Buck Kent and Lou Parrish arrive at the Crissville Field for an air show only to find another couple of pilots had arrived earlier claiming they were Buck Kent and his pal Lou Parrish! In an effort to get to the bottom of the whole mystery, Buck and his pal say they’re someone else to give the faux Buck and Lou some “Sky Room” in order to see what they’re after. From the September 1929 Air Trails, it’s Raoul Whitfield’s Buck Kent in “Sky Room!”

They crowded “Buck” Kent—and learned what it was to dare the anger of a master pilot!

• Download “Sky Room” (September 1929, Air Trails)

A war has broken out between the Logan stores and the McCoy chain. Angus McCoy himself plans on flying to Gold Poke to secure the furs he needs—whichever buyer gets there first, gets his business. Sam Goldman, a fur buyer and friend to Rusty Wade is in a tizzy—his rival, Pete Lick, has said he’s going to get that contract and run Sam out of business and he’s hired this dastardly Breed brothers—”Hawk” and “Kid”—to get the job done. Sam asks Rusty to help him and the race is on!

From the pages of the August 1929 Air Trails, it’s our old pal Rusty Wade in Frank Richardson Pierce’s “Sky Trappers!”

Ringed by wolves on the frozen waste, his only hope lay in the birdman who dared the arctic solitudes!

• Download “Sky Trappers” (August 1929, Air Trails)

Rusty’s passenger was an Alaskan, but curiously enough the old sour dough was headed for a middle-west city instead of the North. The man had offered him a thousand dollars to land him in time for a ten o’clock stockholders’ meeting and Rusty seemed in a fair way to claim the money. It was purely a sporting proposition with him. If he failed he would not get a cent.

From the pages of the September 1929 Air Trails, it’s our old pal Rusty Wade in Frank Richardson Pierce’s “Winged Conspiracy!”

Rusty Wade lands in the middle of white water and a snarling hail of bullets!

• Download “Winged Conspiracy” (September 1929, Air Trails)

Each year Rusty Wade promised himself a real, old-fashioned Christmas, and each year Fate decreed that he be riding high in the air, eating cold sandwiches instead of thrusting his long legs under a table groaning with turkey and the other good things that went with a Christmas dinner. But this year he was determined to have just that with Mary Heath—the prettiest teacher in the whole Yukon country. Until that faked distress call came in from the ice bound Ellen Dow. From the pages of the January 1930 Air Trails, it’s Christmas in July with Rusty Wade in Frank Richardson Pierce’s “Frozen Wings!”

“Hawk” Breed was out to beat him; but “Rusty” Wade made a dare-devil’s landing and pledged himself to play a desperate game!

• Download “Frozen Wings” (January 1930, Air Trails)

This time Buck and Lou are asked to fly a load of toys, candy and food through a vicious snow storm to a remote mining camp that the storm has cut off. It’s a harried flight against the accumulating elements and a test of Buck’s flying acumen that will hopefully result in a Merry Christmas for the kids and miners in the camp!

Into the teeth of the storm on a mission of mercy, “Buck” Kent staked his airman’s skill against the blizzard’s might!

• Download “The Christmas Crate” (January 1930, Air Trails)

The Buck Kent story in the January 1929 issue of Air Trails, follows on from the December installment. After saving Joan Dean from the runaway balloon in the December story, Buck and Lou must protect her from a rival air carnival’s goons set on destroying her trapeze act she does dangling from a plane.

They took a desperate chance when they tried to push “Buck” Kent out of the sky!

• Download “Buck Kent’s Air Push” (January 1929, Air Trails)

In the November 1928 issue of Air Trails, ‘Buck’ is flying down to the boarder to meet up with his buddy Lou, the two will then travel on to Mexicali. Unfortunately, the brother of a bank robber Buck had stopped earlier is out for revenge and his reward money. It all goes down “Above the Lines!”

Bullets meant little when his pal’s life was at stake! Another sure-fire story of Buck Kent, the free-lance airman!

• Download “Above The Lines” (November 1928, Air Trails)

This time around, on a stop over in Seattle, Rusty os approached by a a good friend to pilot his experimental plane in order to achieve a new altitude record and get some dynamic shots of the eclipse that will be happening. Rusty agrees, if he can have his old pal Steve Branleigh as his copilot. Problem is, Steve was the last pilot to try in this plane and had to bail out before the record was achieved. Can Rusty clear his friend’s name while pushing the experimental plane to its limit? From the pages of the June 1929 Air Trails, it’s Frank Richardson Pierce’s “Frozen Controls!”

“Rusty” Wade makes a momentous decision and leaps into space forty thousand feet above the earth.

• Download “Frozen Controls” (June 1929, Air Trails)

This time around, gold has been found at an old claim up north and Rusty’s in a race with an unscrupulous pilot to reach the site and stake the claim and get back first to register said claim. Can Rusty outwit and outfly Pratt and get Old Man Dorsey back to the registrar’s off first. From the pages of the February 1929 Air Trails, it’s Frank Richardson Pierce’s “Mushing Down the Air Trail!”

High-powered planes and battling pilots above the snow fields of Alaska!

• Download “Mushing Down the Air Trail” (February 1929, Air Trails)

And as a bonus, here’s “The Landing Field” column from the January 1930 number of Air Trails where we get to know more about Frank Richardson Pierce, Rusty Wade, Alaska and the Air Musher!

