To Read Sport Aviation's January 1990 Ed on the ... - Courtesy Aircraft

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MOLT TAYLOR'S QUEST FOR A MORE USEFUL AIRPLANE , e've all indulged in the fantasy .. . we're - - ·ng our cars along the highway and, sud- -- ly, up ahead we see the dreaded signals e of civilization's most wearisome woes. Brake lights. Brake lights warning us of still another traf Jam . . . brake lights telling us we are going ~ oe late getting home again . . . that we're = '19 to have to sit there breathing exhaust -- es and having our eardrums assaulted _. e cacophony of horns and hissing -3: a ors . .. as those precious quality min .::&S of our lives we could have had at home - our families slip irretrievably away. ~ M an, if I could only push a button, sprout wings on this thing and fly right er that traffic . .. then land on the street front of my house!" • of us have dreamed, but only a handful _· · ionaries have had the courage to try to e dream into reality . . . to take the -ecc ical step in the evolution of personal portation devices .. . to create a people er equally useful on land and in the air. e has yet reached the technological e.e of a George Jetson flying saucer, but ' : Taylor has come closer to it than any : ,; else. In 1956 he obtained CAA certificaa 2-place, side-by-side airplane that :::::_ be landed, have its wings and tail re .-ed and be driven away as a 4-wheel au "le ... in about 10 minutes or so. If BY JACK COX desired, the wings could be folded back along the sides of the detached aft fuselage and towed behind the car like a trailer. <strong>To</strong> reiterate, this vehicle, which was named the Aerocar, was fully certified as an airplane and was approved for use on the highways of every state . . . and was in production 34 years ago! All told, six Aerocars were built, but one of them had to be sacrificed on the high altar of the government's certification process. Amazingly, all the remaining five Aerocars are still around today. • The EAA Aviation Foundation owns the prototype, N4994P, Serial Number 1, which is currently undergoing a complete restoration to flying condition by the Buehler Foundation. • The first of the production machines, N103D, Serial Number 2, has been registered to a Los Angeles area resident for many years, but is shown as a "sale reported" entry on the latest FAA aircraft registry. • N1 01 D, Serial Number 3, is owned by Norton Aero Ltd . of Athol, ID and is occasionally flown in the air shows staged at the Silverwood museum/amusement complex each summer. • N102D, Serial Number 4 ... the most famous of them all . .. is now owned by <strong>Ed</strong> Sweeney who lives and hangars the Aerocar at the Spruce Creek residential airport complex near Daytona Beach, FL. Pictured here, it was both flown and driven at Sun 'n Fun and Oshkosh this past year. • In the late 1960s the remaining Aerocar I was brought back to the factory and remanufactured as an improved Model Ill Aerocar ... and is currently on display in the Seattle Museum of Flight. It is registered as the Serial Number 1 Aerocar Ill, N100D. The Aerocars have led varied lives. Some have been used extensively, some hardly at all. One was flown to and from Cuba in the pre-Castro era, another served daily as a traffic watch airplane . .. and one was seen weekly on a network TV sitcom! Most have changed hands several times and all the owners were/are satisfied customers. So, why aren't the roads and the sky full of latter day Aerocars Why don't we have a vehicle that can get us from front door to front door in about half the time present day cars and lightplanes can Or, as Molt would say to you, why don't we have a more useful airplane parked in our garages every night Before we get into the whys and wherefores, we need to gain a perspective on the SPORT AVIATION 11
The model Molt used to demonstrate the Aerocar concept to his initial 50 investors. life and times of the creator of the Aerocar, because only then can we fully comprehend the problems and the promise of an automobile that flies ... or, if you prefer, an airplane you can drive to your local gas station for a fill up. Moulton B. "Molt" Taylor was born in Portland OR on September 29, 1912 and was brou'ght home to Kalama, Washington in a clothes basket . . . down the Columbia River on a steamboat. His father was a county assessor who would soon move the family downstream to Longview, WA and go on to become a very successful businessman, founding a local savings and loan association among his many endeavors. A precocious child, young Molt would soon be into everything. He entered the first grade in Longview in 1918 .. . and began p1ano lessons soon afterwards. He took to the keyboard so effortlessly and with such personal flair that, during his high school years, he had his own band ... featuring, of course, Molt Taylor at the piano. Molt's initial exposure to aviation came in the Boy Scouts where he learned to build model airplanes. This, in turn, led him to the farm fields near town that were used on occasion by barnstormers, and in 1926, when he was fourteen, one of them took him aloft for the first time . . . in a Hisso Standard. From that moment