Evening Star Newspaper, January 18, 1931, Page 75

- S e THE SUNDAY STAR,. WASHINGTON, ‘D. C, JANUARY I8 193L $1 FLYING FLIVVERS Are Coming Vest-Pocket Airplanes That Can Land in Vacant Lot and Park in a Two-Car Garage Have Not Come Into General Use as Rapidly as Many Experts Had Predicted, but They Are Just Around the Corner. BY ISRAEL KLEIN OR several years now in the fast development of the airplane indus- try manufacturers and engineers have been hoping and planning for the day when every able-bodied man and woman will be flying airplanes as they drive sutomobiles 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 as 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. THAT 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 How the new flivver planes could cluster around Germany’s giant DO-X. Eight of them side by side bflwlh the huge lvlm eight more in file stringing back alongside the cabin-fuselage, like chicks under the wings of & hen. A martyr to flivver plane development. Harry Brooks with an early Ford model with a wing spread of 22 feet and a 30-horses 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 is unquestionably to come. Practically a flying automobile, glassed in, with good view in all directions. This German Junkers is for personal flying. 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 in the laboratory, with Stout carrying on most of the work. Today he is almost ready to bring 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 te drive an automobile. And the average man will be able to fly it after about two hours ot instruction. He will be able to fly cross-country after only four hours of solo operation. “Furthermore, the flivver plane that’s coming 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 om the landing gear.” Along with Stout in the flivver airplane field s 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 proe duction it should cost not more than $250." 'ANNING’S Wren, which was the smallest airplane ever produced in England, cost & little more than $1,000. But it was practically handmade and was purely experimental. “Already we've demonstrated,” Manning eone tinues, “that we can fly successfully and easily in a tiny plane with a baby 3!,-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. Of 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 ape 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 $1,000 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 requiree ments of the popular flivver airplane. It is & 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