Page 268 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

RIGO BALBONI , a young California pilot, finds little competition in his
line of business, which is salvaging wrecked airplanes. His market for parts
of wrecked planes includes movie directors who can use battered planes in
filming crashes, owners of obsolete engines who need repair parts, aviation
schools, amateur plane and glider builders, inventors and souvenir hunters.

The idea for his airplane junk yard, just outside of Los Angeles, was the
result of an airplane crash. On a flight one day from San Francisco to Santa
Monica, he crashed just north of Los Angeles. He escaped serious injury, but
his plane was completely wrecked. With it went his savings which had been
invested in the plane. He later salvaged what he could of the plane and sold
the parts to aviators. By selling his wrecked plane in this way, he got together
$930. It was then that he realized that an airplane junk yard might be a
profitable business. And so it turned out to be. It was not long before he was
known far and wide as a source of supply for airplane parts, and orders began
coming from foreign countries as well as the United States. Aviation schools
abroad use the old engines salvaged from the ships to teach the students the
mechanics of flying. Inventors buy them and tear them down hoping to find a
better way of building engines. The instruments and mechanical devices are
also used for this purpose. In order to keep his supply complete, Mr. Balboni
is on the alert for news of airplane crashes. Instantly, he takes steps to salvage
the parts and buys them direct from the pilot or others interested.

A Business in Organizing ArcheryClubs

I

N 1929 , J. M. Deeds was a business man in the Northwest with seventy
people on his pay roll. In 1931, he was a common laborer in Oakland,
California. Digging ditches was arduous labor for an aging man in poor
health; but when one has a wife and children . . .

The following year Mr. Deeds, without work or money, told a minister: “I’ll
either have to take up a hobby or go crazy.” The minister replied: “Good idea
—the hobby I mean.”