Marc Stamsta

MOST UNIQUE

Marc Stamsta's 1960 F.8L Falco won a "Most Unique" award at the 2004 Oshkosh air show.

This Falco has a long and colorful history. When we first started selling the Falco as a plans and kit-built aircraft, I got a letter from Charlie Yates, in New Jersey.

"I owned a Falco F.8L in the late 60's which I rebuilt top to bottom and flew all over Western Europe for several years. That plane, now based in Luxembourg, is still flying along happily as ever.

"At present, I own a knocked down Falco without an engine which I had planned to rebuild some day as a repeat labor of love. I have the various body sections, control surfaces, landing gear and so forth all packed up in two large wooden crates in storage in Bordentown, New Jersey. If any of your interested readers are interested in buying the parts, I would be happy to talk to them about it."

That was in 1979, and thus began a long friendship with Charlie Yates. At the time, he and his brother Craig ran Yates Industries, which made copper foil for printed circuits. It was a publically held company, listed on the American Stock Exchange, and Charlie was also a New Jersey State Senator. As he was an engineer with endless curiousity about how things were made, and since he had rebuilt a Falco, he knew the airplane intimitely, and he was an enormous help to me.

Charlie started working on the Falco, and then came to the conclusion that he had too many projects going, and decided to sell the project. Travis Edwards bought the project, and immediately ran into problems when the trucking company ran a forklift truck into it and did a lot of damage. Travis then sold the project to Gar Williams, an experienced aircraft restorer, who worked on it for a while, and then sold it to Marc Stamsta, who finished the project and now has it flying.

Alfred Scott