Page 26 - January 2015 Volume 9, Number1

Walter Beech (front cockpit) and navigator Brice Goldsborough posed for the camera after winning the Ford Tour in August 1926. Two innovative instruments visible in the photograph are the “Air Log” mounted on the right interplane strut, and the drift device with its eye cup for sighting the ground. The venturi on the right cabin strut provided suction to operate the turn and bank gyroscopic instrument in the front cockpit. (SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES, WICHITA STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRAIRIES)
Before construction of the Model BW’s airframe began, Travel Air was approached by the Pioneer Instrument Company, led by Brice Goldsborough. Early in 1926 Pioneer had purchased a “Model B” biplane powered by a Curtiss OXX-6 engine to serve as a demonstration platform for its new series of advanced flight and navigation instruments. After discussion between Beech and Goldsborough that summer, the two men reached an agreement whereby Pioneer would supply a complete “avionics suite” of instrumentation to be installed in the Model BW. To accommodate the equipment the fuselage was widened slightly in the aft cockpit area. Goldsborough was a highly respected engineer who had worked for Vincent Bendix before starting the Pioneer company. He was acknowledged as an expert in navigation theory and practice, and had installed an early version of the earth inductor compass in Admiral Richard Byrd’s Fokker monoplane that he operated during exploration of the Artic.
would work together in an effort to win the Ford Tour, and precise navigation between points would be a key factor in achieving that goal. When the cost of building and equipping the airplane were finalized, the bill came to a whopping $12,000. Walter Beech was counting on the glory of winning the Tour, coupled with the widespread publicity that would occur in the wake of such a major event, to bring in a flurry of orders for Travel Air ships that would far surpass a mere $12,000.
Although accurate navigation and reliability of the airframe and engine were paramount to winning the Ford Tour, the 1926 competition included special contests open to all entrants. Among these was the “stick/unstick” event that tested an airplane’s ability to take off and land in the shortest distance. Success in that event would add valuable points to a pilots overall score for the Tour that would be visiting airports whose grass or dirt runways varied in length. Judges stationed along the runways at each destination would determine when the airplane landed and came to a stop, and a score would be recorded. In 1926, wheel brakes were still a bit of a novelty on small aircraft, and five of the 40 ships entered were equipped with them, including the Model BW. The other would later
Goldsborough told Beech that he wanted the Travel
Air to be a flying showcase of Pioneer’s vertical readout
engine and flight instruments and particularly the
sophisticated earth inductor compass (Lindbergh had
the device installed in the “Spirit of St. Louis” for his
solo transatlantic flight in May 1927).2 The two men prove to be tough competition – a Stinson “Detroiter,”
24 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
JANUARY 2015