RUNWAY AND AIRCRAFT HISTORY
ALAN WOLF (Brooklyn, New York) is the vice president of the Pennsylvania Avenue Radio Control Society in Brooklyn, New York. His club and field (actually, a runway!) is located at Floyd Bennett Field, a decommissioned naval base that first opened in 1930.
“Rich in aviation history, our club has flown here for nearly 50 years, flying our models off the same runway as Howard Hughes, Wiley Post, Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Roscoe Turner, and, my personal favorite, Douglas ‘Wrong Way’ Corrigan,” he wrote.
Wikipedia states that Douglas Corrigan was an aviator who, in 1938, after a transcontinental flight from Long Beach, California, to New York City, flew from Floyd Bennett Field to Ireland, although his flight plan was filed to return to Long Beach. He claimed that his unauthorized transatlantic flight was because of a navigational error and that he misread his compass. He was denied permission to make a nonstop flight from New York to Ireland, and his “navigational error” was seen as deliberate.
Alan went on to state, “A few years ago, I was gifted a Giant Scale model of a Curtiss Robin from a club member, which I spent several months totally refurbishing. I discovered the model was 40 years old, so the entire airframe was reinforced, all new servos and linkages were installed, and the weary Quadra 50cc engine was expertly replaced with a new 70cc EME twin engine. It flies like a dream! It has plenty of power and is always an eye-catcher at our field. Although not completely to scale, it has become a work in progress.”
Alan wrote, “Perhaps Douglas Corrigan used the same runway? It’s hard to tell from the photo, but I’d like to think so! I am proud to be able to recreate a piece of aviation history every time I flip the big wood propeller of my beautiful model airplane!”
SHARE YOUR STORY
Do you have a high-quality/high-resolution airplane, helicopter, or multirotor photo that you are proud of, or a model aviation-related photo with a great story behind it? Email your “Viewfinder” photo and a description about it to jennifer@modelaircraft.org.
