Much has been written about the New Standard Aircraft, particularly

Much has been written about the New Standard Aircraft, particularly the famous D25. In the mid 20's, when aviation was starting it's real growth in the private sector,
the Gates Flying Circus was busy introducing America to Flying by taking aloft
literally thousands of persons for their first ride. Using J-1 Standards, airplanes with
wooden framework built in the teens as WW I trainers, all was well until the then
CAA decided that a commercial operation (Barnstorming) airplane must have a metal
fuselage. Ivan Gates, seeing his chance to grow his business went to Charles Healy
Day, a noted designer of aircraft, and asked him to design a plane specific for his
purpose, hauling passengers. Thus, the first and only 4 passenger plus pilot, open
cockpit aircraft was designed and built and Ivan's troupe was suddenly doubling their
income on each flight, caring 4 and not 2 passengers. They also realized that they
were hauling more passenger then before because the sometimes, somewhat reluctant
family could fly togeather at the same time or two couples could get their bravery up
since they could fly togeather.
When the Barnstorming era started waning most of the D-25 models were bought by
crop dusters and over the years were destroyed or worn out and were removed from
the FAA records, never to fly again. This is why, of the approximately 62 that were
built, only a handful remain in existence. Some had been rum runners and had been
confiscated. Lot's of great stories are out there about D-25's.
Our D-25 has history in that it was used as the fuel carrying "mother ship" in an
endurance attempt by Clyde "Upside Down" Pangborn. It was tanked in the front
cockpit to haul fuel that was transferred in flight to another D-25 that Pangborn was
flying. The record attempt went over 124 hours before a broken oil line forced it's
landing.
N9194 (this plane) moved to California were it started it's second life as a crop duster.
Finally, worn out after decades of hard work, it was sold along with several other D25's to Cole Palens "Old Reinback Airdrome". Bought by Steve and Suzanne Oliver,
an 8 year "restoration" was begun. Restoration here being defined as, with the
exception of the outside baggage door, original heart and soul, every part was built
new, following the original drawings but using even better materials that we have
today. Fuselage, landing gear, control system and etc were all built in custom made
jigs. The plane was built up by Bill Hammond who had built both of Cole Palens D25's and had maintained several D-25's for years. Wood work and finish on the wings
and center section was done by Herb Clark, (pittsfabric.com). See his web sight, his
work quality speaks for itself. Nav/strobe lights were installed for those beautiful and
special sunset cruises, we often add Champagne, the customers love it.
One big change was the installation of rudder pedals with toe brakes from a Vultee
Viberator (BT-13) instead of the unusual setup of four hanging identical pedals, two
being the rudders and the two inside being the brakes. Great for grass fields as they all
were when they were first built, but not the greatest set up for paved runways. In the
original setup, if you needed brake, you would take your foot off the rudder pedal and
put it on the brake pedal, not both at the same time. The setup now, rudder pedal with
toe brake makes it much more user friendly.
Many smaller improvements were incorporated that had been learned over the
decades of flying the D-25's. The original engines were Wright J-5's, the 9 cylinder
radial that the Spirt of Saint Louis had. Though great engines, they are very rare and
require lots of ongoing maintenance due to their being an externally lubricated engine.
Some D-25's were converted to the Continental W-670 of 220 h.p. The preferred
conversion is to the Wright J-6-7 or sometimes referred to as the R760-8.
With 90 more cubic inches it produces more torque and h.p. then the Continental. It is
not unusual to fly 1500 or more hours between overhauls. N9194 has a fresh overhaul
done by Don Sanders, Mustang, Oklahoma, often referred to as the Guru of Wrights.
At this time, "Pang" (we name all our airplanes and Pang is short for Pangborn, a
famous New Standard pilot) has approximately 30 hours since total rebuild.
The fit and finish is excellent, modern Red Line hydraulic brakes have been adapted.
It includes basic instruments and includes the JPI 800 series engine monitoring
system, radio, transponder and set up for a Garmin portable GPS. The radio package
includes a cd player which allows the pilot to talk to the passengers and a cd can be
prerecorded to play to the 4 passengers, all using David Clark headsets, to tell about
the airplane, the area your flying over, whatever you chose to prerecord.
Loading and unloading is very straight forward with lots of room between the
fuselage and top wing, much much greater then a Waco or Travel Air. There are a few
video's on You Tube of folks taking their rides in New Standards.
