The year was 1956. Eisenhower was
president and later that year would win a second term by defeating Adlai
Stevenson, former governor of Illinois, a second time.
Nikita Kruschev was First Secretary of the Soviet Union and the Cold War
was in full swing. The USSR crushed revolts in Poland and
Hungary.
The US population was 169 million. The Bears lost the NFL Championship to the Giants 47-7. The Chevrolet Corvette was in its fourth year of production and a new one cost $2900. Ford’s Thunderbird was in its second year.
“Big”
movies of the year included “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”
and “Around
the World in Eighty Days”
Aviation was
in a time of transition. Most
private airplanes had conventional gear and few had radios.
Even with radios, the navigation tools were transitioning from the radio
ranges (A and N) to VHF Omniranges and DME.
Midway and O’Hare had ILSs. There were VORs located at Bradford, Chicago Heights, Midway, Joliet, Naperville, Polo and Pontiac.
Only Midway, O’Hare and Meigs had towers.
Radar coverage was spotty until after the collision of a TWA Super
Constellation and United DC-7 over the Grand Canyon helped expedite radar for
enroute traffic control.
Cessna
introduced their tricycle gear 172 with a base price of around $13,000.
Midway and O’Hare had ILSs. There were VORs located at Bradford, Chicago Heights, Midway, Joliet, Naperville, Polo and Pontiac.
The Chicago
area included the world’s busiest airport, Midway, and, in the western suburbs
many local fields including Aurora Municipal, Elgin, Elmhurst, Hinsdale,
Lombard, York Township, and Woodale-Moody.
These all had turf runways and some had gravel, oiled surface or (Elgin)
WWII surplus steel mat. Harlem,
southwest of Chicago was recently closed but had ten turf runways, including
three NE-SW, three E-W and two N-S – parallel landings anyone?
Chicago even
had a seaplane base at Navy Pier (above) and another 18 mi SSE of the City on
the Cal Sag Channel. Speaking of
Chicago, Richard J. Daley had been mayor of the city for one year – wonder if
he used a speedboat to “tear up” the seaplane landing area?
What had to be one of the more interesting instrument
approaches was the RNG (radio range) approach to the Joliet Airport. You'd begin by over-flying the JOT radio
range (257 kilocycles), called “High Cone.” Then you would turn to track
outbound on the southwest range leg on a course of 248o. After a couple of minutes and a procedure turn (to 203o then
back on 23o) you’d be inbound on a course of 68o
following the As and Ns. When you
get to the “Low Cone” (the cone of silence right over the station) you would
then make a right turn to about 126o and “dead reckon” the
remaining 3.2 nm to the runway.
DuPage
Airport had two paved runways: NE-SW and NW-SE as well as east-west and
north-south turf runways. See the
photo at http://www.dupageairport.com/images/1951arpt.jpg.
According to the Illinois Airport Directory for 1956 there were lights on
runways and taxiways, Unicom 122.8, fuel and meals were available (probably not
in the same container). Here’s the Chicagoland area in 1963
Air Explorer
Scouts and had their eyes on the sky – perhaps inspired by Flying Saucer Parts
I and II (#1 record - week of 6/25/56).
The Boy
Scouts had Explorer programs for members older than 14.
There were Sea and Air Explorer Posts for groups with those specific
interests. Air Explorer Post 335
had branches in Geneva, Batavia, St, Charles, Elburn and Glen Ellyn.
It had been formed in 1954 and the various groups had aviation-related
meetings and projects. “Red” Knowles, an American (AA) captain based at Midway,
who lived in Geneva, arranged tours of planes and facilities at MDW. Bob Heuer
from St Charles was a copilot for AA and flight instructor.
The scouts and leaders did lots of hangar flying at his house.
Bob had been a crop duster pilot in Tampico, IL.
Another AA employee was Tom Raleigh, a flight engineer. The St Charles
group had meetings Monday nights at the Community Center in St Charles and began
a ground school, so the Geneva group joined them.
