| Here is Dan's explanation of how his Mite became famous:
"I purchased this Mooney Mite in the summer of 1972. At
the time, I was a graduate student at the University of Californian at
Davis. I had a very good fellowship and was able to save enough to buy a
small aircraft. I didn't know exactly what I wanted, but one day I saw
this ad in the San
Francisco Chronicle. Having never seen a Mooney Mite I drove from
Livermore to Santa Rosa to see John Gripe's Mooney. I ended up buying the
first Mooney Mite I saw.
"In 1974 I flew my Mite to Oshkosh to see other Mites. I had purchased
the only one I had seen. As it turned out, my Mite was the only one there!
I left a few days before the end of the fly-in. Monty Groves was about
to write an article for American Aircraft Modeler about the Mooney Mite. He
arrived at the Mite display area too late and got a nice photo of the
Mooney Mite sign with no Mites present. Monty got in contact with me after he returned from Oshkosh and we
arranged a photo shoot, resulting in the following photos and article.
"Unbeknownst to me, Monty had donated his negatives to the Smithsonian
Air & Space Museum. A few years later when I was visiting this museum, I
was really surprised to find photos of my Mite in their collection.
"Several years later, in 1999, I was again surprised to find two pictures of
my Mite in Larry Ball's book, Those Remarkable Mooneys . The
particular photos are on page 50 and 51 showing my Beech-Roby (Flottorp)
controllable-pitch propeller and the instrument panel. Larry Ball had
obtained the photos from the Smithsonian."
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