Ed Heath’s Airplanes

Remembering Ed Heath

P

by Bob W otos rom EAA

ittier Arc ives

It’s a rare aviation enthusiast who has not heard of Ed Heath and his little parasol monoplanes. However, many present-day sport flying enthusiasts know little or nothing of the Heath story. So this month we’ll do something about this state of affairs.

Edward Bayard Heath was born in Amsterdam, New York, in 1888, the son of parents prominent in that area. As a boy he showed much interest in mechanical things. When the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk in 18 SEPTEMBER 2012

December 1903, Heath was then 15 years old, and this accomplishment fascinated him. In the years that followed he read everything he could find on the subject of aviation.

His family moved to Chicago, where he graduated from high school with very good marks in the fields of mechanics and drafting. He was not fortunate enough to go to college to gain a formal education in engineering. But like many other aviation pioneers, he had an inborn feel for how mechanical things should be built and used. And inspired by the Wrights, he had a powerful urge to design and build his own airplane.

Ed Heath did much of the testing for the Heath Super Parasol on floats at Lake Zurich, Illinois. The lake, situated northwest of Chicago and alongside one of the major roads of the area (Route 12), gave Heath and his crew an ideal location for flying the spritely seaplane.

Members of the extended Heath family still living in Amsterdam had suitable shop facilities, which they were willing to make available to Edward. He therefore moved back there from Chicago and early in 1910 set to work on his project.

His finished airplane, a wirebraced monoplane powered by a two-cylinder, horizontally opposed engine imported from Europe, made a successful flight on September 13 of that year. With it he did some exhibition flights at upstate New York fairgrounds. But, knowing that at that time the Chicago area was one of the country’s few really live centers of aviation activity, he went back there and by 1913 was proprietor of an aircraft parts and supplies house called the E.B. Heath Aerial Vehicle Company. It grew into one of the major supply houses of that time. It catered to a surprising number of people then building their own airplanes. During World War I this firm made many small parts for the rapidly expanding military airplane factories.

After that war, Heath made an effort to cater to the averageincome segment of the population by developing a small biplane he called the Feather and which was underpowered by a V-twin motorcycle engine. But this ship came to naught when the government started selling off surplus military planes at attractively low prices.

Therefore he became what is today called a fixed base operator, selling flight services, doing aircraft maintenance work, and shipping parts and supplies to barnstorming pilots all over the country.

But the urge to design and build airplanes was strong in him, and in 1923 he constructed the Favorite, an open-cockpit biplane that somehow managed to fly its pilot and four passengers on the muscle of a 90-hp Curtiss OX-5 engine.

Heath fully realized the value of smart and effective public relations work. In the pursuit of publicity, therefore, he got into the activity of building and flying small racing

On floats, wheels or skis, the Heath Parasol promised economical flying for anyone willing to put the time and effort into its construction. The diminutive size of the airplane did limit its performance with pilots who did not match Ed Heath’s small stature. planes. This culminated in the famous it by the high-speed running typical little Baby Bullet, which was so wellof flight. This included such things conceived and carefully streamlined as reworking the lube system so it that it scooted along at a claimed 150 would feed to the bearings a generous mph on the 32 hp developed by an supply of oil under adequate pressure, English Bristol Cherub opposed-twin assuring adequate cooling of the castengine. In these efforts he was assisted iron cylinders that had integral heads by Claire Linstedt, a trained engineer and skimpy cooling fins and solving he had employed. valve-burning problems.

Still of course quite interested in In 1928 Heath was approached an “everyman’s airplane,” Heath by a smart, imaginative advertising heeded a suggestion made by a wellman name Cliff Edwards. This fellow known naval architect, magazine proposed an arrangement in which editor, and aviation enthusiast named Heath would give him free flight Weston Farmer of Minnesota. Why instruction in exchange for free help not take a pair of readily available with advertising and promotion. straight-four Henderson motorcycle The two made a very effective team! engines? Could it be the dreamed-of When the stock market crashed everyman’s airplane? in 1929 and brought on a deep

The result appeared late in 1925 in business depression, Heath found the form of what Heath decided to himself blessed with an appealing name the Parasol, after the overhead low-cost airplane, a two-story brick mounting of the wing. It flew—but manufacturing facility on Sedgewick not very satisfactorily. The “Tommy” Street in Chicago, and the services of wings had a thin airfoil section a live-wire ad man. This he saw as the typical of the 1918 period. They way to save his firm from being killed didn’t lift very well when pulled by the depression. along by the engine developing only Exciting advertising soon began to about 25 to 27 hp. appear in male-oriented magazines.