Early in
1956 Bill Cherwin (later flew for United and in retirement is flight leader of Lima Lima flight team
(www.limalima.com), one of the Air Scouts, and others
decided to form a flying club so they could put into practice what they were
learning in the ground school. Ten
of them pooled $80 each into a pot of $800, enough to buy a used plane.
Since there weren’t enough scouts to fill the ten membership, several
adults, including “Red” Knowles and Norm Armbrust, bought shares.
N3682E (back
then, E was Easy not Echo) was a1947 Aeronca Champ 7AC – navy blue with a cream-colored top. The engine was a 65hp
Continental, wood prop, instruments included airspeed, oil press, oil temp,
altimeter, fuel gauge, compass, 14 gal of fuel. There was no electrical system,
radio or starter so the pilot would tie down the wings and tail while the
passenger handled the brakes (don’t ask about single pilot starting).
N3682E parked southeast of the old hangar at North Avenue during an engine overhaul.
Almost looks like it is on the North Ave. ramp, close to our current tie downs.
N3682E in July, 1957 at Arbor Vitae airport,
Wisconsin. Jack Powers (later flew for various airlines and retired from United)
checking things out (or maybe changing clothes). Aircraft
usage was billed at $3.50/tach hour. The
club received free tiedowns from airport due to the nature of the club - Scouts
learning to fly. The first rate increase was to $3.60 to make it easier to
calculate rates by the minute. Instructors were not members but gave free dual instruction
time to the Explorers. All of the
initial members were student pilots.
The Fox
Flying Club was incorporated on November 21, 1956 with documents signed by the
following incorporators:
Norm
Armbrust of Geneva (also the Registered Agent), ran a hobby shop in Geneva
There
was a house with some trees at the intersection of North Av and Powis Rd.
From the trees to the threshold of the SE runway there was about 800’
– an ideal place to practice short/soft field landings in the grass.
Obviously this required good piloting skills and a low approach. One day Jack Powers hit a tree on one of these approaches,
damaging the gear but landing without injury.
The members cleaned up the plane, sanded out corrosion and put the plane
back in operation – under the supervision of an A& I. Roy Hazelrigg, a
mechanic for the EJ&E Ry. welded the tubing.
Then as now,
new pilots were always looking for practice and adventure.
Norm Armbrust and Bill Cherwin were new pilots and landed at Elgin
Airport. Elgin had two grass
runways and one made with WWII surplus steel interlocking matting.
As they were preparing to depart Elgin from one of the grass runways,
another plane was inbound on final. Since
that plane had the right-of-way, our heroes decided to pull off the runway.
Unfortunately, the grass off the runway was a couple feet high and as
they pulled into the grass, they performed a major threshing operation.
After they took off, Norm noticed that the plane didn’t seem to perform
the same as before. Turns out the
“mowing” eroded the prop so badly that it had to be replaced.
The good news is that Ron Williams’ girl friend’s father flew in the
Navy with a guy named Sensenich. They
managed to get a new $180 74-46 round tip metal prop to replace the wood prop
for half price. Unfortunately, some
time later, Pete Neal made an “aggressive” wheel landing which dinged the
tips so the prop ended up as a square tip 72” prop.
In the fall
of 1960 the plane broke the tie-down straps and flipped over in a storm.
This resulted in the search for a replacement plane.
On 12-22-60
Bill Cherwin and Pete Swanson flew to Ottawa to pick up their next plane.
N2152E .
(now owned by Walter Plassche of Rochester, NY) or (2512E? (George N) now owned
by Paul Miller of Plainfield, IL), 7AC cream with red stripe. It had similar instruments but it also had a small venturi
with a turn and bank indicator
George Northam, with a new job and
lots of cash decided to join the club in 1961.Bill Cherwin was back from the U of I and was his first
instructor. On 6-24-62 Bill and George did a short dual. The
1800’ runway had a downhill pitch and George landed a bit long – poor brakes
and a downhill slope made for an exciting landing. It must not have been too scary because they then flew
from Roselle to Bradford (an airport and airways beacon location) to Polo and back.
