Flymall September 2022 Wheels & Wings Newsletter

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

This month our theme is “repurpose”. We’ll be highlighting vehicles and/or wheels & wings components that have been repurposed or reused for a purpose other than what the original intent was.

You can view past newsletters here.

Kraemer Aviation hosted it’s annual Labor Day cookout. The weather was perfect for most of the day. A few light showers on and off, but otherwise perfect. Click here for pictures from the event.


We’ll start off our repurpose theme with some cool items made by Harry & Jon. Here are a few spark plug dancers that Harry & Jon made one snowy afternoon. Click here for some more pictures of the spark plug dancers plus a few other items made from spark plugs including a spark plug coat rack. Here is a very cool Piper Arrow nose gear trunnion lamp made by Harry. Click here for a unique piece made by Harry using an old Hawker Jet wheel and a propeller.

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”. The Flymall is offering for sale a very nice grass strip in Carroll County Maryland. Click here for details. What could be better than living with your plane at an airport, how about living in your plane. Here is an aircraft that has been repurposed as a home.

Click here for some pictures of airliners that have been made into homes.

Old/retired airplanes are very popular to be repurposed as a restaurant. The GrillAvia was a restaurant in Amberieu-en-Bugey, built using two Sud-Ouest SO-30 Bretagne aircraft.

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: While it is not know for sure who was the first person to come up with the idea of using a drop tank or belly tank for a race car. Bill Burke of the famed So-Cal Speed Shop is mostly likely one of the first, if not the first to build such a race car. Here’s his most famous of these belly tank is called the Lakester (made from a belly tank from a P-38). If you can find one for sale, scale models of this sell for over $200.

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. You can also check current fuel prices on our home page. Fuel prices are as easy as entering the airport identifier and clicking on search.

Achievements & Special Recognition: 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.

Here is someone that deserves some special recognition for being creative. Harry’s friend, David Sprecher used an old gate from a fence and made it the center section of a bicycle. It is fully functional and David does ride it. He started with a Colson rear steer bicycle. Very cool David. Click on the image for a larger view.

Aviation/Aviators in the news: Airliners are popular aircraft to be repurposed as water bombers or aerial firefighting aircraft. Aerial firefighting dates back to around 1929.

The Airplane Service Station, also known as the Powell Airplane, is a service station built in 1930 in the shape of an airplane. Located at 6829 Clinton Highway in Powell, an unincorporated community in Knox County, Tennessee, it is on the National Register of Historic Places. The station was built by brothers Elmer and Henry Nickle. Their intent was to increase business by having a service station that was visually unique, both to area residents and to travelers on newly widened U.S. Highway 25. Elmer Nickle had a strong interest in airplanes, and so the station was constructed in the Mimetic architectural style in the shape of an airplane.

Here’s a place that Harry would go to with his dad in the 1960s. Jim Flannery’s Constellation Lounge in Penndel, Pennsylvania. Here is a post we did on this several years ago.

The aviation section of the Flymall is full of aviation news, training info, and much more for the aviator.

A drop tank or belly tank motorcycle, there was not much about this very cool motorcycle (just a picture online). Our Market Watch is a great resource for price info on drop tanks or belly tanks. Click here for the price data on the belly tank and click here for belly tank racers.

Do you have an airframe that is not airworthy? Why not put it up in a tree? Here’s an awesome Facebook find where someone used an aircraft fuselage and made a treehouse with it.

Airplanes are not the only vehicles that make a good tree house. Here’s a VW Bus three house. This looks awesome.

Here’s a Piper Seneca that Harry got for a friend that wanted to put an airplane in his front yard for his grandkids to play in. Another one saved from the scrap yard!

An aircraft can also be used just as a display piece. Years ago Harry was contacted by an aircraft owner that had an old Hawker jet that had not flown in a while. Harry was asked to do an appraisal on the plane which he did. The plane was not worth a lot due to its age and having outdated engines and avionics. Once the appraisal was completed, the owner asked Harry to try and sell the plane. With the current state of the old Hawker, it would have cost more than the plane was worth to get it airworthy. Therefore, selling the plane was difficult. So Harry arranged for the plane to be donated to the Cambridge Airport (the airport where the plane was currently located). A picnic area was made around the plane. Harry’s company Kraemer Aviation Services donated the picnic tables. So the old Hawker lives on.

