Ryan Navion

Hi All,

I use to own a L-17 and can tell you they are a joy to fly, easy on the Maintance Bill and the parts are very easy to find.

They are also very easy to do formation flying with. All and All I really enjoy the L-17.

Cheers Crazymainer

This old photo of a Rangemaster may be of interest,taken at Liverpool(Speke) on 27/7/1963.

There’s a very active L-17 based at a small airfield near Munich (Jesenwang); often confused (even – or particularly – by airshow commentators) with the Focke-Wulf/Piaggio P.149. There’s a handful of Rangemasters on the register over here as well.

It is indeed odd that there has yet to be a Navion registered in the UK. A demonstrator toured the country as long ago as 1947! Even odder that a Twin Navion should have been, when very, very few of those ever operated on this side of the Atlantic. Original North American/Ryan Navions were popular elsewhere in Europe, notably France and Switzerland, and Rangemasters seemed to have been favoured by Germans. Navions have been based in the UK though — back in the 1950s the US Army had a couple of L-17s at Hendon.

At an airshow a couple of years back, I saw a nice early Navion refitted with a glass-topped canopy…looked very Mustang-ish. It looked a lot less like an early VW beatle sitting in an airplane. Must be hot in the Texas summertime!
Navion used bt be very cheap in the U.S….it seemed that every airport had one sitting in the weeds (rather like the now standard wingless Ercoupe).
They were cheap enough…and strong enough…that famous stunt pilot Frank Tallman ditched one on camera for an old TV movie “Family Flight”. A pretty impressive stunt done before CGI took over films.

The Rangemaster in question is no more as it was bought as a spares source for the Navion B rebuild. There is/was a Rangemaster based in Jersey.
The basic Navion before they got complicated is a lovely looking machine.

I was at Earls Colne the day the Rangemaster arrived come to think of it, German registered machine from memory. It will be nice to see one up and about.

There is one underway in Essex with a classic aeroplane owner. It has combined parts from a Rangemaster H which was used as a spares source.
The Navion was brought into the country a number of years ago but was stored until bought by her present owner. I am not aware of any that have been on the U.K civil register apart from the Twin Navion which is a little away from the original concept.
For interest sake they were used in Korea for FAC work so they qualify as a warbird. They are much underated machines.

Another of those machines which, like the AA-5 family and the (now or once was Victa) Airtourer, went through a series of different manufacturers. Originally manufactured by North American and it shows. Put one alongside a P-51 and the similarities stick outlike the proverbial sore thumb. Sorry I can’t oblige with a picture. I was not aware that a twin version existed, I reckon that would be a nice looking machine. Apparently they don’t come up for sale very often in the US as the people who own them don’t want to let them go. some Navion owners have spent the price of a new aircraft having their machine totally restored to as new condition purely because they don’t want to fly anything else. I’d say that speaks volumes about how desirable they are.