A Meyers Convention
By Ralph McCormick

What do you have when you get four Meyers 200’s together???  A Meyers Convention!!!

What you do have is four percent of the entire fleet of registered Meyers 200’s in the USA in one location.  In North Little Rock (NLR), Arkansas (1M1) April this year, I was invited to come to a mini-Meyers convention.  Two of the aircraft were owned by two North Little Rock pilots, Ed Turnage and Harold Settle (an I. A. who specializes in the Meyers 200).  The visiting Meyers 200’s were in NLR for repair and annuals.  Steve Vaughn of Union City, Tennessee owned one of the Meyers 200’s and David Short of Beaufort, North Carolina, owned the other on.   A fifth 200 was scheduled to be at the ‘mini-convention’, but didn’t make it.  All the planes have been upgraded to the TCM IO-550 except one.  A puritan, perhaps, would refer to the Meyers 200 as the Rockwell Aero Commander 200, since Rockwell was a later manufacturer of the Meyers 200.

My first contact with Turnage, Settle and their Meyers 200’s was at my home airport.  I was talking to a friend when they landed the Meyers 200 and taxied to the parking ramp.  His first comment was a normal one for the uninformed.  He said, “That is a good looking Navion.”  I corrected him, as I walked over to greet Turnage and Settle.  As the three of us stood by the plane and talked, another pilot came by and knew the exact name of the plane.  Not only that, he knew its engine, cruise speed, stall speed, and more.  The pilot spoke with the excitement of a Meyers 200 owner.  He wasn’t an owner but the love was in his voice.  It is amazing when Meyer’s owners’ talk about their airplane, their sentences seem to flow, one after another.  As a non-Meyers owner, I listened to the facts, figures, max speeds, and true airspeeds as they rolled out of the mouths of the inspired Meyers owners.  So, their invitation to the ‘mini-convention’ was easy to accept.

The day came for the aircraft to all be in North Little Rock.  I traveled to the city to see what was going on.  Having done my homework on the Meyers before I got there was a definite help.  I saw four very clean machines.  A picture session was definitely in the works for these pretty ladies.  The day was a rainy day… what would you expect for a photo session?  The ladies did look their best, as the pictures show.

These older ladies were born in the sixties.  They were to be competition for the Beech Bonanza.  There was no question that the Meyers 200 was built with the sturdiness of a Sherman tank.  They were designed to have a useful load of 1,060 pounds, with a gross weight of 3,000 pounds.  The top speed is somewhere over 200 and below 215 miles per hour with 285 horsepower.  The stall would occur at 54 miles per hour… not bad, huh?  The Meyers 200 would burn 14 gallons per hour or just under, depending on your ability to lean the fuel mixture, correctly.  Fuel tank capacity was 80 gallons, allowing a pilot to fly for almost 6 hours or 1200 miles.  Not bad for 1960’s technology, is it?  Now, if you bought a new one in the sixties you would only pay $29,500 (in 1965 dollars).  Today, there is one on the market for sale in Trade-A-Plane for $140,000.  It is a “D” model.  The FAA shows only eight “A” models listed, thirteen “B” models, 7 “C” models, one “E” model, and the rest of the 103 planes are “D” models.

There is no question that a Meyer’s owner doesn’t just like his plane, HE LOVES IT!

 If you would like more information on the Meyers 200, call Harold Settle or Ed Turnage at 501-834-3314 or hssettle@yahoo.com. 

A few stats for you to admire from the 1960’s…

MEYERS 200A

MEYERS 200B

MEYERS 200D