Page 27 - January 2015 Volume 9, Number1

Mercury Biplane, Ford Tri-Motor and a Buhl/Verville “Airster.”
As the starting date for the Tour arrived, both Beech and Goldsborough believed they had a serious chance at claiming victory. Assigned Tour Number two, the Model BW sported the hand-painted letters “PI” on each side of the fuselage along with the word “Pioneer” across the upper wing panels. The aft cockpit was bristling with the latest in navigation instrument technology. These included a display for the earth inductor compass, which was powered by a generator and a wind-driven vane mounted atop the aft fuselage turtledeck, vertical readout engine instruments for the tachometer, engine oil pressure, oil temperature and fuel pressure; airspeed indicator, vertical speed and a pitch indicator completed the impressive installation. Conventional, circular engine instruments were installed in the front cockpit that would be occupied by Beech, while Goldsborough guided each leg of the Tour from the aft cockpit.
A venture was mounted on the right cabane strut and supplied vac- uum to operate the gyroscopic turn and bank indicator. The “T&B,” as it was often called, was among the earliest flight instruments that made “blind flying” a reality. What King Air pilots today take for granted as instrument flight was still relatively unknown in 1926 outside of the U.S. military. The Pioneer company had promoted the use and reliability of gyroscopic flight instruments, as had Sperry, Bendix and other in- novators in the years before and after World War I. The era of all- weather flight, however, was still many years in the future but serious progress was being made. Another important capability built into the Travel Air was the drift indicat- ing and compensation system. Its purpose was to help Goldsborough correct for the effects of wind on the airplane’s trajectory across the earth’s surface. A chief component of
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KING AIR MAGAZINE • 25