It’s a glider! No, there’s an engine on top. A radial engine, at that! It’s a flying boat! No, not exactly. The Curtiss-Wright CW-1 Junior resembles all of these things in various ways–see how the pilot sits out in front, which gives him the same sort of visibility afforded to sailplane pilots; note also how the hull looks like that of an amphibious flying boat. But it’s actually an an open-cockpit landplane. As Barry Schiff writes in the June 2006 AOPA Pilot, the CW-1 Junior was produced in St. Louis, Missouri, competing against the Aeronca C-2, American Eagle’s Eaglet, and the Buhl Pup. Some 270 were built before the Great Depression brought production to a halt in 1932. Barry says the Junior is an airplane that’s “easy to fly, but not easy to fly well.”—Jill W. Tallman