Steen Steenship
LaMar Steen’s First Airplane

The flagship of Steen Aero Lab’s airplane lineup is of course the Steen Skybolt. However, Lamar Steen, our company’s namesake, actually started out with a different plane… a two-place, low-wing design named the Steenship. Strongly resembling a Stits Playboy, Lamar stated that the only reference to it in the Steenship’s construction was a photo of the Stits plane he had hanging up on the wall of his shop. The Steenship has wooden wings, a tube-and-fabric fuselage, and originally sported a many-coat nitrate dope covering job. The modified O-290-G engine produced 140hp and gave the plane a very respectable cruise speed of 165 mph. In addition, it was stressed for aerobatics (+/- 9 G). Construction took 3-1/2 years and cost $3,800. It first flew in 1966. So far as we know, no plans were ever made available for the Steenship, and no original blueprints or construction drawings exist today.

The May 1989 issue of Sport Aviation had an article about Bob Leonard’s restoration of the plane in Healdsburg, CA. In mid-2002, Burt Nichols in Arkansas purchased it (still retaining the original registration number N881LS) and he flies her regularly. In fact, Burt tells us that he flew the plane for 200 hours in the first 9 months he had it! (That’s an average of 45 minutes a day, every day.) He then decided to upgrade the original Lycoming O-290 to a Lycoming O-320. As of July 2003, he’s very close to first flight with the new engine. Burt says that he’s “looking forward to the next 2000 hours or so!”

We have pictures of the Steenship posted here in our Projects Gallery.