Photos & Story by Lance Phillips
Our last article, Industry Insights with Jim Irwin of Aircraft Spruce, delved into some of the Irwin family history. Jim’s dad, Bob, had a Navion Rangemaster for many years, which Jim co-owned for a while before moving on to the Cessna brand.
Navions have always been compelling to me for a few reasons: I never really saw them at airports, so they held some mystery; I don’t remember any articles about them in magazines; and, lastly, my friends never talked about them.
So, when I see one, I usually try to get a photo of it with one of my unique cameras. In May 2021, I was on a road trip from Vail, Colo. back to Dallas on the back roads that go south through Colorado to New Mexico. It’s a beautiful drive and highly recommended if you’ve never done it.
After living in Wichita and Tulsa for a while, I got to know about the Arkansas River, which flows through both. You see where the Arkansas River begins while driving south along Route 24 in Colorado. It’s just a crystal-clear pool of water in a high valley between giant snow-capped mountains (FYI: the Arkansas River is not crystal clear in Wichita). Also, along that same route is a rather famous airport—the Lake County – Leadville Airport (aka the highest elevation public airport in the United States).
I had heard of Leadville for years. That’s where manufacturers send their certification and test aircraft for high-altitude performance tests. At 9,934 feet elevation, an airplane will get a rigorous hot-and-high workout in Leadville, especially in the warmer months.
I was driving down Route 24 and Leadville Airport signs appeared (which wasn’t planned). This pilot had to stop to check it out.
After driving through Leadville’s cool, historic downtown area, I finally got to the airport. And there wasn’t much to see there; after all, it was peak COVID in May 2021. The cordial FBO attendant let me walk around the tarmac with my camera, an old Hasselblad 500 C/M loaded up with Kodak Portra 400 film that day. I walked around the neatly maintained fuel farm to the main tarmac, and, again, there wasn’t much out there—except for this unique yellow single-engine piston plane. I honestly didn’t know what it was, but I knew I needed to get some photos.
This particular Navion is a B model built by the Ryan Aircraft Company. Before Ryan started manufacturing Navions, it was known as a North American Aviation product, originating in the 1940s. The original airworthiness date on the Leadville-based yellow Navion B was 1956. The B model was modified with a higher powered 260hp Lycoming GO-435-C2 engine, up from the 205-hp model A. It was also known as the Super Navion 260, and Ryan built 222 Bs. Gross weight is 2,850 lbs. with an empty weight of 1,930 lbs. The typical fuel capacity is 40 US gallons. That leaves around 680 lbs. of people and bags. The 6,400-foot Leadville runway must seem awfully short, though, with a couple of people and fuel on board.
In addition to the Leadville Navion, I wanted to share one reader’s feedback (and his friend’s photo). In the July T&T issue, my Editor’s Pic was an old Twin Commander fuselage I had found around the side of a hotel in Tucumcari, New Mexico. Lonnie Blasdel of Washington State saw the old fuselage and sent a photo of an Aero Commander. Lonnie’s friend Jody Maddox took the picture and allowed us to publish it. Notice the little Commander acting as a tetrahedron just below the real one.
Please let me know if you have any unique photos to share that relate to my Editor’s Pics. Many thanks to Lonnie and Jody for their Commander photo.
