Plane & Pilot 08-2020

ALL PHOTOS EAA: CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: WILL CAMPBELL; PHIL HIGH; MICHAEL KELLY; ABOVE: Where the magic
ANDY THOMPSON; ANDREW ZABACK happens. Wittman Regional
Airport in Oshkosh, Wisconsin,
and the surrounding area,
which transforms from a quiet
mid-sized town to the craziest
aviation locale on the planet
for one week a year.
LEFT: Two rock stars, EAA
head honcho Jack Pelton (left)
and jet pilot/country music
superstar Dierks Bentley. (And
the crowd goes wild!)

planeandpilotmag.com 47

BELOW: A bare-bones vintage weight-shift, powered hang glider slips into the ultralight strip as the sun goes down.
BOTTOM: A lucky few night-airshow goers feeling the heat from atop the wing of a Canadair water bomber.

ALL PHOTOS EAA. CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: DENNIS BIELA; STEVE DAHLGREN; CRAIG VANDER KOLK;CHRIS MILLER ABOVE: Photographers line up to get that perfect shot of the night airshow.
BELOW: A typical busy day at Oshkosh at the Four Corners.

planeandpilotmag.com 49

LIVESOSHKOSH
A 30-year-long end-to-end walking tour
of the greatest airshow on earth.

BY ISABEL GOYER

As EAA Oshkosh has grown,
its familiar arched gateway
entrances have moved.

Below, a shot from an the first
modern EAA Oshkosh fly-in
and, opposite page, an arch
50 years down the road.

COURTESY EA; THIS PAGE, LAURIE GOOSSENS D  ecades ago, I stopped trying to Paul Poberezny was the heart and brains behind
describe Oshkosh—the fly-in, that it. It was Paul, an accomplished aviator who started
is—to anyone who hadn’t been flying as a kid and would eventually design a couple of
there. If I were to try, I’d say it’s a simple airplanes and create a movement that became
weeklong fury of activity in four the amazing world of homebuilding, who got the whole
dimensions that, improbably every thing going in the early 1950s.
summer, spins wildly and beautifully to life, a full-tilt
barn dance held upon the head of a pin, an event that But it was much more than homebuilding, too. The
transforms a sleepy regional airport into a roaring, organization he founded, the Experimental Aircraft
fossil fuel-powered Swiss clock of a city for a weeklong Association (EAA), was at first all about bonding over
run of choreographed insanity, a magic that’s too wood wings, loops and summertime. But it would grow
powerful for any one person to fully understand. Yet into today’s EAA, which encompasses everything from
every year, it gets set loose, and we all get to be there grassroots activism with its Young Eagles program
as the magic happens, each of us trying to catch as to full-fledged lobbying for pilots’ rights. It’s too long
much of it as we can. a list, but EAA runs dozens of programs and several
The legends of the early days of the fly-in are inac- publications, has a gorgeous air museum, oversees
curate. It’s often spoken of as an impromptu get- groups of enthusiasts for everything from antiques to
together of a few friends on a sleepy weekend morning. jets, and has a reach that’s global and still expanding.
Somebody brewed a pot of coffee while somebody else Did Paul envision all of this? It’s my guess that he did.
set out the lawn chairs. But “Oshkosh,” which wasn’t
held in Oshkosh full time until 1970, was an impres- What became of that modest first fly-in made
sive, though modest, fly-in from the beginning. It was him proud, and rightfully so. For anyone else, that
done that first year, 1953, at Timmerman Airport in would’ve been enough. The weeklong event, known
Milwaukee, with a good number of planes and pilots. as AirVenture these past 20 years, is the crown jewel
It was a real live fly-in from day one. not of EAA but of all of personal aviation. You won’t
hear me pining for the good old days—okay, maybe
a little. The show has changed. It had to. But it has

planeandpilotmag.com 51

changed into something that’s bigger and better, with There are still a couple of the old exhibit halls, which
more places for more kinds of pilots and more kinds were really only modestly sized sheet-metal hangars
of planes. That’s exactly as it should be and exactly as originally meant for a handful of planes but that EAA
Paul wanted it to be. once used as exhibit halls. With no air conditioning
and the combined heat of hundreds of people tightly
There’s not much left of the original Oshkosh, though packed into them, often on days that were already too
there’s a lot of it left. The entry gateway at Oshkosh, hot, those old buildings had their own microclimates.
known semi-officially as “The Brown Arch,” is the most It was a weeklong marathon for the exhibitors. There
identifiable landmark left of OSH. Well, at least OSH as are a few other old buildings from the early days, from
I knew it when I first set foot on the grounds 30 years big old barns that pre-date the arrival of EAA in late
ago. It’s not the only piece of history that has survived 1969 to little ticket-taking stands that look to be from
the transformation of “Oshkosh” into AirVenture, but around the era of the Hoover administration. They all
it’s the most poignant, for sure. need to stay, in my opinion. They capture the charm
of the place so effortlessly.
There are a number of other artifacts about, some
that have held on simply because it’s easier to leave Even the old press building, that’s to say, the old
them standing than to do something different. The and current press building remains. It’s a ranch-style
amount of work behind preparing, putting up and yellow-brick dwelling that was surely someone’s house
then taking down this show is staggering.

BELOW & RIGHT: The 2018 edition of EAA Oshkosh AirVenture, and the inaugural affair at Timmerman Field in Milwaukee, circa 1953.

LEFT: EAA, CONNOR MADISON, UPPER RIGHT, EAA at some point. For one week and a handful of days per
year, it’s chock-a-block with media types banging out
their stories about new planes or old ones on laptops
set on a plywood counter hooked to EAA’s heavenly
Wi-Fi so they can send news of the show back to home
offices in South Africa or Indonesia or Indianapolis.
They’ve supplemented the old place with a nice, por-
table building with forced air in which many of the
press conferences are held. Those portable buildings
are everywhere at OSH, and they do the trick nicely,
providing a little shade for those hot days and a bit of a
breeze if they have one of those big rolling fans to plug
in. Everything is a constant hum at OSH.

Speaking of which, the one thing that no structure
there can do is block out the plane noise, especially
when a particularly loud one rips down the flight
line. A friend once quipped that when it happens
in the middle of a press conference, “It could be the
Almighty himself, and he’d have to wait until after the
Texans had passed.”

For the week, the noise, or, before 7 a.m. and after 7
p.m., the silence, defines the place, and the character of
that sound has changed over time. My friend was right;
the North American AT-6s are the worst, or the best,
depending on your mood and the importance of the
conversation. Their high-pitched Hamilton-Standard

planeandpilotmag.com 53

Everyone loves the airplanes, and some are more memorable than others. Concorde on the runway at OSH in an undated photo.

growl is unmistakable. There are others that are worth things like that, parts of the fly-in that are gone from PHOTOS COURTESY EAA
the ticket price, like the sound of the Merlins, 12-cylin- the real world but live on in the hearts of those who’ve
der engines growling by as P-51s “strafe” the field. And been going forever, or for at least a big chunk of forever.
for sheer volume, let me count the decibels. Concorde We see ghosts everywhere.
was loud. The Thunderbirds are loud. But when it comes
to sheer knock-you-on-your-butt loud, nothing beats The Brown Arch remains, though, almost as a
the Harrier jump jet, which, when it’s showing off its monument to those artifacts, like the old tower, that
ability to hover, shuts down chatter for miles around. couldn’t be saved. The Arch itself is a chocolate-brown
Literally. I can’t think of a louder sound I’ve heard, and wooden wave-shaped slab spanning the entryway and
I came within a foot of getting hit by lightning when I suspended by a stone pillar on each side. It is adorned
was a kid. It was like that. But unlike the thunderclap, with small flags of many countries and in orange-yellow
the Harrier has staying power. letters. It’s reminiscent of a scout’s woodcarving proj-
ect, perfect for the event, which used to be, I remind
Many parts of the old OSH are long gone, the most myself, all about experimental aircraft, specifically ones
memorable of which is the old reddish yellow-brick that are made from scratch or from a set of plans. The
control tower, situated on a grassy rise, like the kid in Brown Arch spot that today marks the entryway to the
school pictures posing for a group photo on his tiptoes. flight line is largely decorative, occupying a space not
On hot days at OSH, the base of the tower would be far from where the show grounds used to start. The
surrounded by weary showgoers who had stumbled actual entryway is a 10-minute hike from what used
upon a rare commodity: a soft place to sit in the shade. to be the entrance of the show. And many square miles
That old original, built in 1963, has been replaced by a of other EAA properties sit to the west and the south
new tower that’s twice as tall. The modern structure of the show grounds. It’s a company town.
might be better in a thousand practical ways but has
none of the character or charm of the original, with I specifically remember the first time I set eyes on
which it coexisted for a couple of years, the old one the EAA Arch at Oshkosh. It was 1991, and I was a green-
finally getting the wrecking ball in 2009, which was a horn. I knew that Oshkosh was in Wisconsin and they
bad year for aviation all around. There are numerous had a big air show there, but I had no idea, none, what
I was about witness. It wasn’t just me, you see. No one
54 AUGUST 2020 Ç Plane&Pilot

who ever visits OSH for the first time

has any idea what they’re about to

see. Its scale, its breadth, its scope, its

character are unlike anything in the

world. All of that completely defies

understanding, even in theory. You

need to go there, and if you aren’t

nodding your head right now, that

means you’ve never been.

That said, as soon as I laid eyes

on the Arch, I knew that I was enter-

ing sacred grounds. The rest was a

mystery, though it was clearly the

great unknown. The Arch, I could

tell, had been there for a long time,

longer than I could understand, and

had seen people pass under it who

changed life in the sky; hell, people

who’d helped create life in the sky.

People who’d been coming to Aircraft designer extraordinaire and professional pitch man Jim Bede at an early EAA

Oshkosh for years got that. I was an Oshkosh hawking his latest, the BD-5.

imposter. I didn’t know the stories. I

had no map of the place in my head, as I do now, no

cast of characters, no arcs of change, no timelines of

growth. I knew the planes pretty well, but I didn’t know

them there. And there, that spot, Oshkosh, Wisconsin,

in late July at Wittman Regional, puts everything in a

context inescapably deep and as old as flight itself,

a spirit only partially knowable and prone at any

moment to start up in a puff of blue smoke and take

off for parts unknown.