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.

Car/Motorcycle Show News:   The Laytonsville Cruise In is the place to be on a Friday night in Montgomery County.  The Laytonsville Cruise In was started by Harry in 2010. It has become one of the most popular cruise ins in the area. You can follow Harry on Facebook for daily updates during the many shows and events he attends.

On Saturday, September 17, the Flymall team flew to Hammondsport New York to attend the annual Wings & Wheels event held there. All proceeds from this event go directly to the Glenn H Curtiss Museum. The flight up was perfect with some low lying fog and smooth air. Click here for some more pictures from the flight from KAGI to KPEO.

Penn Yan airport (home of Penn Yan Aero) is located about 20 minutes north of Hammondsport and is an excellent choice for general aviation aircraft. N36777 was parked next to a classic Beaver on floats. The de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver is a single-engine high-wing propeller-driven short takeoff and landing (STOL) aircraft developed and manufactured by de Havilland Canada. It has been primarily operated as a bush plane and has been used for a wide variety of utility roles, such as cargo and passenger hauling, aerial application (crop dusting and aerial topdressing), and civil aviation duties. In addition to its use in civilian operations, the Beaver has been widely adopted by armed forces as a utility aircraft. The United States Army purchased several hundred aircraft; nine DHC-2s are still in service with the U.S. Air Force Auxiliary (Civil Air Patrol) for search and rescue. By 1967, over 1,600 Beavers had been constructed prior to the closure of the original assembly line. Various aircraft have been remanufactured and upgraded. Additionally, various proposals have been made to return the Beaver to production.

The “Wheels” part of the event takes over the small town of Hammondsport. Click here for more pictures of the car show portion.

The coolest part of the event was all of the seaplane activity. They had a spot landing contest and a bomb dropping contest (they had to drop a grapefruit to hit the water between 2 pylons). Click here for more pictures of the seaplanes.

Click here for a video montage of some of the seaplanes in action.

The entire town is all about Glenn Curtiss and/or the rich boating history of the finger lakes. Click here for some signs at the local school. Here’s a cool wall mural on the side of the local grocery store. Even the lobby of the Best Western Motel has an airplane hanging from the ceiling and a wooden boat hanging on the wall.

Here are a few pictures of the motel lobby.

The Finger Lakes Beer Company is next to the Best Western. A great little tavern that serves locally brewed beer. Notice that the foam on their sign forms the finger lakes.

Want an aerodynamic car? Then start with an airplane. Someone has repurposed an aircraft into a road worthy car. Very cool!

District Harley Davidson hosted a weekend full of activities over the long Labor Day weekend. We attended the festivities on Saturday. Our 1975 Lomax was there on display. The weather was perfect and best of all, they had free food! Click here for some pictures.

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.

Earlier this month, the Flymall Team visited the AACA Museum. Click here for pictures from our visit to the museum.

The museum had numerous themed exhibits including; Orphan Cars: Vehicles from Discontinued Marques & Brands, AMC Through the Decades, ATVs: Off-Road Adventure, The Jenkins 1966 Volkswagen Type 2 Deluxe Microbus, Driving After Sundown: The Evolution of Headlights, and Tucker Automobiles: The Cammack Tucker Collection.

Click here for pictures of the 3-wheelers & sidecar rigs on display at the museum. Click here for pictures of the motorcycles on display at the museum. Click here for pictures of the buses on display at the museum at the museum. Click here for pictures of the model train display at the museum.

You can visit our YouTube Channel by clicking on the YouTube icon at the bottom of our webpages.

How about repurposing an old shopping mall to house your collection of classic cars. Here’s a guy who did just that. Checkout the Classic Auto Mall.

