The first object to greet visitors to the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, the Pitts biplane is a welcome party of one conveying the message "Flight is fun." Designer Curtis Pitts was renowned for his small, light, nimble aerobatic biplanes, the first of which weighed less than 500 pounds and first flew in 1945. It was wrecked only a few years later. A rare sight in the 1950s, Pitts Specials became mainstays of flying competitions in the 1960sand '70s-once Pitts was persuaded to sell construction drawings for his design, which was never mass produced, for $125 a set. His second airplane, the S-1C, completed around 1946-'47, was the world's smallest aerobatic aircraft, with a 16-foot, 10-inch wingspan. Today, it's the oldest Pitts Special that survives.
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