the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

OOPS 222
American Aeronautic Exposition in New York. It flew, but like a wounded
chicken, and the design understandably failed to achieve widespread pub-
lic support. But the public imagination caught fire, and in the years after
World War I the U.S. government dumped a lot of money into aviation
research and design. While that funding mostly went to develop better
airplanes, a certain breed of entrepreneur—does the term “pocket protector”
conjure any images?—set to work personalizing the dream.
Building a flying car is much like trying to build a brick that will
float. “The automobile and the airplane, as we know them, are incompatible
in many ways,” wrote Lionel Salisbury, the editor of Roadable Times,
an Internet magazine devoted to the colorful history of flying cars and
“roadable aircraft,” and a brimming well of optimism about the future of
the idea. “Some of [the challenges] may seem insurmountable, but we
believe creativity and per sistence can be made to prevail.”
The main problem is that cars usually perform better when they’re
heavy, and airplanes perform best when they’re not. Plus, a fl ying- car
design must accommodate the unhelpful reality that the ideal center of
gravity in a car is different than it is in an airplane. Airplane controls must
be designed to operate a vehicle in three axes—roll, pitch, and yaw—while
its engine pushes it forward; car controls need only power the car forward
or backward, and turn it left or right. What you end up with after combining
the two concepts is a vehicle that manages to be both a crappy airplane
and a crappy car. Those primary issues overshadow a host of other confounding
problems, including convertibility, aesthetics, and marketing.
Still, other wounded chickens began emerging from private garages
and hangars between the two world wars, including Waldo Waterman’s
Studebaker-powered Arrowbile, which in 1937 vividly demonstrated the
differing aerodynamic requirements of ground and air vehicles, and an
autogyro designed by Juan de la Cierva called the Pitcairn PA-36 Whirlwing,
a helicopter-style contraption that in 1939 toyed with the notion of
vertical takeoffs and landings. The phenomenon really took off in the