Word: flivvers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Most airmen thought that the future lay in liquid-cooled engines, like the Hispano-Suiza, and in flivver planes. But Rentschler staked his poker player's bet that the future lay with big engines, big military and commercial planes and air-cooled engines. An engineer named Charles L. Lawrance began experimenting with an air-cooled engine in which the Navy was interested, but he was having trouble with production bugs. Rentschler bought out Lawrance, eliminated the bugs and perfected the engine as Wright's Whirlwind. By 1924, he was making engines for both Army & Navy planes, and Wright...
...commercial production. Hiller sold 81 of his two-passenger "Model 360" at an average $22,000 each, got into the black at the end of 1950, just before he got $18 million in military orders. Killers have been flying in Korea since January. Hiller has also produced an air flivver, a 356-lb., jet-propelled "Hornet" which he says he can sell for $2.500 in quantity production. But the Hornet, powered by two ramjet engines on the tips of the rotor is limited in range (only 50 miles with two passengers), is still a long way from the commercial production...
...general direction of New York City. Designer-Pilot James S. McDonnell Jr., then 29, hoped to make aviation history by a daring night flight. Ha also hoped to prove that his plane was the safest in the air, thus get enough orders to start manufacturing the air "flivver." But he had scarcely cleared Milwaukee before the engine began flying apart. By a well-executed dead-stick landing in a farmer's field Pilot McDonnell saved his skin...
...always believed that the best airplane is only as good as its engine. Twenty-six years ago, at 36, he quit his job as president of Wright Aeronautical Corp. when his board of directors boggled at his demands for funds for engine research. The popular dream of 1924-a "flivver" plane for every American family-left him unmoved. He was sure the future of aviation lay in bigger aircraft, ever more powerful engines. He went looking for a place to build a brand-new air-cooled engine that would outclass the liquid-cooled engines such as the French Hispano-Suiza...
...turned out, the Progressive flivver was spared. The Communists diplomatically ooched over on the seat-not out of grabbing distance of the hand throttle, but far enough to look like passengers. When Henry Wallace announced that Soviet Russia was capable of making mistakes in policy, not a soul in the drab, smoky hall so much as booed...