After 30 Oshkosh fly-ins, I’m still a newbie (well, on

these grounds, at least), and I’m not alone. We are all everything. Watching T-34s above, like waves at the

imposters in a world older, longer, broader and deeper shore, blanketing the sky with song, me leaning back

than any of us could know. I remember during one of in the grass, a late-afternoon soft-serve cone in one

my first shows, my dad and I were down by the flight hand, propped up by the other elbow, ignoring the

line grabbing a burger at the Homebuilt Cafe when a words waiting to be written about something else that

Constellation so sweetly grumbled by, accompanied happened that day. The words would just have to wait

by the spontaneous oohs and ahs of the crowd massed another 15 minutes or 20. They would get written. Boy,

along the flight line, the spontaneous vocalizations do they get written. And not just words get written.

matching the speed of the Connie perfectly, an audible Somehow, work gets done here, though I’m not entirely

wave of appreciation. I mentioned to the older guy clear on how it does, though now I get the rhythm of

sitting next to us how beautiful that plane was, and OSH, the energy, the looks in the eyes of people you

he agreed, adding, as if he were talking about his boy- pass, their faces telling their stories as sure as patches

hood paper route, how much he loved that plane too, on a blue windbreaker, tales of what OSH is to them,

remarking about what adventures he’d had flying it that is, how they traveled to get here, to this very spot,

“over The Hump” back in the day. as warbirds roar overhead.

It’s a place where amazing stuff like that happens We wander these grounds with legends, and I’ve

every day, so much that you simply can’t remark upon been luckier than many in working with a few and

it all. It would wear you out. I’ll be hurrying on my way meeting many. At OSH, you’re among friends regard-

to a press event when a P-51 and F-16 appear overhead less. Smiles are everywhere. They are the light that

in close formation, the sounds of Allison V-12 and GE Oshkosh is bathed in.

F110 combining into a holy growl of past and future Paul’s smile was remarkable. It seemed to fill the

improbably mixed into today’s soundtrack. Then some place. I’d see him tooling around in Red One, a brightly

other incredible thing grabs you by the ears. colored VW Beetle (modded into a convertible), pass-

You learn to take it in and breathe when you get ing by and greeting his fans; hell, his people. I didn’t

the chance. Those little moments of relaxation are know Paul well. But he knew me. Despite meeting so

planeandpilotmag.com 55

many thousands of people every year, somehow he will change your life, or so you come to believe if you PHOTO: EAA
remembered my name after our first short meeting watch for a while.
and, to my astonishment, every year thereafter.
Hucksters come in the aviation variety, too—well,
OSH is nothing if it’s not about friends, the perfect come and go. You learn to smile as the 30-something
reunion setting where tens of thousands of kids at heart winning leaders of new companies tell you in breath-
can spend their days around airplanes and cool new less terms at their very first Oshkosh press conference
technology and their evenings renewing friendships. about how their plane will correct the aeronautical
After hours, when the departures are done for the day misunderstandings of all who came before them. Such
and the exhibit halls are emptied out, the get-togethers brash deception, or maybe just self-deception…at
get going at restaurants, campgrounds and rented some point, even the confidence man can no longer
homes around town. I’ve done them all over town. At tell the two apart.
the North 40 airplane campground, with everyone
standing as near to the grill as seems polite, a beer And the planes I flew there, inextricably woven
(or soft drink) in hand, swapping lies and other good into the picture of Oshkosh in my heart. Ultralights,
stories. And I’ve done them at what passes for fancy jets, a blimp! A lot of plain-vanilla piston singles that
places around Oshkosh, which is at heart a middle- I loved just as much. The trips up, in my own rented
class, blue-collar town. or borrowed or partnered planes, my beloved Skylane,
three years ago, my first and possibly only trip to OSH
My favorite is the White House, otherwise known ever in my very own plane, though I have flown in via
as the Lake Buttes Des Morts Gun and Supper Club (I some manner of small plane 15 or more times, tying
kid you not), where I dined many times over the years down at more than a few central Wisconsin airports
with great friends, many of whom are still great friends over that time and always thinking I really should have
despite our new orbits. Those pleasant dinners some- braved the traffic and gone to OSH.
how turned unstoppably into roaring celebrations of
life, thanks to a seemingly bottomless expense account And the planes I merely watched fly, that we all
and no shortage of stories to tell. Celebrations, after all, watched fly. Concorde right around the time of the
are what Oshkosh is about. Celebrating things that fly, crash, the arrival of the Airbus A380 complete with
and lives that do, too. Raising a glass to new planes, to famously terrible landing that, thank heavens, didn’t
new kids, new jobs, even one time a new hip—no lie! result in disaster. The arrival of the highest-tech planes
on the planet, too many to name—the F22, the Osprey,
And then there was the politics. EAA, like any big the 787, and a generous handful of eccentric Burt Rutan
organization, has its drama and its issues, but some designs, Starships, Grizzlies, Ezes—all painting the sky
things are better left unsaid, at least right now, and as they flew by, their signature silhouettes indelibly
thanks to Jack Pelton for saving...well, for saving the paired in my mind with their songs.
whole ball of wax and making it better than ever.
And the restorations! My word, what beauty! My
I’ve seen so many brands struggle through the favorite? Ha. There have been too many. The Boeing
changes, some weathering them, others falling away. 307, the first real airliner—it was perfect. And not one
I was there for the epic parties that Icon threw, the but two Boeing B-29s, one of which, Fifi, I got to go fly-
even more extravagant displays from Eclipse—say ing in. The Sikorsky/Johnson Wax S-38 amphibian that
what you will, Vern and company could put on a show. traveled the world when adventure was the only route
you could take. And then just last year, That’s All Brother,
And I even got to see the second of two reappear- the Douglas C-47 that led the charge at Normandy…
ances of Jim Bede, there at Oshkosh for the last time there are too many to remember, never mind list here.
years ago, rolling out his latest scheme, which, yes, In fact, one of the greatest purposes of Oshkosh is to
absolutely was based on big promises and big deposits. be the place restorers bring their masterpieces to
There’s a country fair vibe about OSH. It wouldn’t be show them off. I can’t speak for them, but knowing an
the same without the hucksters, the barkers and the adoring crowd of a hundred thousand airplane lovers
sales pitches, the guy hawking tickets to win a Piper would get to see my work of art in action? That would
Cub over by the tower. The traveling pros with their keep me going.
wireless mics, selling everything from fancy ladders
to sunglasses—and all of it, every product they pitch, The planes we fly in with have changed, too. When
I first started going to OSH, Rutan-designed canards
56 AUGUST 2020 Ç Plane&Pilot were the most common homebuilts, as they perched,
nose to the grass, in the parking area by the Blue Barn
west of Knapp. Today, those spots are taken by an even
greater number of Van’s RVs. The people have spoken.

And the people were always first. Get it right, it’s
a show about people, always was and always will be,
people who love airplanes, yes, but people first. I am
not ashamed to admit I remember the people as much

The age of the kids who attend might change, but the planes and their passion for them remain a constant. An undated photo of the
homebuilt section at an early Oshkosh fly-in.

as the planes. They will last, dear friends all, some for it was anything but. Those shows of ceaseless rain,
a season, some for a lifetime. Wittman Regional Field a patchwork of ponds reflect-
ing the blue skies of the morning after the storm and
The camping. How did we survive it? Rain or shine, swampy parts, marked off by the lack of airplanes. And
and there was a lot of rain, leaky tents, deafening the years of remorseless heat, less common but more
thunderstorms seemingly engulfing the campground, devastating…people dropping to the ground mid-hike
swallowing it whole, jagged shafts of light, coloring the and being carted off by squeaking golf carts to the first
jade underbelly of the storm, illuminating as though aid tent. You survive the conditions and take what you
from within the blue and orange tents and flashing can from the event, which is always more than the
off the sheet metal of our parked planes riding out the weather could ever take away and always more than
storm, testing the resolve of their tenuously staked you could hope to digest, more than one could dream
yellow nylon tie-down ropes. The midnight insanity of experiencing.
of the North 40 campground with dear friends, Cindy
and George, bringing us all together, everyone some- There were bad years, too, too many, though some-
how getting increasingly funny as the night turned how your brain filters some of it out, at least the sadness
to morning, by which point not a soul was funny any of it. The losses. Friends who weren’t back that year and
more. Somehow we survived on a few hours of sleep, won’t ever be. The hardest losses are from the crashes.
starting our overbooked days by 7 a.m., the first planes Life and death. It’s part of the glue of what we do, of
starting up in the campground on the click of the hour, who we are, this knowledge that life can be short or
the piston engines grinding to life spot by spot around long, and we might not get a vote, so fire up the engine,
the North 40, their songs battling for dominance with mix up the controls and go flying. Then, later, we can
the yodeling cacophony of the Oshkosh Wake Up Call raise a glass to those who share the heavens with us,
through bad speaker horns. Regardless of what last if not the skies.
night was like, there is no putting off the day at OSH.
And in their honor, and in our own, I say, let’s make
Regardless of the weather, OSH happens. Last year EAA Oshkosh AirVenture 2021 the greatest OSH of our
was nearly perfect. But somehow I remember the years lifetimes, like the last one, and the one before that. PP

planeandpilotmag.com 57

58 AUGUST 2020 Ç Plane&Pilot

ABOVE: Beech D-17 Staggerwing SHUTTERSTOCK And a few
you’ll only
be able to
dream about.

BY JEREMY KING

A  s we progress well into
the second century of
flight, most of us take to
the sky in machines of
metal or advanced com-
posites like carbon fiber and Kevlar.
The science is solid and techniques
well established for flying machines of
these materials. But if you step away
from the mainstream types most com-
monly decorating the ramp at your
local airfield, you may well stumble
across wooden airplanes that survive
as antiques, warbirds and homebuilt
designs, as well as a few types built
more recently. There are even a few
designs in current production—one
featured below is a throwback to the
days of old, while another is a Light
Sport Aircraft utilizing a wood wing
to stay below the 1,320-pound gross

»weight limit.

planeandpilotmag.com 59

The Waco YMF-5, one of the most beautiful biplanes ever, and it's still being produced.

