Ha. They are polished bare metal! You’re seeing reflections. Our two planes only leak where they’re supposed to!
I said they only leak WHERE they’re supposed to. You’re right, if it ain’t leaking, it’s out of oil. We actually just put a Darton Clean Kit on the one in the picture (#26). The #27 bird still doesn’t have it and she wets the bed constantly. 6 sorties over 2 days for 4.2 hours and #26 only spit out 0.5 gal of oil. Before the kit it was about a half gallon per sortie. It mostly flies down the right side at engine start then drools everywhere for 24-48 hours afterward. The in flight usage is similar for both.
S Image Unavailable, Please Login neaking past Castle Rock, Washington, 1970. In the L-3 in the background, Bower's Pietenpol in foreground. Not big iron but totally enjoyable challenges.
I might as well do this one, too. Fresh out of a 1 year long rebuild in my carport, living room, dinning room, and rec room. 1967 Image Unavailable, Please Login
Pietenpols are neat. I remember one in Florida that had a bulb horn on the side. When the pilot flew over, you could actually hear him honking the horn!
Shortly after Pete Bowers took this shot an Army DeHavilland Beaver drew along side , also flying the slot along the Columbia in bad weather, and stayed with us for a while. He had his nose up, flaps down a bit, and he and his partner were frantically thumbing through what I assumed was an identification book trying to verify the odd and old WW2 identification of the L-3. It was really funny as we were chugging along at 70 mph to have a modern liaison plane formating with a similar plane that was in action almost 30 years earlier.
I have seen the horn thing before and it's always a laugh. Pete's Pietenpol was probably the purest example anywhere. He found it in Everret, Wa. in the ceiling of a machine shop where it had been hanging almost thirty years. It was started by two guys in 1930 and after it was all framed up, they got into an argument and split up. So, the guy that ended up with the airplane hung it in his shop. A warm, dry atmosphere preserved it in pretty good shape. The haskelite rib gussets had to be replaced with birch plywood and a few wooden items were replaced also. Pete restored it with new fabric and a Model B engine out of an Akron Funk. Everything else was all 1930 Pietenpol: wire wheels, no brakes, a Model T spring leaf tailskid, a board for the seats, and best of all, a 6 inch diameter altimeter from the 20's that read "HEIGHT". It was a lot of fun to fly but one had to change the flying techniques and make up for the loss of many helpful modern items. Taxiing downwind it was necessary to execute one or more ground loops to slow down to keep the speed in control. It was a good flying airplane except for being aerodynamically tail heavy. If you skidded in a turn , you got an ear full of cold air instead of the heat coming from the radiator and you never looked out to the left after applying carb heat or you could get smacked in the face by a chunk of ice coming off the carburetor. A fun experience to "go back to 1929-30 homebuilt days." If I could fly now, I think that I would have one. It was a well done little airplane and performed amazingly well with a Model B Ford up front.
Bernie Pietenpol was a backyard designer that hit the sweet spot with simplicity, good proportions, practicability, and a remarkable airfoil that was, as he admitted, sketched out on the garage floor. I suppose that the wing section , span, and wing loading produced a good performing wing at 60 mph. It out performed the L-3 at altitude but the L-3 wasn't designed to perform much over 3000 ft. It was heavy and tough. So many amateur Pietenpol builders put Cub landing gear and Cub noses on them that Pete Bowers asked them ," Why didn't you just go out and buy a Cub!" Those airplanes with the Cont. 65's and Cub gear didn't fly anything like a real Pietenpol.
The one I saw with the bulb horn also had wire wheels and a tailskid, and I believe it also had a Ford engine. At that point, I had never even heard of a Pietenpol ("What is this 'Pete & Paul' thing?") but it was a revelation.
KCLW—Tampa Bay Area. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Morning over the North Atlantic. On a flight home with a new TBM 930. Image Unavailable, Please Login
It takes some time getting use to for sure but overall I like it. Some things are buried in to many button pushes
Took this photo sometime in the late nineties. I had just landed at JFK in my 201 and threw the door open to tak Image Unavailable, Please Login e this picture
Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login The other day, PHNL-RJFF. French Frigate Shoals.
Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login First time flying into Pinal Airpark. Sad to see so many great airplanes put out to pasture.