west6008

Back in the 60's I read a hilarious article in Sport Aviation, that i would love find and share,
thinking that readers in this forum might have been into full size homebuilts.

The very convincing story was about a guy who built a DOUBLE size Fokker D7, powered
by a Rolls Royce Merlin. The only trouble he had was a nosy plumbing inspector
wondering what he was doing with all the 2 inch galvanized pipe he used making the fuselage.
When he fired up the ehgine, the airplane jumped the chocks and he found himself in a vertical climb.
The article had a photo even, and also told of a double size Curtiss Junior.

if anybody has a collection of this magazine into the mid 60's please find that article, it is priceless.

pchristy

Slightly off topic, but this sounds like an article I read in one of the US car magazines back in the late 60s. I can't remember whether it was Road & Track or Car & Driver, but it concerned a new, forthcoming 12-cylinder Jaguar. However, this was not to be a V-12, but an IN-LINE 12! They even had a road test of the prototype - an E-type Jag, with the bonnet (hood?) extended by 34" to accommodate the length of the engine!!! The front of the car was so long, it had closed circuit TV from under the radiator at the front to the dash, so that the driver could see oncoming traffic when pulling out of side-roads!

Right at the back of the mag, they revealed the truth! The car did actually exist, but it had been built by a Californian custom car man. He had joined two 6 cylinder Jag engines together to produce the "in-line 12", and simply lengthened an otherwise standard E-type to take it! It looked a very professional job, and certainly looked the part in the road test!



--
Pete
"Duct tape is like the Force: it has a light side and a dark side, and it binds the Universe together!"

west6008

pchristy, brilliant !

I have a favorite cartoonist,Bruce McCall, who has satirical aircraft he invented such as the Russian Snud Bomber,
and here is a link for his other drawings, very convincing,
http://www.airspacemag.com/military-...ir-Forces.html

Look for his book Zany Afternoons, a fond look at the
Battle of Britain included

Sergeant82d

I read that article! My oldest brother was in the EAA in the mid-late '60's, and had that issue! I loved it! He talked about the local plumbing inspector coming out because of all the iron pipe he had bought, and how on the initial takeoff, it climbed so fast that he had no control over it, and he was happy he had only the 55-gallon drum for a fuel tank so it ran out quickly (!!) and he dead-sticked it in!

Great story!

<edit>
If I had read your entire post, I would have seen that you wrote virtually the same parts that I remembered!