At the outset of aviation, wood was a logical mate- at 10 types, some old and some new, to see what a FROM UPPER LEFT: WACO AIRCRAFT; MIKE BURDETT VIA FLICKR, MAGNUS MANSKE VIA FLICKR
rial for aircraft construction. Lightweight alloys were broad variety of wooden wonders might decorate
still anything but common, but wood was widely an eclectic aviator’s logbook.
available and used for everything from bridge tim-
bers and railway coaches to furniture and buildings. 1) WACO YMF-5
Technically, some metal structures did take flight
as rigid airship frames before the Wright brothers Designed in 1934, the WACO YMF would normally
even started building gliders. But for the first several belong in the antique section at a fly-in, but after a
generations of aircraft, wood was a critical design redesign and production reboot in 1986 by WACO
component. From the early pioneers through the Aircraft Corporation, the design soldiers on, with a
Golden Age air racers, wood allowed for strong few nods to modern advances in aviation. Powered
structures with a smooth finish that didn’t require by a 300-horsepower Jacobs radial engine, the YMF
rivets disrupting the airflow. It could be used in a features doublewide seating in the front cockpit,
number of methods. The earliest flying machines allowing the design to make money hopping rides
were often a skeleton of wooden frames, with a fabric to those wishing to get a taste of the barnstorming
skin stretched over it. As machines gained speed and life of an era long gone. Variations available include
a need for strength, plywood skins formed over ribs, options such as an MT constant-speed propeller,
stringers and bulkheads made for a strong structure amphibious floats and a full-up Garmin IFR suite.
without a lot of weight. Even as aluminum became a The fuselage of the modern YMF is a tubular steel
popular building material for aircraft, wooden spars, frame, but the wings remain wooden. Used copies
such as on Piper Cubs until early 1946, persisted built from the 1990s onward are available, advertised
as a light and affordable component. Many of the starting at $150,000 and up to $400,000 for nearly
lighter Cubs sport spars of spruce or fir. Wood spars new examples with all the bells and whistles.
continued in new-production Champs, Citabrias and
Decathlons until the 1990s. WACO YMF-5

Even today, wood persists in plenty of homebuilt » HEIGHT: 8 ft 5 in
designs and even a few certified aircraft in current » WING SPAN: 30 ft
production. Wood is light, strong and, unlike metal, » LENGTH: 23 ft 1 in
it doesn’t have a “memory.” It either breaks, or it » MAX T/O WEIGHT: 2,650 lb
doesn’t. Metal, on the other hand, can be observed » EMPTY WEIGHT: 1,155 lb
failing as you bend a paperclip back and forth several » FUEL CAPACITY: 48 gal lb
times. With each bend, it deforms more easily, and » USEFUL LOAD: 965 lb
when it finally does break, it does so with less force » MAX RANGE: 400 nm
than originally needed to bend it. Wood is far from » SERVICE CEILING: 14,800 ft
a perfect material, though. Termites aren’t so much » MAXIMUM SPEED: 110 kts
a threat as rot—moisture is the enemy. Having a » NORMAL CRUISE: 98 kts
mechanic who is knowledgeable and comfortable » POWERPLANT: Jacobs R-755
with wood structures is key. Let’s take a quick look

60 AUGUST 2020 Ç Plane&Pilot

2) AEROPILOT ABOVE: The Aeropilot Legend 600 is a pretty sport plane that many say resembles a Skylane.
LEGEND 600
BELOW: A popular high-performance single in the ’60s and ’70s, the Bellanca Viking
If you had to look twice because you continues to demand high dollar amounts in the used aircraft market.
thought you saw a Cessna 182 pictured
in a listing of wooden aircraft, don’t feel
bad. It caught us off guard as well. The
Aeropilot Legend 600 mimics the lines
of Cessna’s venerable Skylane, scaled
down to a two-seat LSA. In fact, this
design looks more like a Cessna product
than Cessna’s own LSA, the discontinued
model 162 Skycatcher.

Despite the L600’s similarity in
appearance to the Cessna models, the
wing is a wooden structure—contribut-
ing to the aircraft’s empty weight that’s
only a couple pounds heavier than many
Piper J-3 Cubs. Couple that light weight
with a 100-hp Rotax out front, and you
wind up with some impressive perfor-
mance numbers. You’ve got Cub landing
speeds, 172 cruise speeds and Skylane
climb rates. The LSA weight constraints,
however, mean you’ll be right near gross
with full tanks and two people aboard.
Pack lightly or manage your fuel accord-
ingly, though, and you’ll have a practical
LSA with conventional looks.

Aeropilot design for his Spirit of St. Louis. The Bellanca lineage
Legend 600 of airplanes peaked with the Viking series, a four-seat,
300-horsepower design. The plywood and mahogany
» HEIGHT: 8.53 ft wings gave excellent performance and light weight.
» WING SPAN: 29.72 ft Debbie Gary, a trailblazing airshow performer, flew
» LENGTH: 22.97 ft routines in the Super Viking for years, highlighting
» WING AREA: 113.45 sq ft its handling and maneuverability.
» EMPTY WEIGHT: 727.5 lb
» GROSS WEIGHT: 1320 lb Bellanca Super Viking
» CRUISE SPEED, 75 PERCENT POWER: 113 kts
» MAXIMUM LEVEL SPEED: 122 kts » SEATS: 4
» RANGE: 702 nm (including reserve) » HEIGHT: 7 ft 4 in
» CLIMB RATE: 1376 ft/min at sea level » WING SPAN: 34 ft 2 in
» LENGTH: 26 ft 4 in
3) BELLANCA SUPER VIKING » WING AREA: 161.5 sq ft
» AIRFOIL: Bellanca B
There are few names going farther back in aviation » EMPTY WEIGHT: 2,217 lb
with designs you can still fly today than Bellanca. » MAX T/O WEIGHT: 3,325 lb
The Super Viking was the culmination of a long line
of designs attributed to Giuseppe Bellanca, who
designed and built a long line of pioneering aircraft,
including the first enclosed cabin monoplane, as
well as the WB-2, which Bert Acosta and Clarence
Chamberlin used to set the world’s longest distance
record for unrefueled flight in April 1927. The WB-2,
incidentally, was Charles Lindbergh’s first choice of

planeandpilotmag.com 61

ABOVE: The Pitts Special was one of the premier aerobatic aircraft in the world for many years. TOP: HUHU UET, BOTTOM: WIKIPEDIA COMMONS; JEROEN KONEN
BELOW: Pete Bowers' Fly Baby is simple to build and a ton of fun to fly, though smart pilots dress warmly on days like this.

62 AUGUST 2020 Ç Plane&Pilot

» RANGE: 802 nm (max. fuel) » VNE: 176 kts
» SERVICE CEILING: 17,000 ft » STALL SPEED: 56 kts
» RATE OF CLIMB: 1,170 ft/min » MAXIMUM RATE OF CLIMB AT SEA LEVEL: 2,677 ft/min
» TAKEOFF RUN TO 50 FT (15 M): 1,420 ft » SERVICE CEILING: 22,300 ft
» LANDING RUN FROM 50 FT (15 M): 1,340 ft » RANGE WITH MAXIMUM FUEL, NO RESERVE: 315 mi
» CRUISE SPEED: 163 kts (TAS, 75% power, max. cruise)
» STALL SPEED: 61 kts (wheels and flaps down, CAS) 5) BOWERS FLY BABY
» NEVER EXCEED SPEED: 196 kts (IAS)
» POWERPLANT: Continental IO-520-K 300 hp In 1957, the Experimental Aircraft Association
announced a contest for designers to enter easy-
4) PITTS SPECIAL to-build, affordable aircraft. The rules were vague
and took a while to firm up, but one of the quali-
When Curtis Pitts’ scrappy biplane took to the air fiers was that the designs had to feature folding
in 1945, it was a vastly different machine from the wings—allowing owners to keep their airplanes
aerobatic competitors and airshow performers at home, tucked into a barn, garage or shed. This
of today. With two ailerons fitted to flat-bottom contest truly embodied the “plane in every garage”
wings and a C-85 on the nose, it flew well, but in notion that tantalized and eluded general aviation
a familiar pattern of bigger-faster-more powerful, throughout the postwar years.
the Pitts grew over the years. In 1962, Pitts offered
S-1C plans for those who wanted a Pitts Special of Peter Bowers entered his design, the Fly Baby
their very own, and that design is still popular—if 1-A, a wooden affair that used simple construction
not especially competitive—today. Welded steel techniques, readily available components that came
structures make up the fuselage and tailfeathers, with every stock J-3 wasting away on tie downs (dif-
but the wings are a work of wooden art. With a ferent times, remember) and, per the contest, the
mixture of stick-built ribs and plywood sheeting, wings tucked away after about 15 minutes’ work.
the basic structure is stronger than the average Bowers touted that the average person had the
aerobatic pilot could ever need. Various models of skills required to build his airplane. His prototype,
the Pitts have been stretched to two seats, fitted with N500F, bore the number of plans he hoped to sell.
four- and six-cylinder Lycoming engines, and the
Pitts Model 12 packs a massive Russian Vedeneyev Instead, it was closer to the number of Fly Babies
M-14 radial engine that produces 375 horsepower that actually flew. He sold 10 times as many plans.
stock but has been tuned up past 450 horsepower
by some operators. Several variations followed. A second wing could
be constructed and added with some struts to form
Pitts’ ground handling is the stuff of Saturday- a biplane. A second cockpit was added here and
morning hangar flying gold at your local FBO, but there, and no lack of these machines took wing in
most of the horror tales come from poorly built or military colors. An open-cockpit flying machine
repaired aircraft, or from pilots who have never where you really could hear the wind through
actually flown the design. Pitts owners report the the wires—this really was the perfect plane for a
ground handling as plenty manageable. “It only does generation of pilots to get airborne purely for fun.
what you tell it to do,” is a common refrain. That
said, there are plenty of instructors offering Pitts- Despite its sporty appearance, it really wasn’t
specific instruction, and a couple grand spent with aerobatic. Peter Bowers did loop and roll his pro-
a CFI is a lot cheaper than a prop strike inspection totype, famously so on the cover of a magazine,
and rebuilding a wingtip. even. But a quarter of accidents involving the Fly
Baby were structural failures of the wing. The Fly
Plans for the S-1C and S-1S are still available Baby’s unofficial homepage includes information
through Steen Aero Lab, and flying copies are always about the PB-100, a revamp of the design to make
for sale, ranging from sub-$20,000 to $40,000. The it safer and easier to build. Using the original series
S-1T, a factory-built and certified bird, demands a published in Sport Aviation (and still available to
premium, as do two-seat S-2 designs. EAA Members online) that served as a step-by-step
guide of how to build a Fly Baby, the PB100 project
Pitts S-1S gives enhanced instructions and even such conve-
niences as a CAD file that allows a metal shop to cut
» HEIGHT: 6 ft 3 in out all the metal pieces needed for construction.
» WING SPAN, UPPER: 17 ft 4 in A motivated builder could have one airborne in a
» LENGTH: 15 ft 6 in couple hundred hours of construction time.
» EMPTY WEIGHT: 720 lb
» GROSS WEIGHT: 1,150 lb Once flying, they really are a delightful diversion
from life on the ground. Without radios or any real
avionics, the Fly Baby draws your eyes out of the
cockpit and forces you to smile. If you’ve got a little

planeandpilotmag.com 63

space to spare in your workshop, one of
these would be easy enough to put together.

