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Do you happen to remember last month how I de- scribed that I have taken a journey experimenting with several camera types, even trying out film photography over the last few years? No? Well, I described it, and this month we’re looking at one of the stranger photos I have captured. Not only strange for its image of an old twin resting sadly all alone behind a building but also for the type of camera used. I’ll get to all that in a moment.
In May of 2021, I had taken a road trip through Colo- rado, New Mexico and Texas. On the way back, a stop in Tucumcari, New Mexico brought me to a unique place, and I happened to have a pretty unique camera with me to take pictures of things there.
Tucumcari has this retro, mid-century throwback hotel called the Historic Route 66 Motel. As you can imagine, the famous Rt. 66 runs through Tucumcari on its way to California from Illinois. The new owners of this motel weren’t satisfied with the standard Rt. 66 memorabilia- type stuff to lure travelers, they actually have old decom- missioned Cessna singles scattered about the place as part of its outdoor décor. There’s a 152 out front beneath its tall sign. And there’s another one forming the awning over an outdoor bar area with its left wing.
What I didn’t expect though was to find a polished aluminum Aero Commander out back in the weeds next to a ditch. I guess that it is a 520 model from the Aero Design & Engineering Company, later to be called Aero Commander. If someone wants to write in and let me know which model it is, please do so.
As the story goes, Ted Smith, an engineer at Douglas, formed the Aero Design & Engineering Company with some of his buddies back in the late 1940s. This crew leased a few thousand feet of hangar space in Bethany, Oklahoma and started making airplanes. AD&EC be- came Aero Commander in 1950, then joined Rockwell in 1965. The airplane would go through many iterations and finally was fitted with Garrett TPE331 turboprop engines in the 1970s and 1980s. By the 1960s, though, Ted Smith had also developed the Aerostar which was later produced by Piper.
The day that I found this lonely Aero Commander behind the motel, I happened to have a film camera called a Contax G1. It was a revolutionary camera of sorts due to the fact that it was a rangefinder (rather than a typical single-lens reflex type) with an autofocus system. Contax was an old German camera maker that had been purchased by Kyocera of Japan at some point, and the Japanese Contax cameras of the 1980s, like my G1, were some of the best in the market. And Contax used renowned Zeiss lenses like my 45mm f2 used here. Loaded in my old camera was a film by Kodak called Portra 400. Enjoy this month’s Editor’s Pic, and please send me a note if you have an interesting aircraft photo/ camera combo of your own.
July 2023 / TWIN & TURBINE • 17