Curtiss Condor project update. We are moving along with the Condor restoration. With the help of Curtiss Wright Corporation we have been able to acquire the drawings for the fuselage. The last eight feet of Dick Neumann’s airplane were torn off in the crash. When he recovered the airplane in 1964 he wasn't able to get all the pieces to the rear of the fuselage and the tail. Although he has a fine collection of drawings and photos of the airplane components we didn't feel what he had was adequate to build a fuselage. So it has taken the better part of three years to dig out the correct drawings for the construction of new fuselages. During that time we have located some Condor parts. And the we discovered that the "William Horlick' Adm. Byrd’s Antarctic Condor was not as reported scrapped in New Jersey in 1935 on its return to the US. Instead it was sent to Texas where it was the center of the "Little America Exhibit" at the 1936 "Texas Centennial".
Ryan Pemberton’s statement that the airplane could be built a lot cheaper than my five million dollar estimate is correct. If you have seen the job his family did on their Boeing 40B you know he knows about building vintage airplanes. Their Boeing is absolutely perfect a beautiful restoration. The thing is that the Condor is a pretty large airplane. I asked Steven Wolf in Oregon what he thought it would take man hour wise to build the airplane I forget at the moment how many hours it was but at sixty five dollars an hour it came to roughly three million dollars just for the labor. I would like to build two airplanes in three years to do that it will take a good sized crew of skilled mechanics. If I can figure out how to do it I will post some CW factory photos of the airplanes in different stages of assembly so you can see the work involved.
So where are we today? We are waiting on some paperwork and we have a meeting set up at the end of March with the man we have picked to assemble the basic fuselage structure. And of course we are always looking for someone that would like to own a Condor to sponsor part of the project.
I'll keep you posted on new developments.
Fred Austin
Golden Age Aeroplanes
360-457-6174
goldenageaeroplanes@gmail.com