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The fuel gauge on what Randy Burns calls the Mid-night Rider, the dark blue 1945 Stearman berthed in Moontown, Alabama, has sprung a leak. Since the plane’s been in the hangar for the better part of two years, it’s not a huge surprise, but it’s complex, because everything with these planes is complex. A Stearman is an open-cockpit biplane whose fuel tanks are in the upper wings. The fuel gauge isn’t a dial on the instrument panel; rather, it’s a heavy transparent plastic tube, yellow with age, dangling from the underside of the wing tank. The fuel itself bobs up and down in the gauge, not far from the forward, or student pilot’s, cockpit. In other words, above where I sit.