There are usually a couple projects for
sale online for a few thousand dollars.
It’s rare to see a flying one bring much
more than $15,000, so they really can be an
affordable way to get into the air. Worried
there’s no second seat to take a friend fly-
ing? Rent a 172 when he or she actually
shows up at the airport. Until then, it’s
all you.

Bowers Fly Baby ABOVE: The Cassutt Racer is arguably the most iconic little Reno racer ever.

» CREW: One pilot RIGHT: The Pereira GP-4 Osprey is a speedy retractable gear single that is a
» WING SPAN: 28 ft challenging project for even accomplished homebuilders to tackle.
» LENGTH: 18 ft 10 in
» WING AREA: 120 sq ft
» EMPTY WEIGHT: 605 lb
» MAXIMUM TAKEOFF WEIGHT: 924 lb
» RANGE: 300 mi at 8,000 ft
» RATE OF CLIMB: 1,100 ft/min
» POWERPLANT: 1 × Continental C-85, 85 hp
» MAXIMUM SPEED: 104 kts
» CRUISE SPEED: 96 kts
» STALL SPEED: 39 kts

6) CASSUTT RACER Cassutt Racer ALL PHOTOS WIKI COMMONS: CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: GERHARD SCHMID;
DAVID MILLER, FLUGKERL2
What’s that? Another wooden-winged, sin- » HEIGHT: 4 ft
gle-seat taildragger that begins as a pile of » WING SPAN: 15 ft
raw materials? There are a few similarities to » LENGTH: 16 ft
be noted between a Fly Baby and a Cassutt, » WING AREA: 68 sq ft
but that’s about where they end. The Cassutt » EMPTY WEIGHT: 500 lb
is a classic Formula One race design that has » GROSS WEIGHT: 850 lb
circled the pylons at air races for more than » MAXIMUM SPEED: 216 kts
60 years. Originally designed and flown by » RANGE: 450 mi
TWA Captain Tom Cassutt in 1951, it had » RATE OF CLIMB: 1,500 ft/min
its plans become available that same year. » POWERPLANT: 1 × Continental O-200, 100 hp
Over time, the wing evolved from a constant-chord
easy-building affair to a tapered design that keeps the 7) PEREIRA GP-4
type competitive with more modern counterparts.
In its stock configuration, you’ll want to be neither Owning an aircraft isn’t always about practicality, but
tall nor wide to fit into its 16-inch wide cockpit, with it’s understandable if you can’t justify a single-seat
the spar passing through about where most folks’ homebuilt where there’s not even a roof to keep the
knees would rather be. rain off your head when you park. How about a fast

A Continental O-200 engine with a turned-down
prop puts out enough power to push the Cassutt to
a 200-knot top speed. Some quote numbers as high
as 220 kts, but that’s either creative writing, a lot of
detail work, or some combination of the two. Much
like the Fly Baby, projects can be had for a couple
thousand bucks, and flying copies should be easy
enough to find for less than $20k. If you’ve always
wanted to fly fast and turn left around the pylons at
Reno, you can do it for a lot cheaper than the warbird
guys and still have a lot of fun with a Cassutt.

64 AUGUST 2020 Ç Plane&Pilot

Another pretty Staggerwing Beech, another proud owner and pilot. » GROSS WEIGHT: 2,000 lb
» FUEL CAPACITY: 52 gal
two-seater with a more common setup? The GP-4 is » TAKEOFF DISTANCE: 600 ft
an all-wood, two-seat traveling machine that looks » LANDING DISTANCE: 1,200 ft
like it’s going 200 knots sitting on the ramp—and » CRUISE SPEED: 209 kts
tops that speed once you tuck the wheels into the » TOP SPEED: 221 kts
wheel wells. » RANGE: 1,042 nm
» POWERPLANT: Lycoming IO-360 200 hp
The GP-4, designed by George Pereira, is not for
the faint of heart. It’s a plans-built design that is going 8) BEECH STAGGERWING D17S
to take 4,000 hours or more to build. That’s two years
of working 9-5 in your shop to get this bird airborne. The Beech Staggerwing, one of the first corporate
But once it is completed, you’d be looking at a 200+ aircraft, offered pilots the chance to travel in style
knot, 1,000-mile-legged traveling machine. Since and comfort while covering ground in a hurry. The
it is powered by a Lycoming IO-360, you’d have no model 17 took wing in late 1932, and it absolutely
problem with engine parts availability if something walked away from its nearest competition, cabin
broke while you were on the road. And after 4,000 class Waco biplanes in cruise. Engines over the years
hours of hands-on experience during construction, ranged from 300 to 710 hp, but the Model D17S with
it’s a safe bet you could patch up anything on the a 450-hp Pratt & Whitney 985 may be the perfect
airframe side. combination of performance, reliability and main-
tainability. The fuselage of the model 17 is a steel tube
GP-4 frame with wooden bulkheads and stringers to give
it a distinctive shape, and the wings are all wood.
» PLANS PRICE: $385
» SEATS: 2 Staggerwings were built to go places, and they do
» BUILDING TIME: ~4,000 hours that well. They’re heavy enough not to wander off
» POWERPLANT: Lycoming IO-360 when you glance down at a chart while still offering
» HORSEPOWER: 200 easy control with just a few fingers on the control
» WING SPAN: 24 ft
» EMPTY WEIGHT: 1,260 lb planeandpilotmag.com 65

The Mooney Mite is an odd bird, a single-place retractable gear transportation plane. Mooney built more than 250 of them back in the late 1940s
and early 1950s before Al Mooney realized the money was in building four-seaters.

wheel. The place where the Staggerwing will get » RATE OF CLIMB: 1,500 ft/min PHOTOS WIKIPEDIA COMMONS: MOONEY MITE: DAVID MILLER; CAP 10, ALAN WILSON VIA WIKIPEDIA COMMONS
your attention is on the ground, though. S-turns » MAXIMUM SPEED: 185 kts
in many light taildraggers will seem optional » CRUISE SPEED: 175 kts
after your first time in a Staggerwing, where the » POWERPLANT: 1 × Pratt & Whitney
world on the other side of the nose ceases to
exist without an aggressive S-turn. And for those R-985-AN-1 450 hp
who’ve mainly flown lighter tailwheel aircraft,
prepare for a wakeup call the first time the tail 9) MOONEY MITE
starts to swing on landing rollout. The mass of
this airplane will get your attention, as arresting Before the idea of Flying Ubers, or even flying
any heading swing will take a little more work cars, there was a notion post-World War II that
than in a Cub or Citabria. It’s not a hard airplane there would be an airplane in every garage. There
to fly, but knowing that you could scratch a very were many approaches to this attitude, from Molt
expensive aircraft with a moment’s inattention Taylor’s literal interpretation in his Aerocar to Al
will keep you on your toes. Mooney’s M-18 Mite, a single-seat pocket rocket
that hoped to take the aviation world by storm.
There are 202 Beechcraft Staggerwings on the
FAA registry, and with 127 examples, the D17S is The Mite, known as the “Texas Messerschmitt,”
by far the most popular. Two are currently listed pushed 85 kts on 65 horsepower. Incorporating
for sale online, both hovering just shy of $400,000. retractable landing gear and the now-iconic
A third project is listed at $50,000, but by the time Mooney vertical stabilizer that gives the illusion
you hired a restorer to finish the work properly, of a forward sweep, it housed the pilot beneath a
you’d be no less invested. sliding bubble canopy. It’s the perfect everyman’s
airplane, provided the pilot is not wide, tall or
Beech Staggerwing D17S heavy. With a 260-pound useful load, many pilots
would have to experience the Mite as a glider. A
» SEATS: 4 recent listing on Barnstormers.com touts a 19-gal-
» HEIGHT: 8 ft lon fuel capacity between the main and aux tanks,
» WING SPAN: 32 ft an option that would yield impressive range but
» LENGTH: 26 ft 10 in only for a rather svelte aviator—at 138 pounds,
» EMPTY WEIGHT: 2,540 lb you’d be over gross on full tanks.
» LOADED WEIGHT: 4,250 lb
» RANGE: 582 nm Mooney Mite
» SERVICE CEILING: 25,000 ft
» CREW: One pilot
» HEIGHT: 6 ft 2-1⁄2 in

66 AUGUST 2020 Ç Plane&Pilot

The Avions-Mudry CAP 10 is a two-seat (side-by-side) aerobatic plane that is fun to fly and can put on a good show.

» WINGSPAN: 26 ft 10 in one will speak ill of the design. Instead, expect
» LENGTH: 18 ft a smile and a gleam in their eye as anyone who’s
» MAXIMUM TAKEOFF WEIGHT: 780 lb been at the controls tells you of the fun they had
» EMPTY WEIGHT: 520 lb dancing about the heavens in this specimen of
» USEFUL LOAD: 260 lb a flying machine.
» RANGE: 440 statute mi
» SERVICE CEILING: 19,400 ft The CAP 10 was derived from the Piel Super
» RATE OF CLIMB: 1090 ft/min Emeraude homebuilt, and it continued to be
» MAXIMUM SPEED: 120 kts refined into later designs of single-seat aerobatic
» CRUISE SPEED: 109 kts aircraft, culminating with the CAP 230 series. PP
» STALL SPEED: 37 kts
» POWERPLANT: Continental A65, 65 hp Avions-Mudry CAP 10B

10) AVIONS-MUDRY CAP 10B » CREW: 2
» HEIGHT: 8 ft 4 in
For three decades, Daniel Héligoin and Montaine » WING SPAN: 26 ft 5 in
Mallet, a husband and wife airshow team, wowed » LENGTH: 23 ft 6 in
crowds as “The French Connection,” performing » WING AREA: 116.8 sq ft
an almost impossibly tight formation routine that » MAXIMUM TAKEOFF WEIGHT: 1,676 lb
was as much ballet as aerobatics. Their mount, » EMPTY WEIGHT: 1,190 lb
the CAP 10B, became an icon of the show circuit, » FUEL CAPACITY: 19 U.S. gal
and even the most seasoned of aviators would » PROPELLERS: 2-bladed Hoffmann
stop to watch their snap rolls on takeoff.
fixed pitch wooden propeller
Powered by an AEIO-360 engine, the CAP 10B
was far from the fire-breathing monsters that » RANGE: 750 miles
headline airshows today. And even though they » SERVICE CEILING: 16,000 ft
were made of wood, the airplanes weren’t feather- » G-LIMITS: +6 -4.5
light, either. These airplanes put on a spectacular » RATE OF CLIMB: 1,200 ft/min max at sea level
show through careful energy management—a » MAXIMUM SPEED: 148 kts
balance of kinetic and dynamic energy. Speeds » CRUISE SPEED: 139 kts
and G-limits are largely unremarkable by mod- » STALL SPEED: 54 kts clean; 46 kts dirty
ern standards, but few pilots who have flown » NEVER EXCEED SPEED: 182 kts
» POWERPLANT: 1 × Lycoming AEIO-360-B2F, 180 hp

planeandpilotmag.com 67

THE
HOMEBUILT
ADVANTAGES

ABOVE: A simple old-
school ultralight design,
the Harper Lil' Breezy is
a quick build.
LEFT: A Wheeler
Express composite
kit plane taking off at
Oshkosh.

