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Ross Hadley

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Ross Hadley, Beechcraft Plane

Ross Hadley, prominent sportsman pilot, is flying his own new Beechcraft powered with a 450 horsepower Wasp Junior motor. The airplane is capable of cruising at a speed of 220 miles per hour at an altitude of 10,000 to 12,000 feet. Hadley will stop once in either Kansas City or Wichita to re-fuel.

Ross Hadley, who is principal stockholder of Chas. R. Hadley Co., printing and book binding business in Los Angeles, first became interested in flying in 1922. In 1929 he purchased a Stearman airplane, which he still refers to as his "pride and joy." He shipped it to LeHarve, France in '29, and flew it three-quarters of the way around the world. Painted around its cowl are its "Ports of Call" including such faraway places as Delhi and Calcutta, India, Rangoo, Burma, Bushire Persia, and Baghdad, Iraq. The Stearman was one of the first privately owned American planes to tour Europe. Hadley still owns it and despite nine years of service it is still in excellent condition. His new Beechcraft has twice the horsepower and speed of the old Stearman.

Hadley cherishes an ambition to fly the Beechcraft from Alaska to Buenos Aires.

In addition to the two ships that he already owns, Chaffey Junior College is building him a Jenny of the type used in the World War. He bought an O X-5 motor right after the war and traded it to an aviation company. When the idea of building up a Jenny came to him, he bought it back.

Hadley also owns an interest in Wilbur Shaw's racer which won the Memorial Day Race at Indianapolis in 1937 and placed second in 1938.


Bernarr Macfadden

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Bernarr Mcfadden, Northrop-Gamma Plane

Bernarr Mcfadden, one of America's foremost publishers, has entered his Northrop Gamma in the Bendix Trophy Race. He states that his principal objective is to prove that his rules of physical culture and diet have enabled him to retain the mental alertness and sound physique of the average man half his age. Seventy years old on August 16, Macfadden, who has been flying his own ships for five years, believes that he has better than an even chance of finishing "in the money".

The plane he has purchased to fly in the Bendix race has established a number of important cross-country speed records. Originally built as a mail-express plane for T.W.A., it was bought in 1934 by Jacqueline Cochran. After various experiments with power plants, it was used by Howard Hughes in establishing a series of new speed records in early 1936, Los Angeles-New York in 9 hours, 26 minutes, 10 seconds; Miami-New York in 4 hours 21 minutes, 32 seconds; Chicago-Glendale, 8 hours, 10 minutes, 25 seconds. The power plant is the same as that used when Hughes established those records, a Wright Cyclone F model of 750 horsepower.

Macfadden has proved his ability to handle an airplane with more than 1100 hours of solo flying, including scores of cross-country flights between East and West coasts and from New York to Florida, including two non-stop flights under adverse weather conditions between Floyd Bennett Field and the Macfadden Deauville Hotel in Miami in a little more than eight hours.

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Transcription Notes:
[[Two pictures. One of Ross Hadley, and another of his Beechcraft Plane]] Ross Hadley, Beechcraft Plane [[Two pictures. One of Bernarr Macfadden sitting in an office chair, and the other is him standing next to his plane that his name written on the side and the tail designation "NC211F"]]