Made in USA : .45-70 at 143 years old

Builders,

Today was a working day here in the cradle of Corvairs. Vern and I were working in my hangar, Corvair/Panther builder Paul Salter was tuning up his Panther for the next flight, Dan Weseman met some builders in town at the SPA/Panther factory, and Brent Mayo’s Flying 3,000 cc Panther flew in to our airport, as he now has about 60 hours on the plane.

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In the late afternoon, we took a short break to do a little shooting in my back yard. My neighbor Wes stopped by with a brand new classic, chambered in one of the worlds oldest cartridges,  .45-70 . As a continuation of my appreciation of great American made mechanical devices and tools, let’s have a quick look.

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Above, a .22LR next to a .45-70, with a standard business card for sizing.  The cartridge is beyond a classic, it is something of a legend. It was first made in 1873, when Ulysses S. Grant was President. 143 years later, it is still in production.  Just like your 50 year old Corvair engine, the modern .45-70  which is dimensionally and functionally the same round that Custer’s men used at the Battle of Little Big Horn, has been the subject of carefully engineered improvements on the original design.

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Many people only care about “new and exciting!” but it has been my long observation that far more people are served in aviation by old and proven designs, particularly ones they can learn about and fully understand. It has been my experience that people operating aircraft they don’t understand doesn’t always end well.

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Above, a 6 second video of my neighbor Richard showing what 2,400 ft/lbs. of energy into a gallon jug of water looks like.

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Above, Corvair/Panther builder Paul Salter (Read about the first flight of his Panther here: http://flywithspa.com/there-were-10/) Demonstrates what a master’s degree in Aerodynamics and physics, combined with incredibly good eyesight, results in: a first shot bulls eye. It was just 25 yards, but he had never picked up the rifle before, he shot it off hand, and he lined up the iron sights for about 1 second. The rifle is a 16″ barrel guide gun, and this may be very close to the limits of accuracy for the combination.

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Above, a beautiful made in USA Marlin lever action, brand new, a 2016 model, but essentially unchanged from their 1895 design.  For scale, on the left is a Corvair hydraulic lifter, beside it is a .45-70 case, next over is a S&W 500 Magnum….the dinky brass all the way on the left is a 9mm. The Niagara oil cooler pictured is arguably the best oil cooler on the market, and it is made 15 miles from where your Corvair engine was made in Tonawanda NY.

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In the consumer era, people’s attention is directed to a continuously changing series of “high tech” and “what’s new!” appliances, that here big news today, and gone tomorrow, making up new strata in landfills, their “no user serviceable parts inside” stickers never to see daylight again, keeping used diapers and copies of people magazine featuring stories of the Kardashians company for the next century or so.

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You can spend your hours on that hamster wheel, blindly expecting something good to come around, or you can make the willful choice to steer your life toward real machines, tools engines,  things with real and lasting value which provide actual quality to the hours spent with them. I have found much greater happiness by choosing to spend my creative hours working with such machines. The work of my life, developing and sharing the Corvair flight engine, has all been done with my life long appreciation for the great designers, craftsmen, and machines that all bore the title, American. 

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Ironically, none of my friends from abroad have had an issue with my focus, because they understand I fully expect them to be champions of the works of their own homelands, but I have been called everything from a troglodyte to a xenophobe by fellow countrymen who have somehow come to the conclusion that pride in the products and creative people of the United States is an embarrassing social blunder. I do not mean to offend such people, but I am not going to stop expressing my gratitude for the country I live in, which was provided by the lifetime work of millions of good people. The only thanks I can offer them is to offer a grateful remembrance of their efforts and to emulate their simple decency they brought to everyday life.

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-ww..

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