If a person/entity is seriously interested in ride hopping, there isn't anything that
comes close to a 4 passenger New Standard. One can do the math and other than
having a bigger note to pay off than on an older 1 or 2 passenger Waco or whatever,
the income is two to four times greater for the same cost of operation. Also, and this is
a BIG consideration, is that you will get more passengers who wouldn't have ridden
because they can now go with friends or family. Operating cost is the same as a one
passenger Stearman.
Ride prices range from a low of $40 per person which is what we charged usually,
especially if we were in an economically depressed area which is about everywhere,
to over $100 per seat. The typical seat price seems to be around $60 to $70 for a 10 to
15 minute time in the aircraft. You can figure the hourly cost of operation and the
hourly income and suddenly it becomes apparent why the D-25 is so far ahead of one
and two passenger planes. Our rides, at venues where the crowd is waiting in line to
fly is a total of 10 minutes including loading in and out. It's a trip around the pattern,
takes 1 gallon of fuel and we do 6 loads (24 paying passengers) per hour. Do the
math. If the situation warrants, we can do longer rides and charge more, it depends on
the venue and logistics.
The cost of a new Waco is $350,000 to over $500,000 and they are selling them. And
how much of a beating on depreciation on a plane that there are dozens of and are
being built currently. And one has to consider what the value of a rare plane that there
are only about 10 of and there well be no, really is, along with it holding its value and
appreciating. I can tell you that our first New Standard, sold for much more than we
paid for it (and we paid a lot compared to used Waco's and Travel Airs).
Following the 8 year total rebuild and with about 150 hours on it, our ferry pilot who
had 2400+ hours in Standards, happened to get it into the dirt beside the runway on a
landing. Aggressive use of the brakes got it on its nose which normally would have
been the end of that, replace the prop, do a runout on the crank and you're back in
business. Unfortunately when the prop hub hit the red Georgia clay, it didn't move an
inch farther so the momentum carried it over on its top. That's the bad news. The good
news was that it got another complete rebuild with updates and much much better
covering and finish.
Because the 8 year rebuild was taking so long and we were needing to get it to work,
we had farmed out the covering of the airplane to an older fellow in Fla. that we had
known for years. We were never thrilled with his "fit and finish," though it was
workable. The accident allowed for the complete recovering of the aircraft and the
folks that did it were exceptional. See http://www.pittsfabric.com/about.htm. Fuselage
covering and final assembly was done by Harry Stenger's "Aero Fabrication" in
Bartow, FL. Harry had done much of our aircraft building and repair for over 30
years.
There were some upgrades made during the rebuild and it flew in March of 2011. We
installed a fresh overhauled engine and prop so total time since total rebuild would be
30 or so hours. As you know, Sun n Fun, (were we started their ride hop operation in
1982 and have worked it since), experienced the devastating tornado that year which
closed the grass runway we use so there was very little flying done there. Thus, our
New Standard is basically new again.
One of the biggest changes and upgrades was with the brake/rudder pedal system.
New Standard had built the D-25 to fly off of grass strips, they had 4 identical pedals
consisting of a round tube hanging down from a swing arm with another round tube
welded on at 90 degrees to put your foot on. Thus there were 4 pedals, the two outside
ones were the rudders and the two inside ones were the brakes. Basically you had to
take your foot off the rudder pedal to use the brake, at the same time giving up rudder
authority. Worked ok on grass and was workable but not friendly on pavement. I did
research and found that several D-25's had been converted to the Vultee BT-13
rudder/brake assembly which like the Standard hangs down but the brake is part of the
rudder pedal, typical military style. Using their 50 year old "substantiating data," we
installed and the FAA signed off on them. Much more user friendly.
Suzanne and I barnstormed first our Stearman and then our first New Standard since
1982 though my barnstorming goes back to 1965. We had a regular run from Sun n
Fun through about 6 places we did each year on our way to the National Biplane
Association Fly in in Bartlesville, OK were we were the official and only ride hop
operation for many years. For a number of years, Joe Kittinger (first man in space)
and his bride did the tour for us. We have lots of experience barnstorming in biplanes.
