Flying for Fun
D.B. Mathews | [email protected]
More desirable aircraft prototypes for modeling
This month, as in the June and July columns, I will show you full-scale aircraft that deserve to be made available to modelers as kits or ARFs. Previous subjects have been single-place aircraft; this month I’ll take a look at two- and four-place prototypes that would make superb subjects for models but are rarely chosen.
Much like some of the airplanes I included in the previous columns, the following are aerodynamically simple in design and look well suited to fly Scale in almost any form. Perhaps the photos and comments will encourage some commercial entities to make models of these aircraft available, or at least have someone prepare construction drawings.
I copied the Berkeley Navion ad from the September 1955 Air Trails. I hadn’t paid much attention to it until I was visiting with George Sauer after he scanned to disk the photos I used this month. Then the significance of it struck me.
I’ve occasionally mentioned what a challenge the old single-channel escapement radios were to most of us: how we spent hours fiddling with the things to get an occasional flight and how frustrating they could be compared to contemporary RC equipment. The late, great Chet Lanzo once said, “Back then a successful RC flight was one in which the model crashed somewhere it wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been radio controlled.” Those of us who were trying to fly those primitive radio systems concur.
My comments through the years have elicited letters from readers claiming they had no such problems and challenging my memories. They said they had nearly perfect performance from those old dry-cell-driven, rubber-powered escapements and Aero-Trol and other transmitters and receivers. Study Harold Stevenson’s artwork and draw your own conclusions about my memory.
Navion
I chose an ancient Berkeley Models ad to show the only civilian-market aircraft North American Aviation ever attempted. Why? Because my limited research reveals that this was the only Navion RC kit ever produced. How strange. Several rubber-powered model designs were kitted and/or published; drawings for some of them are available through the AMA Plans Service. On the Internet I found an eBay listing by someone selling what he or she described as “much improved and modernized” drawings for the old Berkeley kit. I recall the kit certainly could have used improvement; it was primitive and weak in critical spots. After all, it was designed and marketed for CL, FF, and RC—a nearly impossible combination.
As it became more apparent that the Allies were going to win World War II and production of B-25s, AT-6s, and P-51s was going to end, North American assigned the design of a four-place civil aircraft to a team. By 1945 North American had settled on beginning production in 1946 of what would become the Navion. The design was influenced by lessons learned from the successful P-51 Mustang. Examination of the Navion reveals its parentage.
North American built 1,100 Navions and an L-17 military observation aircraft, then sold the rights to Ryan Aviation in 1947. Ryan built an additional 1,000 Navions in several versions, each powered with successively more powerful Continental and Lycoming engines. When the market for civil aircraft dried up in the early 1950s, Ryan sold the production rights to Rangemaster Aircraft. Rangemaster manufactured a few Navions sporadically through 1976.
Performance was a hallmark of the Navion series, culminating in the Super 260 which could cruise at 150 knots with a range of 1,397 nautical miles. But the Navion couldn't compete with the likes of Beechcraft's Bonanza and Cessna's 195; both were considerably faster.
An additional feature further reduced the Navion's appeal to many pilots. Rather than doors, the design used a sliding canopy with a high transom that had to be stepped up and over to gain access. This feature—in an era when ladies wore skirts—made for rather awkward entrance and egress for women. Rangemaster later redesigned the Navion with a fixed canopy and a door.
I have a memory of the Navion. The local mortician (whose daughter started school with me in first grade and graduated high school with me) spent two years on a waiting list for a Johnson Rocket aircraft (which never reached production). He finally gave up and bought a Navion. The mortician picked up the airplane at the factory in California and flew it back to Kansas. As he landed at La Crosse, he discovered that he had lost all hydraulic fluid in flight, had no brakes, and could not feather the propeller. He ran the new Navion off the runway and into a ditch at the end, tearing it up so badly that it had to be disassembled and trucked back to the factory.
The entry and exit awkwardness was so inconvenient for the mortician's wife and daughter that he eventually traded his Navion for a Cessna 195.
The Navion would lend itself very well to Scale modeling. I find it strange that kit makers and ARF manufacturers have used many Piper and Beech low-wing designs as subjects but haven't noticed the Navion. An RC model of it would certainly stand out as being different and could be attractive to potential buyers.
Swift
This aircraft has been the subject of erroneous information many times in print and in legend. I've also repeated bad trivia on it. Contrary to the often-reported legend, the Swift and the Navion have absolutely no connection, in concept or in manufacturer. The basic design for the Swift was created in 1940 by R.S. "Pop" Johnson, who also designed the previously mentioned Johnson Rocket.
The wartime emergency delayed production until 1946, when the Swift was finally certificated in Dallas, Texas. By then the rights had been sold to John Kennedy's Globe Medical Company. (I'll bet you didn't think of that as a source for the Globe name on the Swift.)
Initial production was of an 85-horsepower version, which was soon replaced with a 125-horsepower iteration. Globe produced 266 Swifts before the small-airplane market crashed, leaving the company with a large number of unsold completed aircraft. In 1947 TEMCO bought the rights and eventually manufactured 833 Swifts, terminating production in 1951.
The Swift was a rapid airplane with the 85-horsepower engine, cruising at a remarkable 155 mph. I was unable to find figures for the 125-horsepower units, but you can speculate that they were outstanding for the era even though the aircraft spanned only 29 feet.
The Swift had a reputation as being great for former military fighter pilots but a challenge for relatively low-time private pilots. Not that it was vicious or a handful, but it did require attention—particularly in the landing pattern.
