Dave Powell with his Anderson-Greenwood AG-14. Photo by Phil Weston

If Dave Powell has one complaint about flying his Anderson-Greenwood AG-14, it is that it doesn’t have much of a front reference point to line up his landings with.

"When you are landing you have no visual clue of which way you ought to be pointed because you don’t see any nose in front," Powell said. "You see a little bit of the pitot tube and that’s about it."

The AG-14 is a twin tail boom, pusher configuration single with the cabin—Powell calls it a pod, not a fuselage—placed well in front of the wing. The result is almost unrestricted visibility, up, down, and all around. And with the engine in the back, the cabin is exceptionally quiet.

Powell’s 1953 plane is the fifth and last AG-14 produced. Four of them still exist, though only one other is in flying condition.

His interest in finding and restoring the plane came from a very personal connection. Powell’s father, Walter, worked for Anderson-Greenwood, though not directly on the AG-14 program. But through that connection Dave Powell met both principals for whom the company and the airplane are named, Ben Anderson and Marvin Greenwood.

"My brother and I started looking around to see what happened to [the AG-14s]," Powell said. "We found this one in a warehouse in Texas in parts and pieces. Actually, it was scattered among many different locations.

"When I first bought this I asked the person selling it how I could find parts. He said, parts?—no problem. In the mid 60s, they tried to build new ones again, not Anderson-Greenwood, but a person out in California. They had geared up to make 25. When I tried to track the guy down and it turned out he was in his 90s and in a nursing home, his son was dead and supposedly his grandson had the parts somewhere in Oregon. I tracked [the grandson] down and he had sold the parts to somebody else, who sold them to somebody else and to somebody else."

Powell finally found the vagabond cache and came to an agreement to buy the entire lot.

"I flew out [to Oregon] with my 9-year old-son," Powell said. "I rented the largest Ryder truck I could, spent 12 hours loading it up and drove back. That’s been very helpful [with the project] and I’ve been able to help a couple of the other owners as well."

Anderson, Greenwood, and Lomis Slaughter, all engineers for Boeing during WWII, took on the project as an exercise in creating the perfect light plane. In their eyes, "perfect" included making the plane as much like an automobile as possible, an attempt to ease the transition from driver to pilot. So unusual features like nosewheel steering connected to the control yoke, a bench seat, a single brake pedal and a starter pedal are part of the design.

Power comes from a 90-hp Continental engine mounted on the back of the pod. The engine, with its ground-adjustable prop, gets the little plane off the ground in about 700 feet. Typical cruise is 115 mph, so Powell’s trip from his home in Rogers, Arkansas, to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2007, took about seven hours.

Powell’s restoration includes all of the original instruments. The only addition is a cylinder head temperature gauge he added after hearing that the rear-mounted engine installations were known to have some engine cooling problems. To date he has not seen any unusual temperatures.

One difference from the original Powell did opt for is the paint. AG-14s left the factory in mostly polished aluminum with a painted nose. He chose to paint the entire plane and trim it in a custom design created specially for him by Craig Barnett of Scheme Designers.

One special experience for Powell was a visit he made to Anderson shortly before the restoration was complete.

"I brought some pictures of the plane as it was coming together," Powell said. "He’s pretty much confined to a wheel chair now and it was exciting to be able to share this with him. He actually had a model of the plane sitting on his credenza."

Ultimately, Anderson-Greenwood found success as a defense contractor and in manufacturing pressure relief valves for the oil industry. Financing for manufacturing airplanes was difficult to come by and AG-14 production ceased. They did re-enter the airplane business in the 1970s with the development of a model known as the Aries T250. Although it was a good performer, only two of examples of the plane were built.

Even though Powell is a frequent visitor to EAA AirVenture, this was his first time here with a show airplane.

"I normally come up for the weekend and camp in the North 40," he said. "This time I kind of felt like an orphan. I couldn’t bring another person with all the camping gear, but as soon as I touched down I felt like I was adopted by the Vintage folks. I’ve been volunteering with them all week and I’ve just had a ball."