The Pinnacle of Piper - RC Groups
Summary
The material will be scattered and informal but who cares.Heres a brief blurb on our Family/Business machine, a 1949 Piper PA-16 Clipper.My father bought this airplane in May of 1990, so at 30 years its been in the family longer than I have. For the same reason though, its exceptionally difficult to maneuver on the ground since in order to turn the airplane you have to be sliding the tires sideways across the asphalt. Since it is hard to find these old tires these days we tend to only operate them on grass because asphalt wears them down quite quickly.The clipper sports numerous other features to fit its arial photography and family ship roles.Firstly, to pick up the speed necessary to photograph WWII fighters and other high speed airplanes, she has been fitted with a 150hp Lycoming O-320 replacing the original 115HP Lycoming O-235. This also gives the clipper a helping hand when it is on floats or towing a glider.For Photography you need a lot of outside visibility when flying formation with other airplanes so it has an added skylight. biggest pile of junk) award at the Short Wing Piper Association National Convention and years later after restoration, it won grand champion at the same event.