AND OTHER
CONSIDERATIONS

Experimental amateur-built aircraft offer a lot
to both builders and buyers. But you need to
understand what tradeoffs the design embraces
and what that means to you. BY LEROY COOK

TOP: WIKIPEDIA COMMONS AHUNT; BOTTOM: D. MILLER VIA FLICKR Conversation around our airport hangar crowd “The freedom to build and fly something that
generally rotates among favorite subjects covering doesn’t meet standard certification simply means
lots of aviation topics. More often than not, it will that an airplane licensed in the experimental-
include discussion of what this or that airplane amateur-built category (EAB) will probably fly
is like, which one does this or that best, which differently than the normal/utility category bus
one is the top performer—topics that generate you rent from the FBO. Its performance is usually
strongly held opinions, ones frequently founded optimized toward a certain criteria that were
on speculation or hearsay rather than fact. important to the designer and builder, and you’ll
see sacrifices in other details to achieve that end.
And then someone will say, “What about home-
builts?,” and I feel eyeballs turn toward me, as the “The go-like-hell crowd will subscribe to the
aged arbiter of aviation argumentation. Truthfully, Great Big Engine/Little Bitty Airplane concept,
I’ve only flown a few dozen homebuilts, out of the something that would have never been available
hundreds of amateur-built experimental designs in the certificated marketplace because not too
out there, so I’m hardly an expert. But I am nev- many people want to go fast at all cost. Or, in
ertheless emboldened to render a broad-based other cases, experimental-aircraft builders will
opinion, although it’s probably delivered sharply shift toward a small, low-cost alternative engine,
enough to offend some of the hearers in the group. as a basis for flying reasonably fast and cheap.
That engine won’t be seen in a certified airplane,
“Homebuilts are…different,” I’ll begin. “There and the plane might be too small to fit much of
are no surprises, and very few breakthroughs, when the population.”
it comes to light aircraft design. Every airplane is
a compromise; if you want more of this, you have BUT, THEY SAY IT WILL…
to give up some of that. Homebuilts simply cut
across some of the barriers imposed by mass- By now, one of the assemblages will say, “But what
market appeal and FAA certification standards. about the XYZ SuperFlash? It does 200 knots on 10

planeandpilotmag.com 69

A Glasair Sportsman 2+2. Available today in a quick-built kit, the plane is more popular than ever.

gph and is fully aerobatic to boot.” I’ll have to issue In enjoying experimental amateur-built avia- ALL PHOTOS WIKIPEDIA COMMONS
some disclaimer about the difference between tion, we are free to exchange our building efforts
the 200 mph stated in the brochure and the 230 for a factory’s production line, cutting the cost
mph implied by his statement, and then note considerably unless we try to achieve showplane
that we have to analyze what is meant by “fully perfection. However, to obtain these savings, one
aerobatic.” Like full-IFR, that claim is frequently has to discount the hours and years spent building.
subject to interpretation. If you have the time and skills, it’s a great tradeoff.

At the foundation, I posit, is the whole point of And then there’s freedom of expression. A
the EAB category. Homebuilding is about freedom; homebuilt airplane is like a blank canvas; we can
freedom to build what you want, using whatever sketch out pretty much anything we want, putting
materials you choose, to achieve whatever point our own stamp on a design, so long as it doesn’t
you want to make. The category was established to endanger passengers or the populace below. Even
support building airplanes for personal education CNC-engineered, kit-supplied airplanes are open
and enjoyment rather than commercial practi- to modification, within reason, so if we want
cality. Because homebuilders are free to build, extra-thick seats, smoke-tinted canopies, drooped
modify and change their uncertified aircraft as wingtips, etc., EAB allows this freedom.
they wish, repeatability is not guaranteed. If the
advertisement says “200 mph,” it probably means Enjoying this flexible approach to aviation
one specimen may have achieved that benchmark results in aircraft that don’t always fly predictably
at least once, but an average clone, likely modified from one example to another, and they probably
with extra elbow room and weight, won’t get there. work well for one purpose and not for others.
Claims and representations, in EAB aviation, are Aircraft design, and modification of a design, is
somewhat speculative targets. It’s not fraud, per all about compromise; as we said, to get more of
se, it’s just that a design’s projected performance, this, you have to give up some of that.
empty weight, build time or cost is based more
on best-case intentions rather than an average SO, WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
of numbers achieved out in the field.
If there is a generalization to be made regarding
70 AUGUST 2020 Ç Plane&Pilot EAB aircraft, it is that control response will likely

ABOVE: Dyke Delta, a futuristic homebuilt from the 1960s with
Mooney-like speeds. Around a dozen are still flying.
RIGHT: A beautifully finished panel of a Kitfox kitplane.
BELOW: A gorgeous Van's RV-10 four-seat personal
transportation kit plane.

TRADEOFFS BYPLANE&PILOT

Understanding the difference

in flight characteristics between

certified and EAB airplanes begins

with understanding the regula-

tions that dictate certificated,

usually Part 23, designs and how

EAB aircraft might diverge from

those standards.

A couple of the most important

issues are landing speed, crash

worthiness and flight stability.

Often, just looking at the wing

will tell you a lot. For instance,

a small wing, in span, chord and

airfoil thickness, provides higher

cruise speed but at the expense of

having higher stalling and landing

approach speeds. Bede BD-5J jet. Jim Bede's sizzling cool micro jet has been featured in popular culture
Under Part 3 of the old Civil since its inception in the 1970s.

Air Regulations, certificated light

single-engine airplanes had to have a landing- the pilot to explain what it means.

configuration stall speed no higher than 70 mph, Stability and spin recovery are other design

now translated to 61 knots in Part 23 of today’s areas where the FAA’s certification standards are

Federal Aviation Regulations. This figure can be a rigorous but can be overlooked by the designer

few knots faster with credit given for crashworthy in the name of the desired characteristics, again

components, like seats that can take high G load- usually speed. Some very fast homebuilts we’ve

ings. The idea is to make a single-engine airplane flown have little or no pre-stall buffet and behavior

that, if that one powerplant gives up the ghost, can where the nose will drop from 10 degrees above

be landed somewhere less than ideal at a speed the horizon to 50 degrees below in a heartbeat.

where the occupants are very likely going to walk Some of these very fast designs are also subject

away, or at least live to tell about it. to a secondary stall, again something you won’t

Experimental certification removes this and find on a Cessna 182.

most other limitations, allowing EAB designs to Rather than competing with factory-built air-

top 300 mph with optimized big-bore engines and planes, the custom creations of the EAB category

whisper-thin wings, but their pilots must accept simply represent an alternative path to personal

the reduced crashworthiness of 100-mph land- flight. The important thing is that you understand

ing speeds, which might work fine at your home not only the reasons for the tradeoffs but also the

airport but amounts to rolling the dice when it nature of the additional risks you and your passen-

comes to off-airport landings. gers will need to accept in the process. It’s probably

Similarly, the FAR standards for seat structure, no surprise that the most successful homebuilt kits

cockpit visibility and entry/egress are not man- are planes that have design and behavior that, if

dated for experimental-category airplanes. Such not certifiable, is not far from that mark, so their

non-conformity is the reason EAB aircraft will pilots have the homebuilt advantages and also

have the passenger-warning placard displayed, some reasonable expectation of good handling

though in practice the passengers will depend on and reasonably low stall speeds. PP

72 AUGUST 2020 Ç Plane&Pilot

An early plans-built
homebuilt, the Corben/Ace
Baby Ace harkens back to
the early days of flight.

be more sensitive than what we experience in out best and worst cases before flying. Particularly
standard production planes. Flight controls can beware of aft-CG loading’s effect on stability.
utilize unconventional creations like overhanging
center-cockpit stalks or side-mounted sticks, with It’s critically important to watch for “cus-
regular joysticks prevailing over control yokes. tomized” features when flying someone else’s
On the first takeoff in a homebuilt, you should be handiwork. Fuel systems seem to be particularly
ready to use light input pressures, anticipating attractive targets for tinkering, as extra tanks
that the controls will be more sensitive and pow- and valves are often installed, perhaps requiring
erful than what’s allowed in certificated airplanes. transfer pumps or maybe just gravity feed. The
gauging and venting need to be understood as
Tailwheel landing gear is more fashionable in well as the order of usage from individual tanks.
homebuilts than in airplanes built for the mass
market, and typical characteristics like diminu- Watch out for unlabeled switches and knobs.
tive size and faster touchdown speed result in In vintage homebuilts, a feature may be removed
such homebuilts having runway handling that’s by simply disconnecting wires or cables, but the
a notch above the Citabria you might have used old control will be left in place, replaced by a
to get your tailwheel endorsement. Practice some newer one somewhere else. All inoperative items
taxiing and braking before you launch off for the should be so labeled, and every control needs to
first landing. be identified by title and function (“Cabin Heat-
Pull Hot”). Before flying, know what does what
Don’t expect to find a certified flight instructor and put temporary reminder labels in place to
ready to do a checkout in your newly acquired keep things straight. Know which way the trim
homebuilt. The average CFI knows little about knob turns for nose-up and what the limiting
the type or category involved and often can con- speeds are for the flaps and gear rather than
tribute nothing but an evaluation of your ability. relying on memories of a briefing.
If the aircraft is a popular kit airplane that has
factory support with training available, you’d be KEEPING THE CHAIN INTACT
well advised to spend the money to travel to the
plant or bring the factory pilot to your location. The original builder knew the characteristics
Among unsupported designs, seek the counsel of and features of his or her airplane intimately,
other owners and builders. Even if the homebuilt but this tribal knowledge may have been lost.
airplane has dual controls, there often is only one As the distance of years and ownership changes
set of brakes, and rear-cockpit instrumentation add layers of insulating confusion to a homebuilt,
may be lacking, further impeding a checkout. some test flying may be required to re-establish a
basis for safe operation. Document the findings
Because of the customized nature of EAB in well-logged entries, both for the airplane’s
aircraft, it is vital to go over all the paperwork records and your own notes, as well as for the
and logs before flying. Operating limitations are benefit of whomever you might sell the plane to
issued when the special airworthiness certificate down the road.
is awarded and, when the initial flight Phase 1
test hours were being flown, documented data It is important to understand that experimen-
should have been gathered to supplement the tal amateur-built aircraft are individuals. Because
often-sketchy information in brochures and they did not flow down a frozen-type production
blueprints. Weight and balance limitations can line, each one bears the stamp of its maker as
be critical for a small homebuilt; the specific well as the designer. The wonderful freedom to
numbers for the individual airplane should be in fly a creation of one’s own hands carries with it a
the paperwork, providing the basis for working responsibility to other persons who may someday
fly what began as your personal aircraft. PP

