Helicopters Keep Piasecki Name Flying Through Time - Mainline Today
In his garage, he unfolds the rotor blades, stows his clubs in the cockpit of his helicopter, and takes off. Dressed in a pinstripe suit, a homburg and a bow tie, Frank Piasecki is the star of this ingeniously concocted 1943 newsreel segment, dubbed “An Air Flivver in Every Garage. ” As recounted in Jay Spenser’s 1998 book, Whirlybirds , Piasecki’s single-seat, single-rotor helicopter became the nation’s second such machine to actually fly as advertised. A pioneer in the vertical-aviation industry, he remained chief executive of Piasecki Aircraft Corporation along the Delaware River in Essington until his death in 2008 at 88. Today, PiAC is run by two of five Piasecki sons. His widow, Vivian Weyerhaeuser Piasecki, turned 84 in October. Thanks to Vivian’s husband and others with his interests, the Delaware Valley has been a cradle of rotary-wing development, and it’s certainly no coincidence that the American Helicopter Museum & Education Center is in West Chester, about 20 miles... “Pi,” as he was known, earned 24 patents, perfected the first dynamically balanced rotor and developed the first practical tandem-rotor helicopter. He also received the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. “I never heard him reflecting on past accomplishments,” says. Source: www.mainlinetoday.com
