Archive for November, 2021

Kraemer Aviation / Flymall.org November 2021 Wheels & Wings Newsletter

Monday, November 29th, 2021

Welcome to the Kraemer Aviation/Flymall.org November 2021 Wheels & Wings Newsletter

You can view past newsletters here. This month is all about vehicles and aircraft that have been modified for a specific purpose.

Since we celebrated Thanksgiving earlier this month, here’s a shorty history on the holiday:

Pilgrims and Puritans who emigrated from England in the 1620s and 1630s carried the tradition of Days of Fasting and Days of Thanksgiving with them to New England. The modern Thanksgiving holiday tradition is traced to a well-recorded 1619 event in Virginia and a sparsely documented 1621 celebration at Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts. The 1619 arrival of 38 English settlers at Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia, concluded with a religious celebration as dictated by the group’s charter from the London Company, which required “that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned … in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.” The 1621 Plymouth feast and thanksgiving was prompted by a good harvest. The Pilgrims celebrated this with Native Americans, who had helped them get through the previous winter by giving them food in that time of scarcity.

Several days of Thanksgiving were held in early New England history that have been identified as the “First Thanksgiving”, including Pilgrim holidays in Plymouth in 1621 and 1623, and a Puritan holiday in Boston in 1631. According to historian Jeremy Bangs, director of the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum, the Pilgrims may have been influenced by watching the annual services of Thanksgiving for the relief of the siege of Leiden in 1574, while they were staying in Leiden. Now called Oktober Feest, Leiden’s autumn thanksgiving celebration in 1617 was the occasion for sectarian disturbance that appears to have accelerated the pilgrims’ plans to emigrate to America.

Later in Massachusetts, religious thanksgiving services were declared by civil leaders such as Governor Bradford, who planned the colony’s thanksgiving celebration and feast in 1623. In the late 1630s, the Pequot were blamed for the killing of a white man, leading to the colonizers burning down Pequot villages and killing those who did not perish in the fires. Hundreds of Pequots were killed, leading Governor Bradford to proclaim that Thanksgiving from then on would be celebrating “the bloody victory, thanking God that the battle had been won”. The practice of holding an annual harvest festival did not become a regular affair in New England until the late 1660s.

Thanksgiving proclamations were made mostly by church leaders in New England up until 1682, and then by both state and church leaders until after the American Revolution. During the revolutionary period, political influences affected the issuance of Thanksgiving proclamations. Various proclamations were made by royal governors, and conversely by patriot leaders, such as John Hancock, General George Washington, and the Continental Congress, each giving thanks to God for events favorable to their causes. As President of the United States, George Washington proclaimed the first nationwide thanksgiving celebration in America marking November 26, 1789, “as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God”.


The Flymall team hosted their annual Thanksgiving dinner for their friends. Click here for pictures.

Interested in living at an airport?  Visit our Aviation Real Estate page here. You can view price data for airport property in our Market Watch section of the Flymall. Here is the data for all airport property. You can refine the search by “state” simply by searching for the desired state under “Model”.

Want to have your business highlighted on the Flymall???  We offer inexpensive rates to have your business featured on our Wheels & Wings page.  Contact us for more info.

History Trivia: If you enjoy history we have a new aviation history fact each day at the bottom of our webpages.  Some days there may be more than one, just refresh the page.  And if you like Beatles history, checkout our Events Calendar and select the Beatles category.  This is a work in progress, we’re building the most comprehensive calendar of important dates in Beatle history. For those that like to stick with current news, we have an aviation news ticker on our home page.  This is updated daily to show the current aviation news.

Electric vehicles are not something new, they have been around since the late 1800s. In 1880 Gustave Trouvé improved the efficiency of a small electric motor developed by Siemens (from a design purchased from Johann Kravogl in 1867) and using the recently developed rechargeable battery, fitted it to an English James Starley tricycle, and in doing so, he developed the world’s first electric vehicle.

Here’s a bike specifically modified for speed. The 1988 Hutch HPV Superbike… To celebrate the success of the Hutch GPV (gravity bike), Hutch developed these specials. With a special gear-ratio the HPV was literally build for speed… It had a full-fairing for maximum wind resistance.

Achievements & Special Recognition: On  December 14, 1986 Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager took off from Edwards Air Force Base and flew around the world non-stop and without refueling and landed back at Edwards on December 23. An amazing flight. And at the time, this flight was not considered cross country time per the FAA, so the pilots could not log the time as cross country. Their aircraft, Voyager was designed by Dick’s brother Burt Rutan. The Voyager was designed and built just for this around the world flight. It now resides in the Air & Space Museum in DC.

Instructors, what to highlight your students first solo or other achievement here?  Just send us a short write-up and a picture or two and we’ll post it here for you.  Click here for our contact info.

Aviation/Aviators in the news: The aviation section of the Flymall is full of aviation news, training info, and much more for the aviator.

Here’s some bicycles modified to allow British pilots to practice formation flying during WWII. It’d be very cool to find one of these bikes tucked away in an old barn in England.

Air show season is always just around the corner.  Want to travel to air shows in your own aircraft?  Visit our used aircraft page on the Flymall to view our inventory.

Speaking of air shows, have you ever seen one on these at an airshow? A J5 ambulance. This exact aircraft has been at Oshkosh numerous times. It’s always cool to see it in person.