THE LANDING FIELD
AIR TRAILS • January 1930 v3n4

IN THESE crisp winter days with snow streaking through the sky, it seems right and proper to introduce Frank Richardson Pierce to you folks. Pierce lives up in the Northwest, up in Seattle, Washington—and he spends a good deal of his time hopping around Alaska. He is an outdoor man in every sense of the word. There are few writers in America who can catch the spirit of the frozen North as he can. His interests lie out under the open sky, with snow fields, fir forests, Canyons and great rivers. It was natural, therefore, that he took to flying.

For the past year you’ve been reading the “Rusty” Wade stories by Pierce. They’ve made a hit with Air Trails readers all over the country. The reason is that they ring as true as the roar of a Whirlwind motor on the nose of a new sport model ship. Pierce knows all about the Rusty Wade country.

He just recently came back from a trip over Alaska. Here’s what he says: “I get a great kick out of flying over some place I’ve walked. It gives me a chance to laugh at myself in comfort. But mostly I prefer flying in Alaska—the walking is tougher there.

“Alaskans lead the nation in air-mindedness. They have been flying for years—not for sport, but for business reasons. Why should a miner pole a boat for days up a river and fight mountains and glaciers when he can fly there with his outfit for a few dollars and still have the whole season ahead of him in which to prospect? Where in previous years it required weeks and months to bring out a load of fur, now it comes out in hours.

“An Eskimo may be popeyed when he arrives in Seattle and sees street cars, automobiles and skyscrapers, but he’ll not even blink at an airplane. He’s seen them before and probably has ridden in one.

“Rusty Wade is a typical Alaskan pilot. Landing fields are few and far between. If a pilot is forced down he has to walk out and it may take him days. And yet, right now, I can’t recall a single crash in which any one was killed. There may have been some, you understand, but I can’t recall them.

“At times, in Rusty Wade stories, I have tried to describe Alaska from the air. Thus far I have failed utterly. I doubt if there is in the whole world, anything more beautiful than flying over ice fields and glaciers studded with mighty peaks and set with lakes of the rarest blue. If any of the readers make a trip next summer, cable ahead to Juneau and make arrangements to see a bit of Alaska from the air while the steamer is lying over.

“At the present time a surveying party is working out of Juneau in planes. They are surveying a waterpower project discovered by the Alaskan air-mappers—a navy outfit. The lake is two thousand three hundred feet above the sea in a rough country. It would take many hours of the hardest work to reach the spot with equipment. The plane leaves Juneau and is on the lake within twenty minutes. It has even taken up a fourteen-foot skiff to the lake.”

A NUMBER of readers have written in, wanting to know what type of plane the Air Musher that Rusty Wade uses is. Well, that’s easy, and it gives us a chance to do a little “ground flying” here in front of the hangars. There’s nothing that a pilot likes so much as to talk about different types of ships.

The Air Musher is a Fokker Universal Monoplane equipped with ski landing gear. It is a type of plane that has stood the test of time. Ask any flyer what he thinks about the Fokker Universal. It has been used for prospecting, forest fire patrol, exploring, crop dusting, and for mail and passenger transportation on most of the air routes of this country and Canada.

With a pilot, four passengers and eighty pounds of mail or baggage, the Fokker Universal can carry enough gas to cruise for six hundred miles. It is generally powered with a Whirlwind motor, and, carrying a fair load, can reach a ceiling of sixteen thousand feet. Fully loaded, the landing speed is forty-five miles per hour and the high speed one hundred and eighteen m.p.h. One of the good things about this crate is the perfect vision provided for the pilot. He sits ahead of the leading edge of the wing and can look forward, right, left, overhead and downward. This is a big feature when you have to set down in rough Alaska country, where landing fields are not made to order.

The Fokker Universal will almost never spin or nose dive when stalled. It glides downward on an even keel while remaining under full control. With its wings of semi-cantilever construction and its strong cabin the Fokker Universal is just the type of ship for work in rough country where flights are made in all kinds of weather. There are bigger ships, more powerful ones, and faster ones; but there are few that can stand up under all conditions like the type of which Rusty’s Air Musher is representative.

If the Air Musher ever cracks up against the side of a glacier, Rusty Wade will probably be getting one of the Fokker Super-Universals to take its place. They are slightly larger ships, with a wing span of fifty feet seven inches, and powered with a Pratt & Whitney four hundred h.p. motor. They can carry as many as eight passengers, and, with a fair load, can reach a service ceiling of eighteen thousand feet. Their top speed is one hundred and thirty-eight miles per hour.

This time around, it looks like Rusty’s half-brother, Bert Procter, has gotten himself into a bit of trouble—he’s being charged with fish piracy and air deputy Marshall Rusty who has to serve the arrest warrant! Bust Rusty knows Bert, and although he’s gotten in over his head on some bad deals, Rusty believes he’s turned his life around and is being framed—but can he prove it? From the pages of the July 1929 Air Trails, it’s Frank Richardson Pierce’s “The Sunrise Pilot!”

Gangster guns spit flame as “Rusty” Wade rides the air trails.

• Download “The Sunrise Pilot” (July 1929, Air Trails)