The more I fly the New Standard the more I like it. I flew Ted's once a few years ago, so don't remember too many details of that, but ferried Dewey's from New Hampshire to Ohio a few weeks ago, and then spent most of the Saturday and Sunday of the Barnstorming Carnival hopping rides in it. It flies like a 1930 airplane, in that the controls aren't necessarily that well harmonized, and certain things about the cockpit are "antiquey", particularly the rudder and brake pedals. There are four pedals, underhung, inverted L shaped, and the two inners are brake pedals while the outers are the rudder pedals. If you twist your feet the right way you can actually use both rudder and brake at the same time, but it certainly isn't as convenient as Stearman style toe brakes.
As far as flying qualities it's pretty stable, and the controls are not as heavy as you might anticipate. The ailerons on Dewey's are quite light in fact, but Ted flew it and said that his are noticeably heavier, and we haven't yet figured out why that would be different. Other pilots who have flown more than one of the surviving New Standards say that individual ones can fly quite differently, so the rigging may be a factor in that, or? When I give rides in a Waco or Travel Air I always try to fly the whole ride without moving the stick more than 4 inches (except for landing flare), but in the New Standard this isn't possible, it takes fairly large movements of the stick to do what you want to do.
It has a locking/full swivel tailwheel, and is quite docile on the ground. I usually do wheel landings on pavement in the Travel Air, but the New Standard three points almost like an overgrown Champ, even on pavement, sets down easy and rolls good and straight. I haven't flown it in much of a crosswind yet, but I know the other guys do (there are 8 currently flying). Visibility from the cockpit is better than you would think, you sit fairly high, and the view is at least as good as it is in the Travel Air.
If you had a 1930 sized pilot and four 1930 sized passengers I think it would be no problem taking them up with full fuel, but nowadays with 2016 sized people we don't fill it up if we're doing passenger rides, and if they're big enough we only take three.
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