An Internet search lists a 36-inch-wingspan park flyer model with fiberglass fuselage and retracts available through JMD Models. However, the website is currently unavailable and I presume the kit is unavailable too. That's a shame.
A larger-scale RC model of the Swift would be a novel sight on any flying field. It is a pretty airplane. The Swift also makes a neat-looking rubber-powered free-flight model, particularly with its scale wing dihedral.
Rawdon T-1
In 1940 the Rawdon brothers (designer Herb, pilot Dutch, and business manager Gene) incorporated to operate a flight-training school and commercial airport and provide related flying services. Their grass-strip runway was located in east Wichita across Central Avenue from Beech Aircraft's runway. The Rawdon facility was slightly east of Beech's north/south runway but was amazingly close.
After the brothers passed away, Beech acquired the property and Central Avenue was run under the new extended runway. For many years the airspaces for the two facilities were uncontrolled, which required alert piloting.
The Rawdons trained a large number of student pilots from 1940 to 1942 as part of a federal program to teach civilian pilots in preparation for World War II. Many of those students went on to become the early nucleus of a rapidly expanding military flying service.
The Rawdons established a manufacturing facility in 1947 to make parts and subassemblies for local major manufacturers. They also designed and produced a prototype airplane for the training market. The aircraft received CAA (Civil Aeronautics Administration, later the Federal Aviation Administration) approval in September 1947, but it was not immediately placed into production because the GI flight-training program for which the airplane had been designed had been canceled.
In 1948 most manufacturers' production of two-place trainer aircraft was terminated, and a large inventory of unsold airplanes weighed heavily on the market. In addition, the market was flooded with a large number of unneeded trainer-type airplanes that flight schools had used for the GI program. These events were responsible for several manufacturers closing their doors or selling to the competition.
Through the years Rawdon accumulated valuable experience in production techniques. The design for the company airplane was continually revised, waiting for the time when market conditions were more favorable to attempt mass marketing. During this time Rawdon sold a few airplanes to friends of the company. Spray equipment was added to the airplane, as was an all-metal wing to replace the fabric-covered wing. Engines of 135, 150, and 180 horsepower were also certified.
At best it can be determined that less than 100 T-1s were produced, but no accurate records seem to exist. There are 15 registered in the U.S., and how many of those are still flyable is unknown.
I know of two T-1s: N41672 and N44505. The N41672 model was recently added to the Kansas Aviation Museum (www.kansasaviationmuseum.org) and is in a hangar off-site because the museum has no indoor storage space left.
The aircraft in the photo—N44505—holds a spot in my memory. It was restored from two "basket cases" purchased from a defunct spray operator in Wyoming. I walked around a corner at AirVenture Oshkosh in the 1970s and spotted it. A young man was polishing it down when I walked up.
"This is a Rawdon T-1," I said immediately. The young man was pleased that someone knew the aircraft, but my next utterance really delighted him.
"When the city of Great Bend, Kansas, took the keys to the old B-29 facility in 1951, they held an air show, and I saw a man do the most perfect eight-point roll I've ever seen in one of these," I said.
"That was my dad," the young man responded with considerable delight.
I had encountered Terry Chastain, whose father Jack had been the demonstration pilot for the Rawdons then. Jack had exhibited his flying skills and the T-1's aerobatic abilities at many air shows, including the Miami Air Races. I recall Jack's exhibition at Great Bend as a thing of beauty, with much slower and more precise maneuvers than the wildly overpowered contemporary aerobatic aircraft perform today. "Poetry in motion" describes his flying.
Terry and his brother Phil had taken a year off from their jobs to help their terminally ill dad build an airplane from assembled parts. They took Jack and their mother May Belle to Oshkosh that year, even though the restoration was incomplete. The T-1 was awarded many honors at Oshkosh in the following years, but all were after Jack's death.
You can read more about this family; the Creve Coeur, Missouri, airport; and the activities surrounding the T-1 and other restored vintage and classic aircraft hangared there by using an Internet search engine and typing in "Rawdon T-1." Most of the material I've presented this month is from Internet searches of the aircraft's name.
I was not the only one to recognize the T-1 and be struck by its superb lines. Claude McCullough obtained photos and three-views of the aircraft from the Chastains and developed a 1/4-scale RC version, which he campaigned on the national level for a year or two.
Before everyone jumps on this, Claude advises that he has a bundle of photos and an excellent three-view but does not have working drawings for the model. His address is:
- Claude McCullough, 102 Constance St., Montezuma, IA 50171.
According to Claude, a T-1 RC model available is by Charles Baker, but it is a bit smaller. Ron Anderson of Classic Aviation Models ([email protected]) was considering a kit of the old Monogram Speedee-Bilt models and could also have useful information about the Rawdon.
Wouldn't a model of the T-1—or the other two airplanes I presented this month—be a joy to build and fly, whether in RC, CL, or FF? They would certainly stand out and almost assuredly would fly well too.
The rubber-powered free-flight models in this month's photos are by Bill Schmidt. He has construction drawings for these aircraft for sale, as well as many other unusual subjects in 24- to 30-inch sizes. His address is:
- Bill Schmidt, 4647 Krueger, Wichita, KS 67220; Tel.: (316) 744-0378.
Anyone who enjoys model airplanes will be drawn to the simple beauty of Bill's models. Size doesn't matter because the craftsmanship is so excellent; after all, the master painters' classic appeal had nothing to do with the size of their canvases.
Consider building a model in any size or type from the prototypes I've shown lately—and fly them for fun!
MA
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
