Pitts Special S-1S - San Diego, CA
Posted by: Metro2
N 32° 43.586 W 117° 09.238
11S E 485572 N 3620970
Located in San Diego's Air and Space Museum.
Waymark Code: WMPZ04
Location: California, United States
Date Posted: 11/13/2015
Views: 4
The Museum sign accompanying this aircraft indicates it was home built by Harvey Short in 1975 and purchased by the Museum in 1980.
Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:
" The Pitts Special (company designations S1 and S2) is a series of light aerobatic biplanes designed by Curtis Pitts. It has accumulated many competition wins since its first flight in 1944. The Pitts biplanes dominated world aerobatic competition in the 1960s and 1970s and, even today, remain a potent competition aircraft in the lower categories.
Design and development
Curtis Pitts began the design of a single-seat aerobatic biplane in 1943–1944. The design has been refined continuously since the prototype's first flight in September 1944, however, the current Pitts S2 still remains quite close to the original in concept and in design.
Several of the aircraft that Curtis Pitts built had a picture of a skunk on them and were called "Stinkers". After she bought it, aerobatic performer Betty Skelton called the second aircraft that Curtis built, "Lil' Stinker". The prototype S-2, which was the first two-seat Pitts, was "Big Stinker", the prototype Model 11 (later called S1-11B) was "Super Stinker", and the prototype Model 12 was the "Macho Stinker".
In 1962 Curtis Pitts set up Pitts Enterprises to sell plans of the S-1C to homebuilders.["