Interesting hangar mate
 

Showed up to work this morning and was told there was a new aircraft in the hangar. Wondered if we were about to be testing a *new* flight check aircraft :)

LearAvia Lear Fan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Heard from the maintainers that it was being prepared for 'the stick' here on the MMAC.

'The stick'..... MMAC??? What dat?

Have no idea what "the stick" and "MMAC" mean, but that was a great Bill Lear design. He was pushing it for certification when he died. The issue was the gear box having so much complexity or stress, it was troublesome if workable. There is no doubt this airplane would have been completed if he had not died and it shows how fascinated Lear was with aircraft design. This aircraft came during the golden age of general aviation when designing new GA was considered "the" thing to do. They were right in that some aircraft, mostly light jets, ended up being very lucrative. Props not so much, but Cessna had tons of novel designs as well (see the slides I posted below in ten individual threads), and Beechcraft ended up making the Starship a few years later. I believe Linden Blue was on the panel of this airplane's management, same guy who later made the Starship and more recently pushed for a bizjet called the Spectrum that has yet to mature using Honda turbines, and is currently on the board at Icon aircraft.

Cessna Aircraft Company Experimental Aircraft

• See also Cessna Experimental Aircraft Parts 2-10.

Cessna Experimental Aircraft Part 2
Cessna Experimental Aircraft Part 3
Cessna Experimental Aircraft Part 4
Cessna Experimental Aircraft Part 5
Cessna Experimental Aircraft Part 6
Cessna Experimental Aircraft Part 7
Cessna Experimental Aircraft Part 8
Cessna Experimental Aircraft Part 9
Cessna Experimental Aircraft Part 10

MMAC is the Fed schoolhouse

'The stick" = An airplane being put out to pasture on a display pedestal (airplane on a stick)
'MMAC' = Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center

Great Pics
 

Many of those I had seen, but a lot I hadn't. Things I had never seen before:

1. A 182 with no struts.
2. A 337 with no struts.
3. A Cardinal WITH struts.
4. The single-engine turboprop; contra-rotating. (Anyone know the designation of this one?)
5. The pylon (last part 10) is for an F-4 :)

Cub, those were some very interesting threads to go through. Cool pictures.

Does anyone know what that last thing is, the Meridian looking thing (very end of Part 10)?

Glad to share something with these old Cessna photos, and I did not mean to upstage USMC and the Bill Lear airplane. Just widening the subject to include more experimental GA aircraft of the day.

The Meridian Cessna was photographed at Cessna's Pawnee single engine piston experimental development facility a couple of years ago and aired in Avweb. Word about town was Cessna was thinking about an airplane to counter the single engine King Air at Beechcraft. I never heard any more about the Cessna airplane and I am not even sure it flew. It would seem to be a genuine experimental airplane, but who knows. The fuselage appears to be borrowed from the Mustang.

N350CE Registry

Heard that months ago (that it was going to be fitted to the Civil Aviation Medical Institute "stick"), although the last time I saw it was sitting in the pile in the accident boneyard. Really neat aircraft.