I'm shocked to learn so few BL-14's are actually flying. I tell people there are 250 like mine !
Half that... oh well. Accumulate spares from the hopless ones I guess.
How can we be so blase as to say any bellanca that hasnt crashed and burned is hopeless ?
We are too rich and too spoiled. Of course if there were an STC for a common lycoming engine for the cruisair
a lot of potentially interested folks wouldn't shy away.
And how many pilots believe the whole damn airplane is made out of wood ?
Most pilots that talk to me about my plane actually say they do believe that !!!
Yes, likely we will be the last generation to campaign the tripple tale 14's for normal use.
I've been involved in overhauling and resurecting similar vintage tube type ham radios and console type home sets from the 1930's - another arcane interest- and it's the same story.
I'm pretty sure that outside of a few museums, when our generation hangs up it's spurs only a few very odd kids, and even fewer millionaires will have the deep interest required, and that the tripple tail bellanca will drift off into the same obscurity the ( also wonderful) ranger powered Fairchild 24 or the gullwing stinsons "enjoy now". Which is to say virtually unknown even by pilots with 30 years experience, and rarely seen except at certain airshows.
My state requires me to attend 12 "public display days" per year to qualify for property tax exemption as an antique
aircraft.
As far as I can tell... anytime I land the goose anyplace besides my home airport ( pop ~ 20 planes total) it IS a Display Day !
At my airport we had a public airport open house. Mostly it was just a flyin for the light sport kit guys.
I put up displays, I put up fact sheets, opened the cockpit to anybody who cared to look... but NONE of the EAA types
bothered. They clustered around thier own little world.. talking about thier own speices ( zenith) and had no interest at all in anything "certified".
So, I dunno. In the world of radios ( like hot rods and maybe classic cars) I know 3 things push the desire to own.
1. Nostalgia ( desire to have what was unobtainable when they were young, or belief in some "golden age" or other.
2. Buying again what they had in their youth, but let slip away.
3. Magazines, which drive desire to aquire, perhaps to compete in a concours type pecking order of collectors.
Old airplanes fall by the wayside because none of these things are in play...or in the concours example... few can play.
In the world of tube type radios, the skill set and knowledge base shrinks with every year, and suitable new parts become scarcer until they enter into the realm of unobtanium. When the last of my generation loses it's eyesight, manual dexterity or marbles there will be a sea of serviceable and even restored radios bound for the dump - often at the hands of no nothings.
the trouble is the whole enterprise... whether it be talking on the wireless for fun, or privately navigating in the sky... is so arcane, so NOT mainstream, so outside the realm of what young people imagine that they can do ( or can do so easily with cell phone or airliner) that one has to admit to an inevitable kind of doom in the long term.. and remain very aware of how priveleged we are to be flying before the last gasps of the ICE engine age collapes...and in what most of us feel is such an enjoyable plane to fly.. despite it's really queer ergonomics.
In another time, every highschool had shop classes turning out wood workers, metal workers, automotive repair people,
and more. I submit that the ressurection of every dead bellanca could teach so many valuable and saleable skills to young people that it's just plain dumb that you couldn't sell the idea of shop classes to any living administrator in america.
Unfortuantely it's also hard to sell the idea to american kids.