At that time the recently developed Imaginative, flashy color schemes Clark Y airfoil was attracting more and on his planes attracted the attention more attention on the part of airplane of media photographers. Wins designers. Of thicker section, it was in air races for small planes were able to develop more lift while not loudly publicized. And this was at a having too much more drag. So the time when Young America was still Heath shop constructed a new wing extremely air-minded as a result of using it, and Heath was pleased to Lindbergh’s epochal flight from New find that it usefully improved his little York to Paris in 1927. ship’s flying ability. He thus named To coax the undecided and the improved craft the Super Parasol. impecunious to get started on a

S i m u l t a n e o u s l y , m u c h Super Parasol, kits of materials for experimenting was done to make the various components were offered at Henderson engine reasonably able to attractively low prices. The one for stand the lugging stresses put onto constructing the tail surfaces cost only VINTAGE AIRPLANE 19

Over Ed Heath’s objections to the design, company officials decided they needed to offer a low wing model. Sadly, during a test flight one of the struts on the right side failed and the resulting crash from 1,500 feet cost Ed Heath his life.

Ed Heath waves to the camera as he makes a low pass over the surface of Lake Zurich in northern Illinois.

$9.72, steel tubing and wires for the fuselage frame were only $28.45, and four Sitka spruce wing spars, already drilled for bolt holes, cost a mere $8.

It’s hard to say how many Parasols were completed and flown. Perhaps something in the low to middle hundreds. By following a procedure, one could get identification numbers to paint on the wings and rudder from the old Bureau of Air Commerce, which would allow a homebuilt to be flown legally. But many Parasols were probably flown without them in remote places, and thus cannot be counted.

To raise capital, Heath Airplane Company became Heath Aircraft Corp. A mid-wing version of the ship was offered, which flew well and earned a good reputation among pilots. Around 20 SEPTEMBER 2012

1930 an increasing number of lowwing planes were appearing. For racing planes this layout offered favorable geometry for wire-braced monoplane wings. For faster commercial types, low-wings offered a way to get wide, stable, and low-drag landing gears. But somehow people got the notion that for some obscure reason or other, low-wings were inherently faster than high-wings.

This led some in the Heath Aircraft Corp. to insist, for reasons of sales appeal, that the company must develop and introduce a low-wing model. Heath was strongly opposed to this, because the wing struts on such a layout would be under compression and subject to failure by buckling. But company politics insisted, such a ship was built, and during a test-flying

maneuver, sure enough, struts on the right side buckled, and the resulting descent from 1,500 feet and crash brought an end to Ed Heath’s life in February of 1931.

He was the spark plug of the Heath company. Without him, it faltered and was sold to interests in Michigan. In 1932, new owners of the firm introduced a new model Parasol called the LNB-4. It was an entirely new design. Span was increased to 31 feet 3 inches. While it thus had a better wing aspect ratio, it worked out to weigh more than did the Super Parasols, and so when fitted with the Heath B-4 engine the power loading turned out to be a heavy 28 pounds per hp. Rate of climb was thus like that of the proverbial ruptured duck. When fitted with the then-new 37-hp Continental A-40 engine, this model as well as the mid-wing version proved to have acceptable performance.

Today, it happens that people come across old literature on the Heaths, take a fancy to one or another model, and get the itch to start building. Our advice has to be a firm, “Don’t do it!” Ed Heath was only 5 feet tall and weighed 110 pounds. The Super Parasol’s cockpit was only 18 inches wide, and that of the LN was 21 inches. A J-3 Cub’s cockpit is 26 inches wide, and if you find it cramped, you can understand why a Heath would be very tight indeed. A cockpit that’s hard to get into can be dangerously hard to get out of in a hurry in the event of a fire or an accident. Where today would you find a truly airworthy Heath B-4 engine? We can go on at length like this. You’d be much better off undertaking something like a VW-powered Pober Pixie, or one of the all-wood designs offered by Rag Wing Aircraft Designs of South Carolina, or any number of modern designs for parasol-wing monoplanes available today.

In closing, although Ed Heath’s “everyman’s airplane” venture was short-lived, we must pay him homage because it did so much to keep alive and advance the idea of homebuilt airplanes.