planeandpilotmag.com 73

AFTER THE ACCIDENT
By Isabel Goyer

Mysteries Surround Bonanza
Found Eight Months
After It Went Missing

Twenty-five years after the NTSB published its final
report on the crash, questions remain.

Just before midnight on July 25, 1993, the owner of FAA that the plane might be missing, and after it
a Beechcraft F33A Bonanza, registration number received that late call, the agency immediately issued
N3022W, called the FAA to report that one of his a missing aircraft notice, and the search began. The

airplanes, which he had lent to a friend a few days NTSB report doesn’t detail that process, but it likely

prior, was missing. That friend had flown the plane, began on Monday and involved Civil Air Patrol aircraft

along with his wife and a daughter, departing from and ground searchers. The search was just as likely

Camarillo Airport in Southern California on a Thursday abandoned after several days and having uncovered

to attend a large family reunion in Roosevelt, Utah, a no trace of the plane. Its whereabouts would remain

small town located in the eastern high country of Utah a mystery for months.

at an elevation of 5,000 feet. And just why the plane had gone missing was

That same family trio boarded the Bonanza again equally unknown, though a disturbing detail did

on Sunday for the return VFR trip to Camarillo in come to light in those first days. According to family

lovely summer weather. In one of several unusual members, a dozen of the attendees at the reunion had

details in the NSTB report, the pilot, ❯❯ “Even when radar come down with an illness with food
a 54-year-old CFI/CFII with a couple poisoning-like symptoms, though

of hundred hours in Bonanzas and data narrows the search no one had been hospitalized. There
Debonairs, telephoned the Camarillo area to around 10 square also had been no indication that the
Tower from Utah to tell personnel miles, an airplane missing pilot had gotten sick or that
there of his planned return at 7 p.m. can still be difficult or the suspected foodborne illness had
He alerted them that, “he might have anything to do with the missing flight.

a problem transmitting on his com- impossible for searchers The missing plane’s location wasn’t

munications radios,” though there was to locate.” a complete mystery. The pilot hadn’t

no indication he had any trouble with filed a flight plan, and there was no

the comm radios on the day of his departure. record of communications with controllers along the

The pilot’s call about potential radio trouble didn’t way. A radar track, wrote the NTSB investigator (in a

serve as an official flight plan, so one can safely assume strangely noncommittal way), was “thought possibly to

that when 7 p.m. came and went in Camarillo, tower be the accident aircraft, was picked up by center radar

personnel took no action. None was noted in the and was tracked to within 3 miles of the crash site.”

NTSB’s report. Everything, in fact, pointed to the mystery radar

track being that of the missing Bonanza. Its heading—

LOST southwest toward its destination along the Southern

As the evening wore on, a second daughter at home in California coast—its ground speed (140 knots, ballpark

Southern California, having heard no word, phoned the for long-range cruise in the F33 with a likely 10-knot

owner of the plane to report that her family members headwind component), and the place where it dis-

had not returned home. The owner then called the FAA, appeared from radar, which was just 3 miles from PHOTO GOOGLE EARTH

twice, in fact—the first time to inquire about the plane’s the ultimately discovered crash site, are compelling

whereabouts and the second time to report it missing. evidence that the radar track was that of the missing

That second call was the first official word to the Beechcraft. Even when radar data narrows the search

74 AUGUST 2020 Ç Plane&Pilot

The spot in the Mojave Desert 20 miles north of Baker, California, where a Bonanza F-33 was found eight months after going missing.

area to around 10 square miles, an airplane can still very steep angle, 75 degrees nose down and inverted,
be difficult or impossible for seearchers to locate. as well. A representative from the manufacturer esti-
mated it hit at a speed of “between 230 and 240 knots,”
FOUND or about 275 mph.

It would, in fact, be nine months before the plane’s The plane was destroyed, and the report details
wreckage was located in a sandy desert wash in a the damage, noting, “Both main wings were separated
remote area of the California desert 20 miles north from the fuselage with extensive leading edge crushing
of Baker. Baker, which boasts the world’s tallest ther- from root to tip. The ailerons and flaps separated from
mometer, is situated along an otherwise empty stretch both wings. The vertical stabilizer and both horizon-
of US 15, which runs from Southern California to Las tal stabilizers remained attached to the empennage,
Vegas, Nevada. Surrounding Baker are vast expanses and all three leading edge surfaces exhibited exten-
of empty desert basin and range. sive crushing.” Moreover, the landing gear separated
from the aircraft and were found “beyond the initial
The plane might never have been found had it ground scar.”
not been for a committed volunteer, a CAP ground
searcher who had been involved in the original search Reports that document an accident where an air-
and hadn’t given up hope of finding the plane. craft is located only after having been in the elements
for a long time, as was the case with this Bonanza,
A curious and extremely unusual note is included often leave out specific mention of the occupants.
in the NTSB report. An unidentified woman had In this case, the only word of their fates is that, “the
contacted the FAA a few days after the wreckage was certificated commercial pilots and his two passengers
found, claiming that she had witnessed the impact and sustained fatal injuries.” One can safely presume that
reported it right away, including, the report says, the after eight months in a harsh desert environment, they
precise location of the crash. A subsequent records would display little remaining meaningful or useful
search, the NTSB said, was unable to turn up a record forensic evidence.
of that first call.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Regardless, when the plane was physically located,
investigators soon arrived on scene and began their The report’s conclusion that the Bonanza crashed
process, and it would’ve been immediately clear to after a loss of control for unknown reasons at first
investigators that no one could have survived such glance reads like a non-conclusion, but it says more
an impact. than one might think.

The wreckage told a tale of a catastrophic, unsur- While the narrative of the report doesn’t come
vivably violent crash. The aircraft hit the ground at a

planeandpilotmag.com 75

right out and say that there were no mechanical entire mechanism can be swung over to the right side, PHOTO: WIKI COMMONS (N-NUMBER REMOVED)
anomalies, it does eliminate as possible causes the allowing the control inputs to be made from what’s
most likely mechanical factors, along the way elimi- normally thought of as the co-pilot position. Moreover,
nating them one by one, such that the data summary the right-side position of many Bonanzas, including
spells it out, that “there was no evidence found to this one, is outfitted with retractable rudder pedals
indicate a mechanical malfunction of the aircraft or but no foot brakes.
its components.” The flight control surfaces, includ-
ing counterweights, were accounted for, there was no The takeaway is, for a right-side passenger to quickly
sign of runaway trim, the engine was producing power assume control of the plane, that passenger would
and the propeller was turning when the plane hit the need to be familiar with the mechanism and be able
ground (not that engine power loss would account for to execute the control swap-over, possibly only after
the loss of control that preceded the impact). the airplane had departed controlled flight, a tall order
indeed even for a pilot-rated passenger, let alone a
There’s a mention of a forecast warning of moderate non-pilot. Then she would have to be skilled enough
turbulence at the altitude the Bonanza was flying at. to recover control of an aircraft that had already
It’s a typical summer afternoon desert forecast, and, departed controlled flight.
in practice, such turbulence is more of an annoyance
than a hazard. The wreckage was found upwind of Is that what happened? No one knows or will likely
Kingston Peak, which at 7,335 feet elevation would ever know. The NTSB didn’t make a true statement of
have been a thousand feet below the presumed flight probable cause, and it was right not to. There simply
path of the Bonanza. Again, while the NTSB didn’t wasn’t enough evidence to support such a statement.
specifically rule out a weather event, it points to noth- But based on its report, which suggests much more
ing that might make one think it gave such a cause than it could come right out and say, the major suspect
much consideration. was, and remains, pilot incapacitation and the hor-
rifying scenario that would almost certainly follow for
The evidence it did uncover, that the seemingly those occupants who weren’t incapacitated.
mechanically sound plane went violently out of control
with no apparent remedial action, points to a most Such is the nature of accident investigations.
likely cause—pilot incapacitation. Sometimes, having questions answered leads not to
closure that there’s a conclusion but to understanding
Is that indeed what happened? It’s impossible to the terrible nature of what actually happened.
say, and the report’s authors only suggest that possi-
bility. But it’s only that possibility and no others that ***
are supported by the report.
PERSONAL DISCLOSURE
Food poisoning is an unlikely cause. The report
notes the suspected occurrence of food poisoning I have a personal link to the report that’s the subject
at the reunion the pilot had attended, though food- of this month’s After The Accident. I didn’t know any
borne illnesses are seldom associated with sudden of the victims of the crash, and my decision to write
incapacitation, and there were numerous airports about this accident was based not on my connection
the flight had passed in the last half hour if the pilot to it but on the compelling story and report.
were in growing distress.
The NTSB’s thorough, methodical and professional
A sudden, massive heart attack would explain the investigation did as much as possible to help answer
accident, but there’s no strong evidence that the pilot questions about a terrible tragedy, one that had taken
had one. Fatal heart attacks are not uncommon among three lives a year prior, a date that’s today more than
men in their mid-50s, and the pilot’s relatives did tell 26 years in the past.
investigators that the pilot had both a family history
of early heart disease and elevated cholesterol, but Losses like these affect many more lives than those
the pilot’s most recent FAA medical exam found him who die in them or who survive them. I’m one of those
healthy with no issues noted. people, though my involvement was merely peripheral.
I knew that actual airplane well.
Still, had the pilot become incapacitated, it’s
unlikely, the authors suggest, that the passenger in That plane was a mid-1970s Bonanza—the report
the right-hand seat could’ve done anything to prevent doesn’t specify its year, but I seem to recall that it was
tragedy. The report points out that the plane was a 1975 model. The F-33 is a straight-tail version of the
outfitted with a “throw-over yoke” and that neither era’s ultimate four-seat piston single, and while it
of the passengers were certificated pilots. isn’t technically a Debonair, it’s a continuation of that
same Beech Model 33. The model was later stretched
For those who might not be familiar, this style of to provide additional seating. The accident airplane
yoke has a single arm extending from a center push- was a four-seat version.
pull tube, with a yoke at the end of the arm. Typically
positioned in front of the front-left seat occupant, the The plane’s owner was a former employer of mine,

