Disposition
In a last-ditch effort to generate some interest in its new fighter, Can-Car entered the Model 10 in the January 1940 New York-to-Miami air race. Shortly after takeoff, a lack of oil pressure forced the FDB-1 to land in New Jersey, thereby disqualifying it. Two months later, during testing, its landing gear collapsed at Saint-Hubert. Although Mexican authorities were interested in the aircraft, the Canadian government refused an export license and there were no other prospective customers for a biplane fighter in an age of monoplanes.
In a fit of pique, Gregor was quoted as saying: "They'll start this war with monoplanes, but they'll finish it with biplanes." He was wrong. Neither his prediction nor his aircraft were to survive the test of time. After several years of sitting forlornly in storage, the Model 10 FDB-1 was destroyed in a hangar fire at Montreal's Cartierville Airport, and Michael Gregor swiftly followed it into obscurity.
Read more about this topic: Canadian Car And Foundry FDB-1
Famous quotes containing the word disposition:
“The worst feature of this double consciousness is, that the two lives, of the understanding and of the soul, which we lead, really show very little relation to each other; never meet and measure each other: one prevails now, all buzz and din; and the other prevails then, all infinitude and paradise; and, with the progress of life, the two discover no greater disposition to reconcile themselves.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Civility, which is a disposition to accommodate and oblige others, is essentially the same in every country; but good breeding, as it is called, which is the manner of exerting that disposition, is different in almost every country, and merely local; and every man of sense imitates and conforms to that local good breeding of the place which he is at.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)