A Classic Airplane, Flown by Classic Pilots, Doing Classic Things
This airplane is a New Standard D-25, S/N 133 manufactured in July 1929. It
was manufactured under ATC #108 by the New Standard Aircraft Corp.,
Patterson, NJ. It left the factory with a Wright J-5 engine of 220HP (S/N 2237 or
9237, depending upon if you read the FAA's registration or airworthiness data). It
was a 5-person airplane with a gross weight of 3,400 pounds, with a useful
payload of 1,390 pounds.
It sold on July 12, 1929 to the
Citizen's Aircraft Corp. Patterson, NJ,
Hugh Herndon, Jr. President. It was
purchased expressly to act as a supply
ship in an endurance attempt. A
telegram filed in the airworthiness
record for the airplane, dateline
Roosevelt Field, August 25, 1929,
reports that, "... ninety one ninety four
completed refueling tests for special
license." Further, the notation that the
airplane carried a, "..standard oil tank.
Oil to the endurance plane, 182H, to
NC9194 Vertical Stabilizer, April 16,
be supplied in cans". It also explains
2010, Lakeland, FL (Source:
why the airplane was registered "NR"
Webmaster)
or restricted. See the update of
09/28/11 below for additional information.
Indeed, according to Plehinger, NR9194 participated in the men's landplane
endurance record, acting as the supply aircraft for another New Standard D-25,
NR182H (named "Empire State Standard"; not a Register airplane). "Empire
State Standard" was flown by Clyde Pangborn, with Carl A. Dixon as copilot.
Herndon and two others managed the refueling from NR9194, which was, for the
event, named "Uneedus" for obvious reasons. Alas, the flight lasted only 179
hours, 41 minutes (August 26-September 2, 1929), being forced to discontinue by
a broken oil line. The record attempt was unsuccessful. See Register pilot
Marjory Doig's page for a possibility related to this event.
NC9194 landed
Book Cover,
once at Tucson,
1978 (Source:
about three months
Hammond)
after the record
attempt, on Friday,
December 6, 1929.
It was flown by
Herndon carrying a
passenger
identified as, "1
mechanic". They
were eastbound
from Calexico, CA
to New York, NY. No purpose was
given for his trip in this new airplane.
But the book "Upside Down
Pangborn," right, chapter 24, page
149 gives a clue to why Herndon was
on this cross-country voyage. The link
provides the relevant part of chapter
24 (PDF 1.9Mb).
NC9194 Engine & Propeller, April 16, Citizen’s Aircraft Corp. owned and
operated the airplane through
2010, Lakeland, FL (Source:
1931. The FAA record then includes
Webmaster)
an affidavit of public auction dated
August 1931. The airplane was auctioned by Pacific Airmotive Corporation to
recoup a mechanic’s lien of $971.07. It seems that Pacific Airmotive had
performed, “Major overhaul of engine and propeller. New fittings installed” and
had not received payment for their service. The successful bidder was Palmer
Nicholls (not a Register pilot). The registration was switched to his name as of
August 15, 1931.
Nicholls was probably an aircraft broker, as he turned around and resold the
airplane on September 16, 1931 to the Independent Crop Dusting Service, San
Francisco, CA. He turned his $971 into $1,400, making a profit of almost $500
on the deal. Not a bad monthly wage as the Depression was deepening. The
airplane had Wright J-5 S/N 9186 installed at the time of sale. Somewhere
between this transaction and the next sale the registration was changed to "NC".
The next registration document in the FAA file is dated October 8, 1931, and it
describes modifications to the airframe to prepare it for crop dusting. Its seats
were removed, it was classified as a one-place airplane, a 50 gallon spray tank
and spreader were installed and it was reassigned a “NR” license (restricted to
crop dusting with one person aboard). A stamp on this document shows that the
mechanic’s lien was released May 26, 1932.
NC9194 Starboard Fuselage, April 16, 2010, Lakeland, FL (Source:
Webmaster)
As of December 3, 1934, the airplane had five fuselage members replaced and
the landing gear fittings rebuilt. Eight additional fuselage braces were installed
and “…reriveted all main panel points where loose.” Wing ribs were replaced
and the wings were re-covered. The tail group was, “replaced and recovered…”. It is not clear if this work was performed as the result of an
accident, or due to wear and tear from three years of crop dusting work.
NC9194 Cockpits, April 16, 2010, Lakeland, FL (Source: Webmaster)
In March 1941 the airplane was sold for $7,500 to George T. Boyd, Jr. and R.J.
Streif of Modesto, CA. The next record of sale was recorded December 12, 1946