Classic Auto Mall by the Numbers:

  • 336,000 square foot climate controlled building
  • 8 acres under one roof
  • Showroom space for 1,000 vehicles for sale and 400 barn finds on display-Capacity of 1,400 vehicles indoors!
  • 40-acre property with 1,500 feet of frontage on the Pennsylvania Turnpike
  • 28 acres paved, lined and lighted parking lot with space for 2,500 vehicles
  • Parking for 1,000 additional vehicles on the outside green space

Have an old motorcycle that doesn’t run. Turn it in to a mailbox!

Barn Finds/Hangar Finds:  Need an appraisal on your barn find?  Visit our Appraisal Page for information on our appraisals. 

“Barn Finds”, they’re out there. Here is a 1928 Morgan Aero that was recently discovered. It had been hanging in a barn for 50 years. I guess you can say that it was repurposed as art for those 50 years. The Morgan Motor Company was founded in 1910 by Henry Frederick Stanley Morgan. The early cars were two-seat or four-seat three-wheelers, and are therefore considered to be cyclecars. Three-wheeled vehicles avoided the British tax on cars by being classified as motorcycles. Morgan three wheelers are iconic in the world of both British cars as well as three wheelers. H.F.S. Morgan quit the Great Western Railway in 1904 and co-founded a motor sales and servicing garage in Malvern Link. In 1909 he designed and built a car (a three wheeler) for his own use. Previously he developed the first independent front suspension in the engineering shop of Malvern College.  He began production a year later and the company prospered. Production of three wheelers approached 1000 by WW1. Morgan soon had both racing and touring models. Morgan’s first four wheeler came in 1935 with three wheelers phased out in 1952. Morgan continued to run the company until he died at age 77 in 1959.

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: Here’s an awesome vehicle in our collection that came to be because of weather. We’re calling it the Cutlass Rollfast. Here’s the story; On Friday, June 29, 2012, a derecho hit the Mid-Atlantic region. The results were disastrous. N96747, a 1984 CESSNA 172Q Cutlass, was flipped onto it’s back as a result of this storm. The plane was totaled by the insurance company. The flight school that owned the plane kept it to salvage parts from it. After the school was finished with the plane around 2016, it was time to remove the plane from the airport and send it to the scrap yard. Harry said “Wait”! He said that he wanted a section of the fuselage to make a sidecar for a bike or motorcycle. They all laughed at the idea. But he did get the section that he wanted. Harry interviewed many builders to find the right person to do what he wanted. About the year 2020, Harry was introduced the Steve Weddles. Steve was the man that could do what he wanted. Harry basically gave him free rein to be creative and build an awesome sidecar and attach it to a 1950s Synder Rollfast bicycle that he had. The build took just over a year. This is the result. It is not finished yet. We still have some little things to do. Steve and his sister Jean delivered the bike to him on August 14 2022 in Jean’s 1960 VW Single Cab. The had the sidecar mounted on the opposite side of the bike so it would be a righthand drive bike. Steve also incorporated several items we had from a 1941 Boeing Stearman that include the seat belts and a map box that is mounted behind the seat in the sidecar. Pictured here is the plane, the plane on it’s back, the section of the fuselage that we started with, the delivery vehicle, and the almost finished product.

This month we also saw a major hurricane hit the US. Hurricane Ian made landfall on September 28 2022.

Hurricane Ian September 26

Hurricane Ian September 27

Hurricane Ian September 28

Three Wheel Association (TWA):  Harry started the Three Wheel Association in 2013 to promote/support the industry of three wheel vehicles of all types. Visit the Three Wheel Association page on the Flymall for more info on the association. Coming in 2023, we will be redoing the TWA Association website. We will also be open to membership with membership benefits. Stay tuned!

Kraemer Aviation/Flymall.org is now the new owner of the popular 3 wheeler site 3-Wheelers.com. Look for some updates coming soon. We will be adding a lot of new features to 3-wheelers.com.  We’ll be adding a clubs section where clubs can advertise.  We also plan to have a section where you can post 3-wheelers for sale as well as parts for sale.  We’ll also have some 3-wheelers.com clothing and other products for sale.

