N3N 80th Anniversary – OSHKOSH 2015

UPDATE, January 2015:
With the new year we are starting to get reports from those who are planning to make the trip. I am listing those who are currently planning on being at OSH and those who are thinking about it. Please let me know if you planning on making the trip – I want to give a heads-up to the Warbirds flightline manager as early as possible.

PLANNING ON IT:
1911 (N1940N)
1926 (N44963)
2734 (N45222)
2896 (N2896)
3032 (N44843)
4421 (N45035)

THINKING ABOUT IT:
2781 (N44741)
2865 (N773N)

Now that Oshkosh 2014 is over, lets begin planning an 80th anniversary celebration at Oshkosh 2015!

We have had lots of birds at OSH over the years (pictures below), but how about if we put together “the big one” for the 80th anniversary of the N3N first flight (August 23rd, 1935)?

This may be the last major get-together for some of our current owners.  I don’t want to be a “downer”, but more than a few of today’s owners will not make the trip to Airventure 2035 for the 100th anniversary of the N3N.

A co-worker of mine is Airventure warbirds flightline co-chair. He says he can reserve a row in Warbirds for the N3N if we tell him before the Airventure winter planning meeting.

What do you say?  It would be wonderful if we could get 10 or 12 aircraft to Airventure 2015.  I know that most of you are unfamiliar with commenting on blogs, but I really need to hear from you on this one! Click on “Leave a Reply” at the top of this post to leave your thoughts or send me an email (shown on the “Contact Us” page.  I will start making a contact list and get an aircraft count.

P.S. If one of you “not so young” owners doesn’t want to fly solo to OSH, I would be glad to fill the other cockpit and “spell” you. I haven’t made a tail-dragger landing in about 40 years (first solo was in a Cub), but I can keep the wings level and maintain a heading on two hour legs.

David

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Road Trip!

I was passing through Denver on Friday and I had an open day in my schedule, so I gave Ron Kempka a call to see if he could host me for the afternoon.

Cheyenne is about an hour and a half drive up I-25 from Denver and only 20 miles or so past CO/WY state line:

Thoughts on the Heritage of the N3N

I continue to be haunted by the volunteer at the Naval Museum who said that the N3N was a Navy built “copy of the Stearman”.  My recently revised “ABOUT” page (see menu at the top of the page) shows 3-views of the Convair 880 / Douglas DC-8 / Boeing 707 to demonstrate that similar aircraft with similar missions using “best practice” technology from the same era can often look quite similar.  This does not make one a copy of the other.

On the other hand, there is always (well, at least since Kitty Hawk…) a heritage that leads aircraft designers to make the choices that are incorporated into a new design.  I believe that if there is one single aircraft that had the most influence on the design of the N3N, it is the Berliner-Joyce OJ-2, pictured here in sea-plane and land-plane versions:

Why do I say the N3N design team was likely influenced by the OJ?

1. General arrangement – It “looks” like the N3N, although it is a lot larger and heavier.  In fact, the N3N kind of looks like a poorly modeled copy of the OJ-2.  What modelers might call a “stand-off scale”, meaning if you stand far enough away it kind of looks like the original.

2. Convertible – The OJ-2 was convertible for land-plane and sea-plane operations

3. Timeframe – The OJ-2 entered service in 1933 (as a catapult sea-plane aboard Omaha-Class Light Cruisers) so it was newly in service when the N3N design was commissioned.

3. Specific shared features:

• Main center float with outboard stabilizing floats – sitting on the water the N3N looks remarkably like the OJ-2.
• Strut-braced horizontal stabilizer – even though the OJ has 2 struts (and belt-and-suspenders flying wires on top), the concept of a strut-braced tailplane seems to have come from earlier military aircraft, not from civilian light aircraft.
• Four Ailerons with a connecting strut – again, another similarity that was adopted by the N3N design team.

Production was 39 aircraft.  There does not appear to be a surviving airframe.

Here is the Wikipedia page for the OJ:  OJ-2

Here is the Wikipedia page for Berliner-Joyce company:  Berliner-Joyce

I would like to find out more about the construction of the OJ-2. In particular, is a metal airframe?  If anyone knows of any technical references, I would really appreciate a heads-up.

New listing on the Rides page – Dual Available

N42745 (bureau #4383) has a new home at Van Sant airport in Pennsylvania.  As the new owners point out, she is based about 50 miles north of where she was built seventy-some years ago.

She is available for rides AND dual instruction.  What a great way to get your tailwheel endorsement!

Link to the Van Sant Historic Airfield website, rates are the same as the… um… “N2S”: Van Sant Historic Airfield

N3N Hat/Lapel Pin

I recently picked up a pewter N3N hat pin. When it arrived it turned out to be a bigger than I had visualized (I was expecting something dime-sized):

An N3N Ride!

Jim McDaniels graciously offered me a ride in his aircraft when we talked at Oshkosh-2013. He lives on the east side of the state of Michigan and I live on the west side. Our schedules did not line up until this past Monday. I drove over to the east side and… we went flying!

Jim’s aircraft is based at a user-owned airfield (i.e. the hangers are individually owned and with each hanger comes a share in the airport) in Romeo, Michigan.

Here Jim’s Aircraft:

N3N Cartoon from Annapolis, 1947

Reader Mike is beginning work on a digital model of the N3N for X-Plane or FSX (MS Flight Simulator Version 10+).  We have been corresponding on paint schemes and other items.

He sent me this cartoon, drawn in 1947 by some budding artist in Training Squadron VN8 (the Naval Academy N3N squadron) with some extra time on his hands.  Enjoy!

(click on the photo to see a larger image)

N3N Paint Schemes

I have been going through the fleet photos and thinking about paint schemes.

I would categorize aircraft three ways: civilian, “sorta” military and historic military. The challenge is where to draw the line between the kinda-military and the historic military.

I was surprised that there are so few civilian paint schemes in the N3N family. The vast majority have at least some pretention of being military. There seems to be a real “warbird” draw to the “N”.

I would define civilian as having a significant amount of color that is not Orange-Yellow and none of the following markings: military stars (or later period Annapolis stars-and-bars), branch logos (Navy, Marines, Coast Guard) or buzz numbers. A simple “N3N” on the vertical stabilizer doesn’t get me to “military” (as always, your mileage may vary). I count eight civilian birds in the fleet as follows (in no particular order):

As I said at the top of the post, there is some disagreement on what is historic and what is not (please don’t anyone start a blog-war), but I think we can all agree that the El-Toro bird is NOT a historic Marine paint scheme:

Marsh Aviation N3N Postcard

I recently picked up an old Marsh Aviation postcard. It pictures an “N” and the phrase “If it’s a silver airplane with a yellow nose it’s Marsh Aviation”. It was printed on a linen-like surface by Western Lithograph in Los Angeles.

This is a high-resolution scan – you can click on the photo to enlarge.

On the reverse side it says “There is no substitute for experience. If it has been done on the farm by an airplane, Marsh has done it. Crop Dusting, Liquid Spray, Seeding, Defoliating, Selective Weed Control and Fertilizing.”

I will be adding this to the Ag Aircraft page as well.

10,000 views – a website milestone

We reached 10,000 views this past week – that means 10,000 “clicks” on the various pages and posts of the website. Whooda’ thunk that my idea to collect N3N documentation for the web would have rallied together such a great group of people: