What is a Redwing Blackbird?

[Roger Cain]

In the Yankee Air Museum fire last October, one of the planes lost was listed as a Redwing Blackbird homebuilt. I took pictures of a biplane in those colors registered as NC65022, a 1977 Wallis Model -3. Is this the same plane?

[helinut]

The Redwing Blackbird at the yankee museum , started out life as a Pitts Special, then owned modifed it and a believe at on tiime had a buick V-8 in it, I met the biulder back in 95 , a friend of mine knows him ,I will get more info from him , it was in a EAA mag , years ago

[helinut]

Update, on the Redwing Backbird,it wasn,t a biuck, but a ford 351 that he had in it had prblems with the gear box, so he then went to a continental radial out of a tank, his name was Stan Wallisl,and it was his third homebuilt.

[Roger Cain]

Thanks for the info Helinut, sure looks nothing like a Pitts would ever have started from. It now has a Continental (or had) W670 on it.

[Paul Draper]

The Redwing Blackbird was a homebuilt design by Stan Wallis, as I remember the design was inspired by another aircraft called the Blackbird??? I'm a little hazy here. It did not start out as a pitts. The original powerplant was a Ford 351C engine. He flew it many times, but had problems with overheating. He then removed the Ford 351C and hung the Continental (I don't think it ever flew this way, I heard the CG was way out of wack after the engine swap), and it was the donated to the Yankee Air Museum.

[Roger Cain]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the heads-up. I was going to try contacting you directly, but found you didn't have an email address visible on this board. No problem, as I see your still out there. If this image shack picture works, here is the plane.

[helinut]

Well I friend of mine that keeps his arplane at the same small aiirfield {Downwind acres} that Stan did said thats what it started out as and I think I meet him at an EAA meeting and we talked about that, it also had brent the covering off one side because he did pull the engine thru, he recovered it then donated t o the museum.I will keep looking of the Sport Aviation Article on it.