Airport hosts pilots and drag racers

It was hard to miss all the activity going on at Sisters Airport last weekend as hot rods and hot planes shared the tarmac.

Rick Drake of Boise, Idaho, President of the Northwest Navioneers - an elite group of men and women who fly the North American Aviation Navion - decided to invite the membership to join him for a Labor Day Weekend in Sisters.

Thirteen Navions, ranging in age from the first models built in 1946 and once equipped with a meager 185 HP engine all the way to the latest modifications with a 300 HP six-cylinder Continental engine swinging a three-bladed prop, congregated at the Sisters Airport Saturday afternoon planning on doing some fun flying.

On Saturday morning a whole mob of dragsters, hot rods, highly modified automobiles, beautiful rebuilt Fords, Chevys, Oldmobiles, Shelby sports cars and more also descended on the Sisters Airport for a day of games and races.

That took care of the program Rick and his compatriots had in mind for some crafty competition flying; hot rods and airplanes just don't mix on a single runway.

But as it turned out, the Navioneers would have been in conflict with the FAA and the Forest Service even if they didn't have the hot rods to contend with.

Douglas Gibbs of the Alaska Incident Management crew working the Puzzle Fire near Mt. Jefferson and the clean-up of Black Crater and Lake George fires entered and politely - and with some of the finest diplomacy this writer ever witnessed - gently told the Navioneers that if they were planning a play-day of flying around Sisters it would be very difficult to do as there was a TFR in place directly over and around the Sisters Airport.

A TFR is a FAA mandated Temporary Flight Restriction, which for all practical purposes grounded everyone.

The Helipad over on Goodrich Road has six helicopters working the Puzzle Fire and coming and going in the vicinity of the Sisters Airport. On top of that, the Redmond Air Center has water bombers going to the Puzzle Fire and also to the Rocky Top Fire near Sweet Home. The planes fly right over the Sisters airport traffic pattern going both ways, sometimes at an altitude of less than 1,000 feet.

From all of this, however, comes a great boon for the wives of the Navioneers. One of the Navion pilots, 81-year-old Bud (Albert) Supp of Wells, Nevada put it this way with a big grin: "I think we picked Sisters in honor of the women so they could go shopping." And they did, gleefully.

Among those men and women who flew into Sisters in their Navions were 82-year-old Richard "Dick" Bayliss and his wife, Lola, out of Huntington Beach, California. Dick was the oldest member of the Northwest Navioneers and has spent many thousands of hours flying everything from the Vultee "Vibrator" B-13 the standard advanced trainer the Air Force used in the mid-'40s to the sleek P-51 fighter.

Bud Supp - who has been flying for 74 years - has flown the memorable Curtiss Pusher, a two place biplane of the '30s, Piper Cubs, Alexander Eagelrock, the biplane workhorse of the 1930s used in the Air Mail Service, and, as Bud puts it, "…been flying Navions ever since."

The hot rodders had better luck playing with their toys.

Men and women played fun games with their cars that made the entire day nothing but a jolly time, and it was obvious they cherished their machines.

One slick trick was to drive a car in a tight circle around a pylon while a passenger held a rope and kept it from tipping over traffic cones in the circle. The fastest car got the award, but to make it fair driver and passenger had to swap places to balance things out before their actual time was recorded. It took on average about 10.5 to 11 seconds to make a complete 360-degree circle.

Tom Jones of Redmond, one the event's organizers, said, "There's only one rule; there are no rules." However, Pat Arnott, UPS driver from Redmond and starter of the drag racers, added, "There is one rule, if you run over me I'll kick your, you-know-what!'"

Safety and fun worked hand-in-glove to make the day just that, a lot of fun with not a drop of alcohol on the premises.

It was no place for a purist, however, who was a "Ford Man" or a "Chevy Man." There was a bright red 1935 Ford pickup there that did very well on the drag course - with a small block Chevy engine in it.

"Tossing the Fish" brought out a lot of laughs. The driver went from a racehorse start past his or her partner and tossed a big stuffed fish into the air, most times in the general direction of the partner who did his or her best to catch it in a salmon net.

Sometimes that worked, but often it didn't, much to the chagrin of both driver and catcher and the amusement of bystanders, among whom was 99-year-old Cliff Clemens.

Toward the end of the day, amidst the drag racing an absolutely grand rebuilt 1930 Ford Model A truck rolled into the scene driven by Tom Jenkins of Deer Ridge Road. It sounded like it had a monster V-8 engine with its dual pipes, but under the hood was a beautiful relic from the 1930s - a stock four-cylinder Ford engine.

The engine was equipped with a marvel of early automobile engineering, a Miller overhead valve head that doubled the original engine's horsepower.

Despite the logistical hurdles, Saturday at the airport turned out to be a great day. No one got in the way of fire bombers going to and from fires or helicopters flopping by noisily on their way to and from the Goodrich Road Helipad. Navioneers were happy to see their ladies shopping; hot rod fans had a blast, and the day ended with no one mad at anyone and no one hurt.

The Navion was a marvelous dream North American Aviation had of cornering the general aviation market when World War II ended. The same engineers who put the P-51 Mustang into the war - an airplane considered to be the best propeller-driven fighter ever built - also turned out the Navion. And they built it as strong as the P-51.

That wasn't a good idea, as there were very few powerplants available that could get such a heavy airplane off the ground with four people, their luggage and a full load of fuel. All that was available was a 185 hp, six-cylinder Continental and that wasn't quite enough to do the job.

To add to the marketing problem of selling Navions, Beechcraft came out with the low-wing speedball they named the Bonanza that sold for less and flew faster.

North American tried to recover its money by selling the Navion to the Ryan Aircraft Company, but in time, even with new and more powerful engines available, Ryan gave it up. The Navion became the Rangemaster and flew back into North American's lap - where the whole concept eventually collapsed.

But Navions are still flying with over 750 members in the American Navion Society, including those flying in Canada, England, Africa and other places throughout the world.

Clearly, those who fly the 60-year-old Navions cherish them.