Originally Posted by
India Four Two
Those years of reading Flying have paid off! I recognized it immediately - Pete Garrison's Melmoth. Do I get extra marks for naming the pilot?
Treaders' photo is of the early version, when it had a conventional stabilizer and an aluminium turtle-deck.
Melmoth met a sorry end and Pete had a lucky escape at Orange County Airport:
Extra marks
I42 - it is indeed Peter Garrison's Melmoth N2MU, designed around the Practavia Sprite with which he was involved when working for Pilot in the UK.
In 1975 when I was already quite smitten with small aeroplanes and pretty good at recognising most types, a T-tailed, tip-tanked object went zotting across the small patch of sky visible from our sitting room window - nothing in the books like it. A pic of it at Biggin Hill appeared in Air Pictorial later on, ahhhhh!
Garrison bought it over the Atlantic non-stop I think as long distance flying was its goal and he and his wife had some longer adventures across and around the Pacific. James Gilbert and, I think, Manx Kelly had a go at Booker. Following the accident in 1982 Garrison was already thinking about Melmoth II, a redesigned and much improved version of the concept which has been flying for some time and with which he is still tinkering.
You have control!