Tag Archives: Los Angeles CA

Watch a Highly Modified 70 Year Old Cessna’s Amazing Feats

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1953 Cessna 170B Model

As a relatively new airplane at the time, it proved to be a comfortable and economical aircraft for our family.  With a four-place cabin and a six-cylinder Continental O-300 engine, it easily cruised at steady speeds of over 125 MPH.  We lived in Phoenix, Arizona, and often flew out to Los Angeles, CA for weekends or business.

The trip was usually about 3 easy flight hours from start to finish and the fuel costs were equivalent to those one had to pay to drive an ordinary four-door sedan on the identical trip. But it took a full day’s 8 or more hours to make the same journey by car.

Airline trips to Los Angeles took MORE time, because of the wait at the airports before departure, and the wait after arrival. Furthermore, in the Cessna 170B, we could fly directly to any town’s smaller airport near LA where we had our business or other activities.  On the other hand, the airlines only flew into the larger commercial airports such as either LAX or the Burbank airport, and those airports were rarely close to where we needed to go.

In any event, this story and video surprised me insofar as they showed an entirely different sort of utility for which the same model aircraft might be used.  And yet the airplane is now some 70 years old!

Here we go:  Let’s watch “The Most Highly Modified Cessna in the World!”  It’s just over 16 minutes long. I know this particular airplane from stem to stern, but had no idea, when modified this way, it was capable of almost flying at only 20 MPH airspeed – – – without stalling!  Seeing is believing.  Watch this remarkable 70-year-old Cessna 170B do the impossible.

If you would like to learn how to get this level of unusual performance out of your own Cessna 170, then you can take advanced BUSH training from the school: BUSH AIR is located at the Kidwell Airport (1L4) Cal Nev Ari, Nevada, USA. Their phone number is: (928) 460-3987.  The video is thanks to the pilot, Larry, who posted it and who runs this interesting site: Back Country 182 in Washington state. Tel: 206-453-9116

 

 

 

1910: The Beginnings of a Pioneering Airshow in California

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From today’s “Fly’nthings” Post about early American Aviation – This was a century and 12 years ago!

           Dr. Lakshmi Vempati by PT-17 Stearman

Click on the above poster to go to the Fly ‘n Things website/blog. There you will find an intriguing post by blogger/aviator Dr. Lakshmi Vempati, (at Left) a woman who was born in India, and at the age of 10, suddenly became infected with the aviation bug. This, in turn, led to her immigration to the U.S. where she completed graduate degrees, culminating with her doctorate from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Dr. Vempati is a Private Pilot with her Instrument Rating and is currently advancing toward her Commercial license.  As an engineer, she has done work for both the FAA and NASA.  She is a Research Engineer and Analyst with experience providing extensive modeling, simulation, analysis, and software development assistance to the U.S. Government Aerospace agencies and other private-sector enterprises.

Here is the intriguing story about the above lead poster, which was first published this month by the Transportation History Site:

January 10, 1910

The first major airshow in the United States — as well as one of the earliest airshows worldwide — made its debut at Dominguez Field in Los Angeles County, California. Approximately 254,000 spectators turned out for the 10-day extravaganza, which was characterized by the Los Angeles Times as “one of the greatest public events in the history of the West.”

Charles Willard and A. Roy Knabenshue, inspired by an airshow that took place the previous year in the French city of Reims, selected the Los Angeles region for the show because of its agreeable January climate. Invitations went out to pilots of all sorts of aircraft — monoplanes, biplanes, balloons, dirigibles — to take part in the event’s various competitions.

The participants for the Los Angeles International Air Meet included such leading aviators of that era as Glenn Curtiss and Louis Paulhan. The Wright Brothers also attended, but did not participate; they showed up with lawyers in an attempt to prevent Curtiss and Paulhan from flying. Orville and Wilbur claimed that both of those pilots had features on their aircraft that violated the brothers’ patents. (Ultimately, however, Curtiss and Paulhan were each able to take to the skies after all; the former set a new airspeed record, while the latter broke records in flight endurance and altitude.)

Other aviation greats were likewise on hand for the Los Angeles International Air Meet. Thaddeus S.C. Lowe, who achieved acclaim as the Chief Aeronaut of the Union Army Balloon Corps during the Civil War, attended the airshow with his nine-year-old granddaughter Florence Leontine Lowe; she would become world-famous as “Pancho” Barnes, an aviation pioneer who broke Amelia Earhart’s speed record in 1930 and eventually operated a bar and restaurant in the Mojave Desert that was frequented by such test pilots as Chuck Yeager and Buzz Aldrin.

Image Credit: Public Domain

For more information on the 1910 Los Angeles Air Meet, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1910_Los_Angeles_International_Air_Meet_at_Dominguez_Field