Classic Is as Classic Does

It is dangerous to use the word “classic.” One reason is that, under the Experimental Aircraft Association’s scheme of things, the term applies to a specific group of airplanes made after World War II. For another, it denotes something that is timeless, which knows no era of birth or death. That is the traditional definition of the word, and it is usually applied to a work of art, whether it’s one-, two-, or three-dimensional one, that will live forever. It’s also the definition of the Ryan STA.

I am an STA buff, pure and simple. I am not an expert. I have very little Ryan time, and I doubt if I’ve seen more than three STAs in my entire life. But that can’t stop me from loving a celebrity I’ve never met nor a place to which I’ve never been. In that respect, I suppose I’m like 90 percent of the aeromaniacs around the world: You don’t have to have flown an STA nor do you even have to be a pilot to appreciate the lines and the history of performance that has made the STA live well beyond her prime of life. No, correct that—she is still in the prime of her life, which is why she is a classic. If I were being totally honest, I would have to admit to an unnatural lust for the STA; in my eyes, there is simply no better-looking open-cockpit monoplane. In fact, most of my Veco Chiefs and Warriors (those are control-line models for you young’uns out there) came out looking like STAs. But if you think about it, most of the control-line models of the 1940s and 1950s tried to look like STAs since that was every kid’s way of owning the airplane he or she loved.

Designed originally in 1934 by T. Claude Ryan, of Spirit of St. Louis fame, the plane first took to the air as the S-T, with a little 95hp Menasco 4-cylinder in-line engine in the nose. After only four or five S-Ts were produced, the engine was replaced with the 125hp C-4 Menasco, which gave it a lot more performance. The new model quickly grabbed the attention of such aeronautical luminaries as

Tex Rankin, who used an STA to win the International Acrobatic Championships in 1938. According to folklore, Rankin used to dive the airplane to 260mph to start some of his maneuvers, which, if true, certainly proves the fact that there were no real structural limitations on the STA airframe. The only limitation was the pilot’s intestinal fortitude.—Budd Davisson, Editor-in-Chief, Flight Journal