76 AUGUST 2020 Ç Plane&Pilot

A Bonanza F-33 similar to the accident airplane, which was outfitted with a throwover yoke, a detail mentioned by the NTSB in its report.

the owner of a number of aviation magazine titles and At some point, the aircraft owner asked us to
an avid warbird collector. He died in 2014. In addition return the Bonanza to Santa Monica, where he gave
to his warbirds, which included a North American us a different plane to fly, a Twin Bonanza. We had
B-25 bomber, he owned a few personal planes over that big twin for just a short while. At the time of the
the years, one of which was N3022W, the Bonanza crash, we were briefly without an airplane. The reason
that crashed on July 25, 1993. he wanted the Bonanza back, he told us, was that he
missed the airplane and wanted to fly it. He also said
At the time, I was in my early 30s and had been he had a friend who wanted to borrow it. That friend
working for the aircraft owner as an aviation journalist was the pilot of the plane featured in the NTSB acci-
along with my father, who, as some of you might know, dent report here.
was also an aviation journalist as well as a pilot and
an aviation business owner. At the time, I had been a I remember when we got the deeply upsetting report
pilot for more than a decade but was coming back to that N3022W was missing. We hoped for the best while
aviation as a low-time, rusty pilot. tempering our optimism with the knowledge that when
flights that go missing, as this one had, the outcome
The magazines I worked on were very low-budget is seldom a happy one. After the search was called off,
affairs, but the owner was a true aviation lover and, we all knew that the best we could hope for was that
much to our delight, generously supported our flying the plane would eventually be found, which would
needs, which often meant lending us an airplane to at least be an answer of some kind for the surviving
fly. One of those airplanes was N3022W. family members.

It was a great airplane, one in which I doubled my When we heard the news many months later that
experience as a pilot. We flew it all around the country the plane had been found, it did provide that answer—
from our California desert home base, located about not one that anyone had hoped for, but one that we
90 miles southwest of the crash site. We had, in fact, all had expected.
flown the same route as the accident flight on more
than one occasion. So I did have experience flying that I remember, too, reading the accident report when
particular airplane, which did indeed have a throw- it was first published, another year later. It was deeply
over yoke and which also lacked toe brakes on the right disturbing. It also cemented my commitment to be
side. When I flew with my colleague and instructor, the safest pilot I could be and to do whatever I could
we got to be pretty good at swapping the yoke over in my career as an aviation journalist to help make
on a regular basis to give the other pilot a chance to flying safer for all. That’s a commitment I’ve been
do the flying. The process wasn’t difficult or lengthy honoring as faithfully as I know how for more than
in benign weather when in straight and level flight. 25 years and counting. PP

planeandpilotmag.com 77

CROSS-COUNTRY LOG
By Bill Cox

Welcome To East Africa

What was I doing in Djibouti?

A s I stared out at the desert sun barely blistering Standard fuel was 94 gallons, but the total capacity could
above the Red Sea, I was overjoyed that the trip was be increased to as much as 150 gallons or more, if neces-
nearly over. It was the ninth day of what seemed an sary. In our case, we had about 180 gallons total to allow
interminable delivery from Santa Monica, California, to us to make as few stops as possible on the ferry flight.
Nairobi, Kenya.
That’s because avgas, outside the U.S., was becoming a
The day before, the leg south out of Luxor, Egypt, paral- rare commodity in many parts of the world, where volume
leling the coast of Sudan and Eritrea, was a nightmare of is perhaps limited to a handful of airplanes a day. Since
115-degree heat, controllers trying to give me vectors to volume governs price and profit, many airports have long
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and a cylinder head temp that was since dropped avgas availability altogether.
pegged as far to the right as it could go much of the time.
At the time, the South Pacific was an especially tough
When we left the luxury of Luxor at 8 a.m. the previous place to find avgas, as Mobil, once a prime supplier, simply
day, the temperature was already pushing 100 degrees, stopped refining the type and left much of the Pacific low
and the airplane obviously didn’t appreciate the heat and dry. The islands are often so far apart, clients are
during the extended climb. I left the mixture full rich to literally few and far between. The only alternative is to
keep the big Lycoming as happy as I could, but because use auto fuel and reduced power for all phases of flight.
of the fuel overload, we couldn’t climb much above 7,000
feet, and the controllers insisted we continue to our filed (One of my first airplanes was a 1951 Bellanca
altitude of 11,000 feet. Cruisemaster, and I was amazed to discover it was
approved for 73 octane fuel. Today, there’s hardly any
There seemed to be a half-dozen aircraft that needed piston petrol that’s rated for less than 80 octane.)
to transition through our little patch of Middle East
airspace down the middle of the Red Sea, flights coming When you can find avgas in some rarely traveled places,
out of or going into Cairo, Luxor, Port Said, Riyadh and it’s often ridiculously expensive. Most of Greenland’s
other places I couldn’t pronounce. Though I had flown airports charge about $17-$18 a gallon for 100 LL, and
this route twice before, I couldn’t believe the amount of some places at even more remote locations exceed $25
traffic in this corner of the eastern Sahara. per gallon.

At least the Lance was a good airplane for the trip, At 15 gallons per hour across the Atlantic and Europe,
even if it didn’t have a turbocharger or air conditioning. we had about 12 hours’ endurance for a theoretical range
The clients had called six months earlier and asked if I of 1,700 nm. The ferry flight never demanded more than
could find them a reasonable-condition, six-seat single nine hours, so the only real challenges on the final leg into
that could cruise over 150 knots and manage legs of 600 Nairobi were strong headwinds, rising terrain and a lack of
to 700 nm. It had to have a big cargo door, a gentle stall options on the route, mostly the steeply rising Ethiopian
and not be afraid of dirt strips. mountains. We left Djibouti with perhaps 11 hours of fuel
for what I flight planned for a seven- to eight-hour leg.
I had found this 1976 Piper PA-32R-300, had it painted Except for the winds, the weather was good. Now, if the
and reupholstered to the owners’ specs, and now we were damned wind had just backed off from 25 knots on the
about to complete the delivery to Nairobi. The owners were nose, I’d have been a lot happier.
flying throughout Central Africa for education and medi-
cal care, and the Lance would be their mode of transport. Back to the story: We finally managed to land in
Djibouti after circling for a half hour looking for traffic
Despite (or perhaps because of) the Lance’s retractable we never saw. The airplane was none the worse for wear,
gear, the airplane was an excellent choice for the mission, but the crew was pretty well frazzled after seven hours
a cross between speed and carrying capacity, easily and of dealing with angry controllers, abysmal heat and the
quickly converted from one configuration to another and occasional chop that jarred our teeth.
talented enough to do both jobs equally well.
Eventually, we were sequenced behind a gargantuan
It was fitted with a durable and seemingly bulletproof Russian Antonov An-124, among the largest airplanes in
300 hp, Lycoming IO-540 engine and a large, double cargo the world. After landing, we were directed to park under
door on the aft left fuselage directly behind the wing. the Antonov’s left wing, a contrast between the gargantuan

78 AUGUST 2020 Ç Plane&Pilot

and the miniature. There was no other shade available on irrelevant, as practically everyone in that part of the world
the ramp, and the controller generously commented that flies by GPS.
we would be fine under the An-124’s 250-foot wingspan
if we snuggled up to the giant, as long as we were gone In our case, the trip progressed more or less normally,
by 9 a.m. the following morning. though the heavy overload and heat never allowed us to
come anywhere near our assigned IFR altitude. HF radio
The Russian crew was staying at the same hotel, and is required in this part of the world for IFR communica-
we tried to exchange notes on flying south to Nairobi at tions, assuming you can count on the receiving station
breakfast the following morning. Several crewmembers system to be up and working. (I use a 100-watt, Kenwood
spoke English, but, surprisingly, the captain didn’t. Our TS50S converted HAM system that works well under most
knowledge of Russian was nonexistent, so we concentrated conditions. I once contacted Rio de Janeiro control from
on our breakfast. Reykjavik, Iceland.)

The airplane’s owner and I would fly his totally refur- (I wandered into the communications shack at
bished Piper Lance 800 miles south above Ethiopia’s Guadalcanal airport in the Solomon Islands a few years
Ogaden Desert to Kenya. At least, that was the plan. Like ago and noted that they had three huge racks of HF
all flights in Africa, we had a new set of challenges. The radios, yet hardly any of them worked. No big surprise;
Lance would be loaded about 700 pounds over gross they were all WWII, tube-type, military surplus, at least
(with ferry fuel and ocean/desert survival equipment) 60 years old.)
on a Special Airworthiness Certificate, so reaching the
MEA would be a challenge. As we proceeded south toward Ethiopia’s southern
border with Kenya, things began to improve. The GPS
The terrain sloped significantly uphill as we tracked suggested the wind was dying down, the temperature
south. That meant we would have to climb to keep pace was dropping slightly, and we were able to ascend to our
with the mountains of the Ethiopian highlands as we approved cruise height. Just as I was beginning to relax,
proceeded toward Kenya. the engine gave out with a ratty “Brrrt.” Recovered. Then
did it again, recovered and finally began to run rough.
Accordingly, I would normally have been tempted to Fuel pump, changing and adjusting mixture had no
route along the coast, but we had Somalia along the way, effect. Not good.
and the country’s contentious political climate proved
dangerous to overflying planes. Regular readers of this column may recognize that
I had been there before. With 250 international trips in
Additionally, there was very little in the way of radio my logbooks, I knew it was almost bound to happen at
navigation in much of eastern Africa. Flying south out of least once. In fact, I’ve had four total engine failures on
Djibouti, there was a total of one VOR and a sprinkling of ferry airplanes, two on a twin on the west coast of Africa.
NDBs (assuming someone remembered to turn them on)
scattered along the east coast of the continent. Fortunately, Next month, we’ll let you know how we fared with
the lack of established, ground-based navaids is probably those airplanes, and how the problems were resolved. PP

planeandpilotmag.com 79

WORDS ALOFT
By Jeremy King

The author as a young airplane nut. His first trip to Oshkosh was one for the ages.

