Sometimes it takes more than a bag of sand and snow tires to get around in the wintertime. Sometimes you need a little more ingenuity and a cache of old auto and airplane parts, which North Dakotan Roy Berg had plenty of in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and which he used to create a series of homebuilt snow planes.
After a recent comment from reader Rudy Radke mentioning Berg’s snow planes, we followed up, looking for more photos and info. He put us in touch with his cousin and Berg’s son, Gerry Berg, who filled us in on the contraptions. Gerry said the snow planes were built mostly for fox and rabbit hunting. “As I remember the county paid a two dollar bounty for fox,” he wrote. “Starting the engine was a two man job. One person would sit in the driver’s seat and the other person would turn over the engine by hand. The person at the engine would turn the engine over several times without spark. He would then call out “Contact.” The person in the driver’s seat would flip two toggle switches one for each magneto. The person at the engine would crank the prop as hard as he could and get out of the way.”
Regarding the first snow plane, pictured above, Gerry said that it was built in 1947. “My brother was born in 1946 and he looks to be about two years old in the picture. It had a single seat and short wings. I’m not sure why it had wings. Maybe for some lift but it needed the skis on the ground for stability.”
The second snow plane was built in 1949 or ’50 based on my brothers age. As Rudy suggested in looks like it used a bomber fuselage. It had long wooden skis without suspension.
The third snow plane was built around 1952. The fuselage was from a plane and it looks like a the front hood off of some car. As you can see it used automotive axles with wooded skis set on long sheets of steel.
The fourth plane I think was built in the mid to late Fifties. In 1955 my folks built a new house so I don’t think they would have had time to work on snow planes. I can remember this one being built and can still smell the dope being put on the fabric to shrink it tight. I was born in late 1950. You can tell from the picture that this was a well engineered snow plane. Very streamline with four point suspension. The plane would go 50 to 60 MPH with good conditions. The front skis pivoted on kingpins at the ends of the front axle. The front hood opened to store the foxes and rabbits. This plane had a four cylinder horizontally opposed Continental engine. I think about 60 HP. The fuselage and engine came from a Piper Cub airplane purchased at the Fergus Falls airport. This snow plane was converted into a three wheeled crop sprayer in the mid-1960s. I don’t have any pictures of the sprayer. The last time it was used as a snow plane was in the late 1960s. The engine was overhauled but the pistons were too tight and it overheated, if I remember correctly. It was never run after that.
Gerry said all that remains of the four is the frame of the last one, which his brother now owns after it sat outside for years. They do, however, still have a few of Roy’s other contraptions, including an Allis tractor turned skidloader, a four-wheel drive tractor that he built for $500, a homebuilt garden tractor, and another skid-steer loader that he built in 1962 for $200 .
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