I was at my brother's house in upstate NY on Saturday for a cookout when one of the other people attending happened to say that he and his wife had stopped at a local antique store that morning for a browse. Said that they had some interesting stuff there, antique tools, some old autogiro parts, old farm stuff... wait a second, back up, what??! Autogiro parts??!! I thought they must be old Benson gyrocopter stuff or something like that, but we jumped in the car and drove the 3 miles to the place, and sure enough, there they were, a couple of chunks of what I recognized as Pitcairn PCA-2 rotor blades circa 1931. I took them to the front of the store to buy them and asked the owner if he had any idea where they came from. "Yes, they came from the estate of a guy named Johnny Miller..." Wow! I knew Johnny Miller, and he was one of the most famous autogiro pilots, first to fly one coast to coast, and one of the few to peform aerobatics in them. They must've been leftovers after an accident, and the only accident I know of that Johnny had was at the 1932 Cleveland Air Races while he was doing a comedy dogfight with Al Wilson in a Curtiss Pusher. On landing Wilson flew into Johnny's rotor blades and was killed, these are probably the remains of one of those rotor blades, which would've also been the ones used on the transcontinental flight.
30 years of stopping at antique stores during my travels and I've bought maybe 5 things, and none of them anywhere near this neat. Found a Tiger Moth compass once, and bought an antique typewriter for my journalist girlfriend, but Johnny Miller's autogiro blades? Whew!
In better times:
After the crash:
Video of the crash here, click on "1932 Wilson-Miller Dogfight":
http://www.dmairfield.com/flvs/film_fee ... eeder.html
And info on Johnny: http://www.dmairfield.com/people/miller_jm/index.htm
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