The Chair-E-Yacht. This unique 3 wheel vehicle was designed to give more mobility to someone in a wheel chair. The idea is that you could roll a wheelchair up the ramp, lock yourself in, and then use the ‘yacht’ to navigate smaller streets. It was capable of hitting 15-20mph. It seems that only about 1,200 were ever built. Every now and then, one will come up for sale. Here is our price data on this unique 3 wheeler from our Market Watch section of the Flymall.

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

Prototypes: Here’s a home that was designed to look like a spaceship. It was called the Futuro. A Futuro house, or Futuro Pod, is a round, prefabricated house designed by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen, of which fewer than 100 were built during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The shape, reminiscent of a flying saucer. During the 1960s, there were two of these in the Dundalk/Baltimore Maryland area. There is currently one at the Eagle Crest-Hudson Airport in Delaware.

Nautical Notes: Did you know that after the Vietnam war, Vietnamese farmers recycled thousands of external fuel tanks from U.S. aircraft to create makeshift river boats and canoes. There was most likely a lot of these available. They were light weight and water tight. They probably made an excellent canoe.

 Cosmic Muffin

Have you heard of the Cosmic Muffin? It’s a boat made from the fuselage of a Boeing 307 Stratoliner that was once owned by Howard Hughes. Hughes turned his 307 into the “Flying Penthouse”, with much more powerful engines, and full of luxuries. The plane was eventually sold to an oil tycoon in 1949, but was damaged by a hurricane in 1964 while parked and rendered unfit to fly. The aircraft was then moved to a scrapyard, where it was then purchased for just $62 by a local pilot and realtor, Kenneth W. London. Ken decided to convert the unflyable aircraft into a plane boat. Ken removed the wings and transported it to a local marina, where he spent the next 4 years making it sea worthy. Ken completed the project into 1974, and was the proud owner of a fully operational 307 Yacht named the “The Londaire”. The boat was once again sold in 1981 to Dave Drimmer, who named in “Cosmic Muffin”. Dave discovered the boat was barely holding together, so performed major restorations on the structure, and refitted the interior to its former ‘VIP lounge’. The boat is controlled by the original flight controls, and uses two inboard V8 engines for power.

Here’s a cool little boat made from an outrigger or pylon from a Short Sunderland flying boat The Short S.25 Sunderland was a British flying boat patrol bomber, developed and constructed by Short Brothers for the Royal Air Force (RAF). The first flight was October 16 1937. The Sunderland was one of the most powerful and widely used flying boats throughout WWII.

Here’s a house that was a boat. It was taken from the top of a V4-M-A1 oceangoing tug, used in World War II by the U.S. Maritime Commission.

Modern Day Pirate Ship

How would you like to live on a pirate ship? Someone did just that. Here’s an old boat that was converted into a live aboard pirate ship. The earliest documented instances of piracy are the exploits of the Sea Peoples who threatened the ships sailing in the Aegean and Mediterranean waters in the 14th century BC.  The most widely recognized and far-reaching pirates in medieval Europe were the Vikings. Queen Ann’s Revenge (Blackbeard) is one of the most famous pirate ships.  Blackbeard’s piracy ranged across the Caribbean and North America from the late 17th to early 18th centuries. In November 1717, he stole a French slaving vessel, La Concorde, and set about converting it into a fearsome pirate ship. When he was done with his renovations, the vessel had 40 cannons onboard and bore the name Queen Anne’s Revenge.  

Riding The Rails: Train cars are very common to be used as bridges.

Home sweet train!. A railroad box car converted into a home.

A caboose resturaunt.

Animals in the headlines: What could be better than going surfing in the summer time? How about being able to carry your surfboard on your motorcycle! And better yet, being able to take your dog with you. This is a Russian made Ural motorcycle with a sidecar rig that has also been setup to carry a surfboard. How cool is this? The Ural is such a rugged bike, that you can modify it to do most anything. Checkout our Ural in our collection and read about the history of the Ural Motorcycle by clicking here.

Here is another Ural that was modified to carry a dog as well as a surfboard. Very cool rig!

We close this newsletter with these words: Never underestimate the power of a kind word or deed.

Comments Off on Flymall September 2022 Wheels & Wings Newsletter - Share this on Facebook or Twitter.

Comments are closed.

Today in Aviation History