AA-2026-EE3F6E
On the image
The word EXPERIMENTAL is painted across the fuselage in letters as big as the registration number, which tells you everything about how seriously the Civil Aeronautics people took amateur-built aeroplanes in the 1960s. This was not a marketing choice. It was a federal requirement, a legal disclaimer stencilled onto a machine that a man had riveted together in his garage on the theory that Newton's laws applied equally to professionals and hobbyists.
Behind it, a whole grass field of similar convictions sits wingtip to wingtip, the informal parking lot of an era when the Experimental Aircraft Association's gatherings were still small enough to fit on somebody's cow pasture. Men in short sleeves walk the rows comparing paint schemes and control surfaces with the studied casualness of people who have opinions about dihedral angles. Nobody here doubts that their aeroplane will fly; the doubting, if any, happened months earlier at the workbench.
The little green-striped taildragger sits with its tailwheel planted and nose pointed at nothing in particular, waiting its turn, entirely unremarkable among its neighbours except to the man who built it, for whom it was the only aeroplane in the field.
The historian's note
Amateur-built aircraft bearing the mandatory placard "EXPERIMENTAL" became common in the United States after the Civil Aeronautics Administration, and later the Federal Aviation Administration, formalised rules in the 1950s allowing individuals to construct and fly their own aeroplanes under an experimental airworthiness certificate. The requirement to display the word prominently on the airframe distinguished these owner-built craft from factory-certified production aircraft.
The Experimental Aircraft Association, founded in 1953, organised regional fly-ins through the 1950s and 1960s that drew builders and enthusiasts to grass airstrips across the Midwest, predating the organisation's move to a permanent large-scale convention site in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 1970. Gatherings like the one shown, with dozens of small aircraft parked in open rows on turf, were typical of this earlier, smaller-scale era of the homebuilt aviation movement.
Registration N11985 identifies a U.S.-registered civil aircraft; the specific design cannot be confirmed from the visible markings, but its low-wing configuration, tailwheel undercarriage, and hand-applied colour scheme are consistent with amateur-built designs popular among EAA members during this period.
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Homebuilt "Experimental" Aircraft N11985 at a 1960s Fly-In. 1960–1969. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-EE3F6E. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/homebuilt-experimental-aircraft-n11985-at-a-1960s-fly-in.
@misc{aaAA2026EE3F6E,
title = {Homebuilt "Experimental" Aircraft N11985 at a 1960s Fly-In},
year = {1960–1969},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-EE3F6E},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/homebuilt-experimental-aircraft-n11985-at-a-1960s-fly-in}
}TY - ART TI - Homebuilt "Experimental" Aircraft N11985 at a 1960s Fly-In PY - 1960–1969 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-EE3F6E UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/homebuilt-experimental-aircraft-n11985-at-a-1960s-fly-in ER -
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