all day,” Rosman says as he points to the planes outside the large tan hangar just beyond the North Carolina Aquarium. “Most days, if we’re busy, I’m flying all three airplanes.”

Steve Hanf grew up on Air Force bases around the world and loves looking to the skies when planes pass overhead. He teaches the journalism classes at First Flight High School.