We’re not sure about this flying bicycle. There wasn’t much information online. We do know that in the early days of aviation, there were a lot of experiments with designs like this. Even the Wright Brothers used bicycles to test their airfoil designs.

Car/Motorcycle Show News:   The Laytonsville Cruise In is the place to be on a Friday night in Montgomery County. You can follow Harry on Facebook for daily updates during the many shows and events he attends.

Here’s a 1910 Philadelphia Electric Co. streetlight maintenance vehicle. This vehicle was modified so that the operator could drive it from the same height needed to reach the streetlights.

Here’s a specially designed rail car from Switzerland that had a design purpose very similar to the vehicle above, except this one rides on railroad tracks.

This looks practical. Wolseley-Vickers wheel-track prototype passenger car with a tracked undercarriage. The tracks could be retracted for road use and extended for off-road use. Very cool design.

Here’s a bus that was modified as a tractor trailer or a tractor trailer that was modified as a bus. The Dyson Landliner. Let us know if you have ever seen one in person. These were equipped with two Ford flathead V8 engines and each engine had its own four speed transmission.

1930s Buick rail car. Railroads still do this today. They will fit a pickup truck with railroad wheels that are retractable so the truck can drive up on the tracks and extend the railroad wheels.

Here’s an early motorcycle that has been modified to cut wood.

The motorcycle, the universal piece of equipment. Here we have a BMW with a sidecar that appears to have a PTO (power takeoff) fitted to it.

Our Events Calendar has the most current info regarding local and national car shows, air shows, and more.  With nearly 30 categories, there is something for everyone.  The Day Tripper section of the Flymall has dozens of day trip ideals and interesting places to visit.  Check it out here.

Barn Finds/Hangar Finds:  Need an appraisal on your barn find?  Visit our Appraisal Page for information on our appraisals.  This month, these aren’t exactly barn finds, however each would be cool to find in a barn!

From 1922. We’re not sure what the Dunkley company had in mind when they debuted their motor pram. The Pramotor drive unit was designed to bolt onto the back of any of Dunkley perambulator (stroller).

Another very cool bike that would be the Holy Grail of barn finds. 1939 four-person bicycle invention, which includes two levels and a sewing machine station

Visit our online store to search for hard to find car parts, aircraft parts, and much more.  You can pay online in our secure store, just click on the Store button on our home page.

Visit the Test Drive section of the Flymall for reviews on automobiles, aircraft, motorcycles, and more. Read about it before you buy it.  You can also research price info on a wide variety of vehicles, collectibles, and more in the Market Watch section of the Flymall. 

If you’re restoring a fabric aircraft, Ira Walker of Walker Aviation is your resource.  Visit his page on the Flymall by clicking here

CFI / DPE Notes:  Visit Harry’s Practical Test page for information on his checkrides.  You will also find useful information there to help you prepare for your checkride.  You can also visit Harry’s Lesson Plan section of the Flymall for other flight training information.  Visit our Flight Training page for information on our aviation training classes.

Weather in the news: As pilots, were taught to avoid storms at all cost. The idea of flying into storms (hurricanes) has been around since the 1930s.

The 1943 Surprise Hurricane, which struck Houston, Texas, during World War II, marked the first intentional meteorological flight into a hurricane. It started with a bet.

That summer, British pilots were being trained in instrument flying at Bryan Field. When they saw that the Americans were evacuating their AT-6 Texan trainers in the face of the storm, they began questioning the construction of the aircraft. Lead instructor Colonel Joe Duckworth took one of the trainers out and flew it straight into the eye of the storm. After he returned safely with navigator Lt. Ralph O’Hair, the base’s weather officer, Lt. William Jones-Burdick, took over the navigator’s seat and Duckworth flew into the storm a second time.

This flight showed that hurricane reconnaissance flights were possible, and further flights continued. Below is a current day hurricane hunter aircraft.

Did you know that “Homichlophobia” is the fear of fog? Have you ever met someone that has a fear of fog?

Three Wheel Association (TWA):  Visit the Three Wheel Association page on the Flymall for more info on the association.

Here’s a very cool three wheeler (motorcycle & sidecar) that is setup as a mobile barbecue.

Want a reproduction vintage 3 wheeler.  Walker Aviation can scratch built from pictures or drawings.  Visit his page on the Flymall.  

Prototypes: A 1972 Toyota RV-2 concept car. Its a car, its a camper! For times when you need a car and may want a camper.

Nautical Notes: The Vikings were some of the first (not the first) humans to use ships for trade and transportation. Their Longships were fitted with oars along almost the entire length of the boat itself. Later versions sported a rectangular sail on a single mast which was used to replace or augment the effort of the rowers, particularly during long journeys. These “dual powered” boats were very successful.

Riding The Rails: Here is the English Electric GT3. A prototype mainline gas turbine locomotive built in 1961 by English Electric at their Vulcan Foundry in Newton-le-Willows to investigate the use of its gas turbines in rail traction applications. It was designed by English Electric engineer J. O. P. Hughes in a project that started in the early 1950s.

Animals in the headlines: Wheelchairs for humans go back to the 1600s and most recently, we’re developing them for animals. Many dogs end up having issues with their backs and/or hind legs. In the past these dogs were just euthanized. However there is new hope for these furry friends. Here’s a wheelchair designed for dogs. What started as an aid for humans, has been modified for dogs and other animals.

There’s even wheelchairs for turtles.

We close this newsletter with these words: We close this newsletter with some words by Paul McCartney – And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.

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