Westfall Sport

Miles Westfall was born in 1901, and raised in New Richmond, Indiana. At age 6 his passion for flying machines was ignited when he saw a group of balloons fly over his house. He brought this passion to life as an adult. He made a living in Oklahoma City by running a cafe, tuning pianos, and selling restored pianos. He built his first airplane in 1930, a Church Midwing JC-1, using a motorcycle engine for propulsion.[1]

After his experience with the Midwing, Westfall began planning an aircraft of his own design. This resulted in his Sport, first flown in 1934.

The Westfall Sport had a welded steel tube fuselage with fabric covering. Its biplane wings were positively staggered, and were made of wood. It initially flew powered by a Ford automobile engine. Westfall mounted a cooling radiator ahead of the engine as in an automobile, cutting a hole through to allow a propeller shaft. After some experience with this layout, he replaced it with a modified OX-5 radiator below the cowling. By 1935, Westfall had reworked the airplane to use a LeBlond radial engine rated at 65 hp.[2]

The prototype was finished and test flown in Oklahoma City in 1934. After replacing the Sport’s Ford Model A engine and modified OX-5 radiator with an air-cooled 65-hp LeBlond radial, Westfall logged 1000 hours flying air tours across the United States. Just before the war began, the US Civil Aeronautics Administration mounted a crackdown against homebuilt aircraft, and Westfall was sent to jail for several months as an example to other experimenters.[2]

By 1964 Westfall desired a two-place airplane, and began designing a negative-stagger biplane which he named the Mark V Special, a loose reinterpretation of the Beechcraft Model 17 Staggerwing. It had steel-tube fabric-covered fuselage and wood wings, a streamlined windscreen and Cessna-type spring main landing gear. The project took nearly eight years to completion.[3] Westfall flew the airplane to Oshkosh in 1978.[1]

Westfall's Special was noted for its excellent landing characteristics and gentle stall, a result of installing its lower wing at a lower angle of attack than the upper and of using wings of unequal span. The airfoil was a Boeing 106R. The 43-inch-chord wings were separated by a 46-inch gap.[1] The aerodynamics resulting from this arrangement were analyzed by William H Durand in a series of articles in EAA's Sport Aviation magazine.[4]

The fuselage is 21 feet 2 inches long with a 42-inch-wide cabin. The forward-mounted fuel tank held 30 gallons, and it was powered by a Lycoming O-290 (125 hp) and a metal propeller.

Miles Westfall died on 27 April 1979, not long after introducing his Mark V Special to the aviation community.[1] His aviation output was summarized in a 2006 magazine article.[5]

Data from Experimenter

General characteristics

• Crew: 1
• Length: 15 ft 4 in (4.67 m)
• Upper wingspan: 25 ft (7.6 m)
• Lower wingspan: 23 ft (7.0 m)
• Airfoil: Clark Y
• Empty weight: 460 lb (209 kg)
• Fuel capacity: 15 gall
• Powerplant: 1 × Leblond radial , 65 hp (48 kW)

Performance

• Maximum speed: 100 kn (120 mph, 190 km/h)
• Cruise speed: 96 kn (110 mph, 180 km/h)
• Stall speed: 19 kn (22 mph, 35 km/h)

Prototype currently owned by Paul Agaliotis in California.