Unusual Attitudes: Lovin' Them All

Unusual Attitudes: Lovin’ Them All

Martha Lunken

Saturday, January 31, 2015 at 01:49 AM ET

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Key Takeaways:

The author shares a detailed, nostalgic account of her personal journey with a 1939 Pietenpol Air Camper, from jointly acquiring and restoring the project in the late 1960s to flying it for instruction and attending an antique airplane convention.
While generally professing a love for nearly all aircraft, she details a highly negative recent experience flying a Cessna 162 Skycatcher, describing it as tiny, noisy, and poorly designed with difficult controls.
Despite her strong dislike for the Skycatcher, a conversation with a student pilot who loves the aircraft, combined with her reflection on her own similarly flawed but cherished first airplane, an Ercoupe, leads her to reaffirm her ultimate conviction that she loves all airplanes.

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A few weeks ago I flew the Cessna 180 to a nearby grass strip to give a sport pilot practical in a man’s Pietenpol Air Camper. Coincidentally, somebody else had just sent me an old Antique Airplane Association magazine. The “Our Lady Antiquer” section in this January-February 1968 issue featured “brand new AAA Member 9010, Martha Franke; of Cincinnati, Ohio (who) owns and flies a 1939 Pietenpol Air Camper and promises to bring it to Ottumwa in ’68 barring a 60-65 mph headwind.”

“Miss Franke” (a ham, obviously, even back then) told about a friend at Lunken Airport who had bought and dismantled the airplane with plans to restore it with an original Model A Ford engine. Built by Bernard Pietenpol in 1939, N18224 lived in the Minneapolis area for over 25 years, but somebody along the way “modernized” it with a 65 hp Lycoming engine, a tailwheel and heel brakes.