SILVER CENTENARY

As an aviation photographer, I have captured many varied, exotic and rare aircraft with my cameras. But never an aircraft with a production run of just one.

Rod Edwards, chairman of the WA Sport Aircraft Builders Club (SBAC) based at Serpentine, owns and operates two 1930’s classics. He wanted formation shots, as well as single portraits of each of his aircraft. I knew about his Boeing Stearman, in fact I had flown in it a few times as a cameraship with long time colleague Werner Buhlmann. The Stearman is not a rarity as such, though it is a beast of a machine with a more powerful 450 hp radial engine, certainly eager to slip the surly bonds. But I knew nothing of his ‘other’ aircraft. Rod is the proud owner of a true rarity, the ‘Silver Centenary’. This aircraft, the only one ever built, was designed and constructed by his grandfather Avon Selby Ford, in 1929, making it Western Australia’s oldest existing aircraft. 

Selby, who was born in Perth in 1900, knew nothing of studied or applied aeronautical engineering, or aircraft construction in general. He decided to build the Silver Centenary by hand, constructed from plans sketched in chalk on the floor of the Beverley town powerhouse, a business that he had taken over from his father. He named his new aircraft ‘the Silver Centenary’ to commemorate the State's centenary in 1929, plus the fact that he had it painted overall silver. His detailed observations of aircraft that he had seen, plus the one flight that he had been on, gave him an uncanny understanding of how an aircraft flew. His guiding principles of practicality, strength and lightness of construction enabled him to create an aircraft that was equal to, if not superior to any contemporary aircraft of the time, including the DH Gipsy Moth. 

Unfortunately his brilliant creation only flew a handful of times. The aviation authorities at the time flew and tested it. They came to the conclusion that it was a truly well made flying machine with very few if any vices, so common to most aircraft of the time. But there was a stumbling block to his dream of owning and flying his own aircraft. His homebuilt method with now non-existent plans (the chalk drawings faded away), diagrams and schematics, that would have certainly given his Silver Centenary a registered Certificate of Airworthiness, unfortunately sealed its fate. Without these essential items it was not to fly again for at least the next 70 years.

The aircraft was subsequently hung from the roof of his Power House roof in the town of Beverley. Selby died tragically in a road accident in 1963. The following year his two sons refurbished the old aircraft and housed it for the next thirty years in the Beverley Aeronautical Museum. The aircraft was seen to be such an integral part of the local community that its depiction was eventually incorporated as part of the Beverley town crest. Thirty years later, in the late 1990’s, Rod Edwards purchased the aircraft from his late grandmothers estate, in an effort to see if he could obtain an Airworthiness Certificate and subsequently fly it. Following an extensive restoration process his dream came true and now flies regularly from his hangar in Serpentine airfield.

All photographs © Jon Davison 2013

 ARCHIVAL IMAGES OF THE SILVER CENTENARY
courtesy of Rod Edwards

Designed and built 1928 - 1929. First flew July 1st 1930. Wingspan 30’4” span. 24’ in length. 8’9” high. Empty weight of 1100 pounds. Fuel capacity of 26 gallons. 85hp Gipsy One, four cylinder engine. All archival photographs © Rod Edwards.