The de Havilland
Chipmunk was originally designed as a post World War II primary trainer, a replacement for the venerable de Havilland Tiger Moth training biplane used by the air forces of the British Commonwealth throughout World War II. Among the tens of thousands of pilots who trained in or flew the
Chipmunk for pleasure was veteran aerobatic and movie pilot Art Scholl. He flew his Pennzoil Special at airshows around the country throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, thrilling audiences with skill and showmanship, and proving that the design itself was a top-notch aerobatic aircraft.
The
Chipmunk was an all-metal, low wing, tandem two-place, single engine airplane with a conventional tail wheel landing gear. It had fabric-covered control surfaces and a clear plastic canopy covering the pilot and passenger/student positions. The production versions of the airplane were powered by a 145 hp in-line de Havilland Gipsy Major "8" engine.
Art Scholl purchased two Canadian-built Chipmunks from the surplus market after they became available in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Using his skill as a licensed aircraft mechanic he modified the plane extensively, creating the Super
Chipmunk by removing 20 inches from each wingtip and changed the airfoil section of the tip area, retracting the gear, converting it to a single-seater, adding an autopilot and a 260 hp Lycoming GO-435 flat-opposed 6-cylinder engine. When his popularity as a performer reached gigantic proportions in the 1970s he kept two Super Chipmunks busy on the airshow circuit, basing one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast.