Lockheed Lodestar | Photos & Story by Lance Phillips
| Lockheed Lodestar |
The Lockheed Lodestar was developed in the late 1930s to remedy the poor sales of Lockheed’s Model 14 Super Electra, which was smaller and more expensive to operate than the DC-3. The Lodestar, designated Model 18, took the Model 14’s fuselage and lengthened it five and a half feet to accommodate two more rows of seats. A lodestar (lower case) is a star used to navigate. The North Star is a lodestar.
N1940S is a Lodestar Model 18-56 with two 1,200-hp Curtiss Wright R-1820-56AS engines spinning Hamilton Standard 3-blade propellers.
| Beechcraft Model 18 |
The Beech 18 first flew in January of 1937. All told, 9,000 Model 18s were built, half of those going to the military for use in World War II. The last one rolled off the Wichita, KS, production line in 1970.
Both of the Beech 18s pictured at left, a D18S and an E18S, use the 450-hp Pratt & Whitney R-985 series engines.
| Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star |
Licensed to Canadair as the CT-133 Silver Star, the subsonic trainer first flew in 1948 and was in production until the late 50s. T-33s were in regular military use around the world until the Bolivian Air Force retired the last of the type in 2017. Over 6,500 were built.
The Red Knight, sponsored by Modelo, performs at airshows around North America.
| The Camera |
The Pentax 67 is hefty. There’s no way around it. Lugging it around Oshkosh isn’t too fun, either, but it simply takes remarkable images. I use a purpose-built Pentax 105 mm f 2.4 lens that creates otherworldly resolve between the subject and the rest of the image. This lens is particularly special in portrait photography.
Here, you get to see the 67 next to my 35 mm Leica M6. The Pentax weighs around three times as much as the little Leica. But its negative size is five times greater. That denser resolution is what enables its magic. Very few other cameras can duplicate or come close to the Pentax 67.
I’m going out to take some pictures now.
