On A Wing And A Prayer

Bob Adickes and Avtek Corp.'s other founders are in a race with Beech, Lear, and the clock to produce the next generation of corporate aircraft.

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When -- and they all assume it is when, not if -- they finally get the revolutionary Avtek 400 rolled on to the Camarillo, Calif., airport runway, there will be a handful of old men standing in the warm sunshine beside hangar #3, looking for vindication.

Sixty-one-year-old Dr. Leo Windecker should be there, eyes gleaming behind his polished bifocals. A former dentist turned materials expert, 14 years ago he launched the Eagle I -- the only all-composite airplane ever to win Federal Aviation Administration certification -- then watched as production was shut down by his investors after just seven planes were built.

Seventy-eight-year-old Al Mooney should be there, if his health permits. Creator of the only production aircraft in history to deliver a mile-per-hour of speed for each horsepower, he, too, once had his own company, Mooney Aircraft Corp., now a subsidiary of Republic Steel Corp.

Bill Taylor, the legendary 70-year-old test pilot originally scheduled to fly the 400, might drive up from Palm Springs. Sixty-nine-year-old John Carroll, a former international captain at Trans World Airlines Inc. who cme out of semiretirement to work on the plane, also should be there, if he is at work that day.

And 63-year-old Bob Adickes, a retired TWA pilot, will certainly be there, probably wearing the red, white, and blue striped tie he favors for symbolic occasions. Although his name isn't on the plane, Adickes is the driving force in Avtek Corp., the chairman, chief executive officer, and chief investor. He combined the people, technology, and money to launch the project, then kept the self-proclaimed "gerontology company" alive.

It will be a strange-looking plane that rolls past them, a futuristic, six-to-nine-passenger turboprop, white and red, with both Avtek's and Du Pont's logos emblazoned on the tail. Instead of propellers in front, to pull, they will be in the rear, to push. Instead of a stabilizer in the tail, there will be a small wing, known as a canard, over the cockpit. And there will be no rivets holding it all together; the body will be smooth and sleek, fluid-molded space-age plastic.

First flight provides only a moment of drama. The plane will taxi down and back the 9,000-foot runway, then increase its speed and lift off, two or three feet above the tarmac, flying 300 feet or so while the pilot gingerly tests the controls, before setting down to be rolled back into the duncolor hangar. But when it comes, first flight will mark a long-awaited milestone for Adickes and Avtek. It will bring the plane a little closer to FAA certification, the single largest hurdle facing any new aircraft. And it will mark one more step in Adickes's plan to turn an idea into a giant public corporation in just eight years.

Avtek is not alone. A new generation of aircraft is being born -- in Camarillo and Wichita; in Reno, Nev.; and Genoa, Italy. All four will be built of composite materials, all four with pusher engines, three with canards. But the race to market the plane of the future is an arduous and expensive marathon. Gates Learjet Corp. has the backing of Italy's Industrie Aeronautiche E Maccaniche Rinaldo Piaggio for its entry. Kansas's Beech Aircraft Corp., whose King Air is the best-selling business twin on the market today, has an estimated $250-million research and development budget to create its $2.7-million Beechcraft Starship 1. In Nevada, the $2.2-million Lear Fan, launched in 1978, has already cost its manufacturer about $200 million as it struggles for certification.

Avtek is different. The 400 isn't being built in a large-scale R&D or design-and-engineering department; it is being created in a skunkworks, by a pickup team of grayhaired aviation experts and veteran commercial and military pilots, most of whom work as part-time consultants. Although such well-heeled corporate giants as Dow Chemical, E.I. Du Pont de Nemours, Japan's Toray Industries, and the aircraft builder Aeronca are tied to the project with equity, Avtek is working on a shoestring. About $3 million has been spent for start-up. Another $32 million is budgeted to build and test the first plane, but only a fraction has been raised. And the company has guaranteed potential customers in writing that the Avtek 400 will be faster and more economical -- and, at $1.5 million, far cheaper -- than anything else in the sky or on the drawing board.

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