Teenage Oshkosh

Far from home, but far from alone.

“L  ooking for co-pilot to OSH. Call Tom.” A phone 650 miles from home, accompanied by a total stranger,
number followed. It was handwritten on the back without a cell phone, and if I had a credit card, it was my
of a Phillips 66 aviation fuel order card and taped parents’ and for emergency use only. I called home on
into the window of the FBO’s front door, implying an a payphone to check in a time or two, but for the most
urgency beyond the fuel cards decorating the bulletin part, I was wandering around without much in the way
board inside by the Coke machine. I was 14 years old, of supervision, fear or worry. The week was magical.
and I can still remember every digit in that phone
number, as I called it with my mother nearby, doubt- Tom and I ducked into the EAA Young Eagle tent,
less wary at the notion of letting her son haul off clear where we proudly declared I had surely just set
across the country with a complete stranger. We had a record for the longest Young Eagle ride, and the
some friends in common, some of whom vouched to my volunteers did a fine job of remaining enthusiastic
parents that my ride to Oshkosh wasn’t a psychopath despite my claim being the 73rd such claim made that
while delicately avoiding the fact that about a dozen of morning. They set me up with some swag, and I went
his flights had ended in ways that some would describe merrily on my way.
as "aircraft accidents." Sure enough, pretty soon I was
packing my bag for a trip to Oshkosh, that fabled place Going to an event like AirVenture with hardly a
I had spent countless hours reading about on the FBO nickel to my name was a completely different experi-
couch while I absorbed old magazine issues as the ence from what it would be now. Instead of being lured
textbook for my ground-schooling. into thinking I had to drop thousands of dollars on the
That 1995 trip remains the only time I’ve flown into latest gizmos, I walked around in awe of the technology
what is now AirVenture. This year, I had hoped to fly that was then emerging. For perspective, the Garmin
the Mooney up that way, but the COVID-19 pandemic GPS 90 handheld was the cat’s meow; LORAN was still
had other plans for the world. Instead of packing my a hot ticket, and, for the most part, VOR/DME was still
camp gear and tiedowns, I’ve been shopping online for the way most pilots were flying IFR. Many of us would
merchandise from a show that never happened and stay home with that level of “roughing it” these days.
reminiscing about the last time I landed on the dot
and taxied to the North 40 campground for a week of In the warbirds area, I sat in awe as Chuck Yeager and
hanging out with all the friends I had never met. I was Flying Tigers pilot Tex Hill recounted their wartime sto-
ries. Yeager I had certainly heard of; Hill I quickly learned
to appreciate. When I went through the autograph
line at the end of the event, Yeager’s “whaddya want,

80 AUGUST 2020 Ç Plane&Pilot

kid?” certainly contrasted with Hill’s easygo-

ing personality—and I learned that the big

names could be even friendlier when I later

met Bob Hoover, who had been there and

done that but still took a few moments to ask

about my flying experience and aspirations.

Tom Poberezny, Charlie Hillard and Gene

Soucy flew their final performance as “The

Eagles,” and their iconic rainbow-striped

biplanes still manage to evoke fond memo-

ries among those who saw some part of their

25-year run on the airshow circuit.

I met Richard Van Grunsven as he mopped

morning dew from the RV-8 prototype, field-

ing questions about the (then) new design

that many of us would later see as one of the Another snapshot, courtesy of the author, of one of the many planes that
most popular homebuilt designs of all time. captured his fancy at the world's greatest fly-in.

I rattled off the plans number for the kit my

grandad and I were building, and one of the employees world, we waited with baited breath as the team at

asked if I’d flown in an RV yet. Two days later, I was Sun ‘n Fun waited until what seemed the last minute

circling Lake Winnebago from the backseat of the to make a decision to postpone—and then cancel—

RV-4 demonstrator that now lives in the EAA Aviation this year’s event. AirVenture got scrubbed with much

Museum on the field. more advance notice—the amount of information that

It was a champagne life on a beer budget, though, emerged in the weeks between those two decisions gave

and at least once I wandered across the bridge over U.S. the folks in Oshkosh a solid foundation to base their

Highway 41 to the Piggly Wiggly, where I was in line decision upon. Neither call was easy: These events are

for a deli sandwich behind Delmar Benjamin, who was financial powerhouses that can make or break the orga-

piloting the Gee Bee R-1 in the airshow. The ponytail nizations that host them, as well as the exhibitors and

was a solid clue to his identity; the embroidered Gee vendors who participate. Both decisions were correct.

Bee on his back erased any doubt. His brief answer to Having to sit out a year of visits with aviation friends

how it flew, “just like it looks,” wasn’t nearly as dismis- and industry pillars hurts—but I’ve accumulated a

sive sounding in person as it seems 25 years later. It disproportionate number of shirts and memorabilia

was his turn to order a sandwich, and a brief answer from a couple of airshows that didn’t and won’t hap-

kept the line moving. pen this time around. Both Sun ’n Fun and AirVenture

In the campground, I met our neighbors. A couple have their memorabilia for sale online. While online

parked next to us had flown down from Canada. A merchandise sales will be a little more than a drop in

man nearby handed me his business card. We talked the bucket, it’s a way to show support for these events

several times that week, and I held onto his card for that contribute significantly not only to our lifestyles

years. Mort Crim, it turns out, is something of a legend as aviators but also to the communities around them.

in broadcasting; the man whom I recently learned Exhibitors are offering discounts in the spirit of the fly-

inspired Will Ferrell’s Ron Burgundy character was just in discounts they had planned, and I plan to support

the guy with a Seneca who was my neighbor for a week. them, as well. The money I had planned to burn flying

My Oshkosh experience was amazing but not atypi- to Wisconsin is about to get added to my Mooney’s

cal. There are a lot of people whose names and contribu- panel project, based on a rebate I just saw advertised

tions are nearly fabled, yet most remain approachable on an engine monitor.

and engaging when we cross paths at these events. The Hopefully, we’ll have some fly-in opportunities

big fly-ins serve to pair a face and a personality with soon. I’m already seeing notices of some small fly-in

the names we read in aviation news stories. We gain events, where everything will be outside and spread

perspective and scale by seeing an airplane or device out. One nearby will be hosted on a 2,000-foot grass

on display in person that an online catalog or photo airstrip—that will be one way to make sure that the

album may fail to capture. And we make lasting friend- crowd doesn’t get too large. The handshakes, hugs and

ships, united in a love and passion for flight that often backslaps may be far in the future, but I’m certainly

transcends all manner of socioeconomic divisions. ready to see what fly-in events can become as we emerge

For those of us who thrive on the camaraderie into whatever the new normal will be. But then again,

and excitement of fly-ins and air shows, 2020 has normal is overrated. Didn’t we learn to fly as a means

certainly been a letdown. As COVID-19 rattled the to escape normalcy? PP

planeandpilotmag.com 81

THIS INCREDIBLE PLANE
By Deb Ings

Anderson-
Greenwood

AG-14

An experimental approach to AG-14’s differential aileron flight controls were also
creating a great personal flyer, this unique. While the ailerons on each wing responded
as expected to control wheel input up to 40 degrees of
pusher never got any traction. deflection, once past that, the aileron on the upward
wing reversed direction to 10 degrees up deflection.
A fter World War II, three Texas engineers returned And although the aircraft had a twin vertical tail
home to Houston from Boeing to resume work configuration, only one rudder was installed, on the
on an “everyman” aircraft they designed before left side.
the war. Ben Anderson, his brother-in-law Marvin
Greenwood and their mutual friend engineer Lomis While cockpit visibility was unparalleled, lack of
Slaughter opened shop at the now-defunct Sam hard-point structural references around the pilot
Houston Airport with the intent of capitalizing on made level-turns and landings challenging. Aviation
an anticipated post-war general aviation boom with journalist Ed Hoadley noted in a 1950 review in Flying
their safe, comfortable, easy-to-fly airplane, dubbed that landing was a trick due to “too much visibility.”
the Anderson-Greenwood AG-14. It was by mutual He lauded the plane for its overall handling and per-
agreement that Lomis’ last name would detract from
company marketing, so it was excluded. formance, however, and noted, “getting
in the plane is one of the easiest things
The AG-14 was a twin-boom, pusher-propeller, I’ve ever done in months. You simply
tricycle-gear aircraft. The egg-shaped fuselage sat low sit down, pull your legs in and you’re
to the ground, allowing easy access to the cockpit and ready to depart. Women pilots and
aft engine compartment. Without an engine mounted modest housewives may now enjoy the
in front of the pilot, cockpit visibility was impressively pleasures of flight without the singular
unobstructed. The fat-chord wing yielded stable (but embarrassments that they encountered
less than nimble) inflight handling and in the past.”
gentle stall characteristics. Spinning
the aircraft was nearly impossible: Despite its attributes, the AG-14
CAA certification required 50 spins, ceased production when the United
but the plane could only do them one States entered the Korean War and
turn at a time since it flew itself out aluminum became difficult to find.
after completing that one turn! Aft Five aircraft were built. Both prototypes
engine cooling proved inadequate, so were scrapped. One AG-14 became part
NACA scoops were integrated into the of Mississippi State University’s ducted
aft fuselage, which resolved the issue. prop research and was converted into
an XAZ-1 Marvelette, a ducted fan ver-
Designed to be car-like, the AG-14’s sion of the AG-14.
steerable nosewheel was actuated
with the control wheels and not the Two others are owned by private
rudder pedals. Unfortunately, a fea- individuals, one of whom has often
ture intended to ease taxiing made flown his AG-14 to AirVenture. PP
crosswind landings challenging: The
control wheel had to be centered prior
to touchdown to ensure the nosewheel
aligned with the runway. Wheel brak-
ing was accomplished through a
right rudder pedal toe brake only, so
no differential braking existed. The

82 AUGUST 2020 Ç Plane&Pilot

WEO’RNELINTOE O!

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