In 1962 the
Club moved to Roselle (now Schaumburg) since the tower had opened at DPA with
communications on either 120.9 megacycles or 342 kilocycles (Heinrich Hertz was
still dead and hadn’t been resurrected as frequencies, yet).
Radios were now required and the airplane was NORDO (no radio).
In early
’63, Chester Good became president and, along with some others felt that the
fabric on the plane was in bad shape so it was sold and a 1957 Champion
(formerly Aeronca) 7FC tri-gear was purchased, N7257B with 95hp.
It had a Narco Superhomer VHF radio with crank tuner and about 5 transmit
frequencies, of course, it wouldn’t work on the numerous LF stations still in
operation, like 342 kc. The plane
also had a venturi, which provided vacuum for the artificial horizon, turn and
bank and directional gyro. As luck
would have it, at the first annual, the fabric was declared to be inadequate.
The fabric was replaced at the Champion factory in Osceola, WI.
It just took a couple of months.
In ’66 the
engine needed overhaul and it was taken to Crystal Lake. The prognosis wasn’t good (bad bearing and case needing
welding).
In August,
1967 N3539J, a 1965 Cessna 150 was purchased from DuPage Aviation for about
$3,500, where it had been a trainer. (now owned by Bob Weiss of Lombard, IL) The
membership limit was increased to accommodate the new resource.
N8580U, the
club’s first 172, was purchased in February, ’69.
It was a ’65 model 172F and is now owned by Charles Sigmund, Walworth,
WI.
In 1967
George Northam “scratched the itch” of ownership with a ’47 Bonanza, in
partnership with Keith Larsen. He
leased it back to the club for several years.
George’s pride and joy had a polished aluminum finish to rival the most
modern fighter jets. Unfortunately,
one day on 1975 the member pilot was a bit hasty in raising the flaps after
landing and raised the gear instead.
“Beechcraft!
Can you spell ‘squat switch?’” Fortunately the damage to the plane
wasn’t much more than to the pilot‘s ego.
However, it was mutually agreed that maybe the leaseback wasn’t the
greatest idea.
Polishing and sticky fingerprints finally got to George
and he decided to get a paint job. Armed with a great design he flew to a low priced guy in an adjacent
state where the painter seemed to be high on the fumes (or something else).
A couple of weeks later he had a brand new “25 foot” paint job.
It looked good from 25’ away. That
shop is still in business, although it’s rumored that they’ve broadened
their product line and now you can get a 15, 25 or 35 foot paint job. IF YOU HAVE MORE INFO ABOUT THE FOX FLYING CLUB HISTORY
PLEASE SEND YOUR STORIES TO Thanks to
Bill Cherwin and George Northam for details of the early years – Bill Everson, April 2004 – 
Aviation in 1956
Chicago Area
Air Explorer Post 335
A
few years before, an intrepid band of young men had much better things to do
than Standing on the Corner (Watchin’ All the Girls Go By)" by the Four Lads (#1 record week of 6/16/56). They were
Incorporation
Ken McClure
of St. Charles, a machinist at Dickey Mfg Co.
Ken was the first member to become licensed.
Eric
Gordtney of Batavia
Fred Keicher
of St Charles
The first
Board of Directors included Armbrust, Gordtney, McClure as well as:
Robert L
Heuer of St. Charles and
Thomas
Raleigh of St. Charles.
Ted Stumm
was the Air Scout Senior Crew Leader and Bill Cherwin the Deputy Crew Leader
Bill
Morrison (son of Wally)
Bob
Case worked with Eric Gordtrney
Early Adventures
Second Plane
Adios DuPage
Back to DPA
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