Photos of N4068 by Forrest Lovley, Jordan, MN

Received by email June 17, 2011:

The pictures were taken on my ramp between the house and the hangar here in Jordan, Minnesota. I live on a residential airpark. I took the pictures yesterday morning just before going for a one hour flight at about 7:30 AM.

The paint scheme is exactly the same as Fred Schmidt put on the airplane in 1963 except that his colors were red with white stripes and mine are yellow with black stripes. Fred also had the large 12-inch numbers on the fuselage sides, and I went with the small 2-inch numbers.

Forrest Lovley

Here is N4068 in 1984 when it was owned by Fred Schmidt, who passed away in 2005.

In 2001, Fred told us this story about when he bought N4068. After he had driven down in his old Studebaker to pick up the Mite at Wright-Patterson AFB in Columbus, Ohio, he noticed that skilled repairs had been done to the wing. In the log, he discovered that the plane had made two trips to Wichita, apparently to the Mooney factory. The background story was that a GI had flown south in the Mite, got lost, landed at a small strip, and was told he should use a certain railroad track to navigate to his destination. Unfortunately, there was a tunnel on the railway. He pulled up in time but got into cloud just as the engine died. During his emergency landing on a nearby hillside he hit a haystack. Normally, this would not have caused problems except that there was a wooden pole in the middle of the haystack, which he hit with the wing. He ended up packing the Mite in pieces down off the hill.(from our archives)

Photos by Forrest Lovley, 2011-06-19