on he was the first to greet an itinerant pilot who landed in the area and the last to wave goodbye as a Jenny or a Standard bounded off the rough fields and headed for the far horizon. One day he, too, would be up there seeing wonderous sights through a pair of those glamorous goggles pilots wore, young Molt promised himself. "One day" didn't take long, it turned out. When the first improved airstrip was built at Longview, Molt was driving the road grader that smoothed out the lumps and furrows .. . and he· was the bright kid selling tickets for 15 barnstormers like Tex Rankin and Nick ! Mamer. Marner brought a Ford Trimeter into 0 Longview to relieve the local citizenry of a : little of their hard earned cash, and Molt ~ spent the night in it as a guard. During the 5 summer of his 16th year (1928), Molt worked ~ as a line boy at the airport, oiling the rocker :g arms on OX-5s, pumping gas, washing "- airplanes, etc., for flight time. As soon as he 12 JANUARY <strong>1990</strong> turned 16, his instructor, Les Meadows, soled him in a Waco 10. Not too long afterwards, Molt and four other young pilots pooled their cash and bought a Hisso Standard ... which they flew when they could afford the gasoline and oil. One of the treasured moments of Molt's early aviation experiences was the day Phoebe Omlie flew into Longview in her Velie Monocoupe (apparently during the 1928 Ford <strong>To</strong>ur). She took him for a ride in the tiny monoplane and allowed him to handle the controls .. . which meant tremendous bragging rights for a young lad in that post Lindbergh period of aviation mania because Omlie was a pilot receiving a lot of national newspaper coverage at the time. In 1930 Molt set out for Seattle in his 1919 Model T coupe to enroll at the University of Washington to study aeronautical engineering. Ever the entrepreneur, he wasted no time in rounding up 9 fellow mus1c1ans to form a new band to replace the one he had left behind in Longview . .. and soon was appearing all over the Northwest as "Molt Taylor and the Washingtonians." Molt paid his way through college with the money he earned with his band and, in fact, remained for a fifth year to add a business major to his engineering degree. He occasionally had a few bucks left over to spend on flying so he indulged himself by renting new E-2 Cubs and Ryan STs at Boeing Field. In those days that now famous airport was little more than a strip of sand. Jobs for aeronautical engineers were few and far between in 1935 when Molt was ready to enter the nation's work force, so he chose instead to sign up for the Navy's avia· iion cadet program. He finished first in his class at Pensacola . . . and had the thrill of flying such aircraft as the Boeing F4B-4 and Chance Vought SU-1 Corsair. At that time, cadets were not commissioned upon graduation, so Molt was assigned to the fleet as a "cadet pilot" ... flying catapult launched Cur tiss SOC-1 Seagulls off the cruiser U.S.S. is ! Quincy. (The regulations were later hanged 0 and he received a shipboard commiSSIOn as : an Ensign.) Coming aboard about the time ~ of the ship's commissioning on the East 5 Coast, Molt was able to enjoy a South Amer ~ ican "goodwill tour" with stops in Rio,_ Buenos :g Aires, Santiago, Lima and other maJor ports "- as the vessel made its way around the Horn and north to its new home port at Long Beach, CA. The moment his feet hit pavement in California Molt made a beeline for the Long Beach Airport and soon was spending ~is off duty hours operating various new busmess enterprises. Among other ventures, he pur· chased Hangar 15 at Long Beach and renteo space to the Culver Cadet distributor for the area. This ultimately led to h1s becom1ng 2 Culver dealer ... and a Luscombe dealer as well. By this time Molt had met the very at· tractive lady who would soon become h 1~ wife and after teaching her to fly, the two a· them made numerous trips back east to the Luscombe plant in Trenton, NJ and the Culver plant at Columbus, OH to fer airplanes back to California ... one each. After a couple of years, however, Uncle Sam threatened to bring Molt's off-duty act1v· ity to a screeching halt. <strong>To</strong> his dismay, he learned the Quincy was being transferred tc Boston and, indeed, soon sailed for the Eas Coast. · During a layover at the Panam:. Canal however, Molt ran into a SOC p1 lo from the cruiser Louisville who was willing : trade duty assignments with him. The Louis ville was being transferred to Long Beac· and this pilot, who was from Boston, wante: to stay on the East Coast. The Navy w c.l willing, so the two made the sw1tch and 1n ~ The prototype Aerocar on its first flig . Note the amount of dihedral and the lo ; ventral fin, both later changed. T Aerocar was initially powered by a 90 : Franklin, but a Lycoming 0-320 derate: to 143 hp eventually became the standa powerplant. L _____.....;:...__________________________
Page 4 and 5: week or so Molt was back at Long Be
Page 6 and 7: ·eight, considerably more power -
Page 8 and 9: so badly that it was canted a fu ll
Page 10 and 11: airplanes . . . a presey Mustang ,
Page 12: ufacture of power packages for hang

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