Pietenpol Aircraft Company Air Camper

The Air Camper is Bernard Pietenpol's 1929 parasol-wing open-cockpit two-seater, designed around a Ford Model A car engine and still sold as plans by his grandson's company, with the pilot in the rear seat and a passenger ahead. The designer's figures are 625 lb empty, 1,080 lb gross, 456 lb useful load, up to 18 gallons of fuel and a climb of around 500 fpm in the first minute; no single cruise speed can be quoted because the engine fitted decides it.

This is a design from 1929 that people are still building from plans, and it is a wooden aeroplane: spruce and plywood, glued and fabric-covered, so it needs a dry hangar and an inspector who can judge wood and glue joints rather than aluminium. The engine choice defines the aircraft — a 40 hp Model A cruises at roughly 50-60 knots, a Corvair conversion of about 100 hp gives a much livelier one, and a 65 hp Continental A-65 sits between — and builders also vary fuselage length, landing gear, brakes (the plans call for a tail skid) and whether there is an electrical system, so the record's numbers are a starting point for a design nearly a century old and nothing more. The individual aircraft, its builder's skill and its wood's condition are what you buy. It is slow, draughty and charming, and a tailwheel aircraft flown from the rear seat, from which a developing swing on landing is harder to see than it would be from the front. The owner may maintain it and an A&P, or the builder holding the repairman certificate, signs the annual condition inspection.

Variants of the Pietenpol Air Camper

• Air Camper · 1929 · 153 active · this page

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