Evening star. [volume], January 18, 1931, Page 3, Image 75

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
FLYING FLIVVERS Are Coming
Vest-Pocket Airplanes
That Can Land in
a Vacant Lot and
Park in a Tzvo-Car
Ga rage Ha ve No t
Come Into General
Use as Rapidly as
Many Experts Had
Predicted, hut They
Are Just Around
the Corner.
BY ISRAEL KLEIN
OR several years now in the fast
m j development of the airplane indus
try manufacturers and engineers have
I been hoping and planning for the
day when every able-bodied man and
woman will be flying airplanes as they drive
automobiles today.
So far it has been a matter merely of hoping
and planning. But within the year—say, by
next Christmas—we may expect to see the
actual beginning of popular flying.
The flivver airplane will make it so!
The flivver plane—the little, light-weight, low
powered and low-costing chummy type of sports
aircraft —has been flying about for the past four
or five years. Even today there are three small
airplanes in the United States, at least two
more on the way, and several being manufac
tured in Europe. So far, however, these planes
have existed merely for the finished pilot, the
youngster who has taken an extended course of
training in flying and who has entered aviation
as a career. Few there are today who, owning
their own planes, fly them, too. Few there are
Who can afford to own a plane.
But with the coming of the flivvers, with
their popular acceptance, you may be flying
them as you now drive automobiles.
The cost of these planes will be low and
their performance, economy and safety features
high. They will be operated at least as easily
•a the automobile. Their size and construction
will make it possible for their owners to land
them in small fields and park them in places no
larger than an automobile garage.
'T'HAT thought doesn’t overshoot the mark of
possibility, for just as small automobiles of
the flivver type have been made Christmas and
birthday gifts, so may the flivver plane.
There will be even less fear of trouble with
the youngsters in these small airplanes than
there has been with the younger generation in
dashing roadsters embroiled in the confusion of
traffic. For the flivver plane is going to be
practically foolproof before it is offered to the
public.
Right now one of the greatest engineers in
the airplane industry is about ready to Introduce
what he terms a foolproof flivver plane to the
United States. He is none other than William
B Stout, designer and builde -of America's first
all-metal, tri-motored airplane, pioneer in trans
port aircraft development.
Three years ago Edsel Ford became interested
In the flivver airplane and had two types built
for him. Stout undertook the job of experi
menting with it, with a view toward the produc
tion of as popular a flying machine as was the
family flivver, one that the average man could
buy and fly with ease and confidence.
These Ford flivver planes of two and three
years ago were light, low-wing, single-seat mon
oplanes, with an engine of comparatively low
horsepower in front. One engine had two op
posed cylinders. The motor on another experi
mental plane was of the three-cylinder radial
type.
Harry Brooks, who flew Mrs. Evangeline
Practically a flying automobile, glassed in, with good view in all directions. This
German Junkers is for personal flying.
THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JANUARY 18,
How the new flivver planes could cluster around Germany's giant DO-X. Eight of them side by side beneath the huge tcwag%
eight more in file stringing back alongside the cabin-fuselage , like chicks under the wings of a hen.
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A martyr to flivver plane development. Harry Brooks with an early Ford model with a wing spread of 22 feet and a 30-horse ■
power motor. Brooks died when one of these flivvers crashed.
' ■'
He set her down right on the highway, ran 75 feet and lifted her up again right
over the heads of startled autoists. Clarence Chamberlin demonstrates his
Sperry Messenger, in 1928. Just a foretaste of what Li unquestionably to come.
Lindbergh to Mexico City and back to Detroit
two years ago on a visit to her famous son,
came to his death in one of these planes shortly
after off the coast of Florida. The plane he
flew at the time had a 30-horsepower motor, a
wing spread of 22 feet, length of 16 feet and
weighed only 370 pounds. Its tank had a
capacity for only five gallons of gasoline.
RESEARCH on these flivvers continued la
the laboratory, with Stout carrying on most
of the work. Today he is almost ready to brin#
out the result of his experiments.
“It won’t be a single-seater,” Stout intimates,
"because such types are good only for the ac
complished pilot. Any flivver plane will have
to have two seats at least, in order to permit
the new owner himself to learn to fly.
“The new plane will be twice as safe as those
In existence. It will be foolproof for the aver
age pilot, the man who now is accustomed to
drive an automobile. And the average man
will be able to fly it after about two hours of
Instruction. He will be able to fly cross-country
after only four hours of solo operation.
"Furthermore, the flivver plane that’s coining
will be designed so that it can land in a small,
rather rough area, and over high obstructions.
That means a rather high gliding angle and
fast landing speed. But low landing speed Isn’t
necessary any more, if we put brakes on the
landing gear.”
Along with Stout in the flivver airplane field
Is Curtiss-Wright, one of the foremost airplane
corporations in America. This company has
been experimenting with models of tiny air
planes for some time, until it is expected to
produce a small and light plane by this Spring.
Like Stout and Curtiss-Wright in the United
States, W. O. Manning, designer of the famous
British Wren, is looking forward to the flivver
type plane in England.
“This plane,” he says, “should weigh in the
neighborhood of 200 pounds, should have a
maximum speed of between 60 and 70 miles an
hour, and should consume not more than one
gallon of gas every 50 miles. In quantity pro*
duction it should cost not more than $250.”
Wren, which was the smallest
airplane ever produced in England, cost a
little more than SI,OOO. But it was practically
handmade and was purely experimental.
"Already we’ve demonstrated,” Manning con
tinues, “that we can fly successfully and easily
in a tiny plane with a baby 3 V 2 -horsepower
motor cycle engine.”
At present that’s far from the motive power
existing on small planes, or even being planned
for future flivver planes. Os the three types of
tiny planes now being manufactured in the
United States two have motors of 27 horsepower
and that of the third is only 3 horsepower
higher.
These American planes are the closest ap
proach to what may be termed flivver airplanes.
But they still do not satisfy the demands which
the average owner-pilot will make.
All three planes, for example, cost SI,OOO or
more. One of them, a single-seater, is of a
type that would permit only an experienced
pilot to fly it. Another is a compromise between
a glider and an airplane, and therefore becomes
a safe vehicle only for one trained in glider
operation.
Only the third comes close to the require
ments of the popular flivver airplane. It is a
two-seater with a low landing speed and rather
high flying speed. But it weighs much more
than either of the other two small planes, and
Continued on Seventeenth Page
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