What an amazing fly-in this year! With great weather and an impressive group of airplanes that made the trip to 3W5, this year’s fly-in exceeded everybody’s expectations. We had a feeling things were going to be busy today after we had a large number of airplanes arrive yesterday. A huge thanks to all of the pilots and visitors who spent the time to come and visit the airport this weekend!

Our official count today was 168 airplanes flew in for the 2010 North Cascades Vintage Fly-In, and that’s a minimum number since there were airplanes that came and went without checking in. Not sure if that’s a record, but the airport was filled to the brim.

Included in that number were a number of amazing airplanes including Addison Pemberton’s Boeing Model 40C that we’ve been talking about all week. The plane was a big attraction and Addison was generous enough to give rides to more than a dozen people. We managed to get some pictures from a beautiful evening flight on board the Boeing. Truly an amazing airplane to ride in.

We also saw the return of the Student Prince that appeared in our 1988 video we posted earlier in the month. There were a pair of Howards, a Spartan Executive, Wacos, a Laird, Bellanca Cruisemasters, a line of Luscombes, Piper Cubs…the list goes on and on.

We’ll post more stories and pictures in the coming week from the fly-in. We just wanted to take a moment to say thanks to everybody who helped make the fly-in such a huge success.

Well as of 4:00pm on Friday afternoon we have clear blue skies, a west wind and already about 25 airplanes that have flown in for this year’s fly-in. There’s a beautifully restored J-3 Cub that has all of its original paperwork, including the bill of sale from 1946. A Waco YMF parked out front and our Fairchild PT-19 has been giving rides this afternoon.

We’re offering rides today and tomorrow in our PT-19, Waco INF and our beloved Aeronca Champ.

We’re showing the movie Pearl Harbor tonight at 7:30 in the main hangar and the classic film, Blue Max tomorrow night at 7:30.

Addison Pemberton is scheduled to arrive around 5:00 this evening and we plan to meet him in the air with the INF and fly around the Skagit valley a bit.

Tomorrow morning breakfast will be served at the high school from 7:00am to 11:00am and there will be food vendors here all day.

And don’t forget about our guest speakers this year, Addison Pemberton talking about his Boeing Model 40C and Richard Bach talking about his life as a pilot.

Looking forward to seeing everybody here at 3W5 tomorrow.

With the 2010 North Cascades Vintage Fly-In only a few days away, we wanted to let everybody know that we have two talks scheduled for Saturday afternoon.

Addison Pemberton will be talking about his Boeing Model 40C at 3:00pm and author Richard Bach will be speaking at 4:30pm. Both talks will take place inside the main museum hangar.

Mr. Pemberton will be arriving Friday afternoon with his Boeing and will perform some fly-bys during the fly-in on Saturday. The Model 40C is the oldest flying Boeing in the world and was found on a mountain top in Oregon where it sat for 70 years. After an exhaustive eight year restoration, the Boeing flew again for the first time in 2008.

The airplane can carry four passengers in cabin comfort, with the pilot sitting in an open cockpit. Mr. Pemberton will talk about the history of the Boeing Model 40C, as well as the incredible restoration that was completed to get the airplane back in the air.

Richard Bach is a legendary pilot and best selling author. The long time pilot and adventurer is very well known in aviation circles for his books that share the passion for flight many of us experience, but few of us can share in words.

We are honored to have these extraordinary speakers at this year’s vintage fly-in and we hope you will be able to join us as well. The weather forecast is looking great for the weekend and we hope you can fly, drive or ride up to Concrete to enjoy the airplanes!

With a week to go until the 2010 fly-in here in Concrete, we thought it was a great time to look back 22 years. We found this great video from the 1988 Concrete Fly-In on YouTube. There are lots of great airplanes in the video, many of them don’t seem to be around any more (or at least we don’t see them at the fly-in anymore).

We’re curious how many people recognize some of the vintage airplanes in the video. It would be great if somebody knew the current whereabouts of some of the airplanes and if we could get them to visit us once again, assuming their still in the area.

Also made us realize we should get out the video camera for this year’s fly-in, especially with some of the amazing airplanes we have flying in this year. Hopefully in 2032 we will still be seeing some of the airplanes flying in to 3W5 that we will see there this year!

Enjoy the video, and let us know in the comments if you recognize any of the airplanes/pilots from 1988.

We look forward to seeing everybody up here in Concrete next Saturday. Breakfast is served at the high school just a few hundred yards from the airport until 11am. Aircraft judging will take place all day, and Addison Pemberton will be speaking about his Boeing Model 40C in the afternoon. Come visit for an easy going, old-fashioned fly-in!

We are in the middle of the busy fly-in season here in Concrete. As soon as we finished getting everything put away after Arlington, it was time to start getting everything ready for our fly-in here in Concrete that starts a week from tomorrow (7/23-24). Everybody is invited to the fly-in and it’s a great place to be if you like an old fashioned, low key fly in with lots of old airplanes.

This year we’re excited as we have a special guest that will be visiting us here in the North Cascades. Addison Pemberton will be flying his one-of-a-kind Boeing Model 40C into 3W5 and will be staying for the fly-in. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, the Model 40 is an incredible example of aircraft restoration. Pemberton and Sons Aviation spent many years tracking down the airplane, acquiring and fabricating parts and immaculately restoring what is now the oldest flying Boeing airplane in the world.

It’s a great honor that Pemberton will be flying his Boeing here to the North Cascades Vintage Fly-In. Even if you’ve seen the airplane before, this will be a great opportunity to get a close look at the airplane, ask questions and see it fly. And if that’s not enough, he and his family are flying in some other airplanes as well including a beautifully restored Laird LC-1B-300.

Continue reading »North Cascades Vintage Fly-In Coming Next Weekend

Over the weekend the NW Super Cub Fly-In was held here at the airport in Concrete. It was the first time they have held the event here and it was a lot of fun. There were around 15 airplanes that flew in on Friday and spent the night camping on the field.

Saturday morning a group of the bush wheel equipped planes headed out on the Skagit River and found some off airport places to practice their STOL skills. By lunch time the weather had cleared up and airplanes kept arriving all afternoon.

The take-off and landing competition was held on the grass runway parallel to the main runway here at 3W5. The organizers set up a orange stripe about a third of the way down the runway to give them plenty of room to slow down for their ultra short landings and keeping things as safe as possible.

By the time the competition was underway there were around 40 airplanes that had flown in for the event. We had more than a dozen Super Cubs, most with giant bush wheels. There were a handful of Cub Crafters Top Cubs and Sport Cubs as well as the company’s amazing Carbon Cub. A few Aviat Huskies showed up, including one on amphib floats. At the bigger end of the bush plane scale were six Cessna 180s and a 170. There were also quite a few spectators who flew in for the event in a random assortment of airplanes.

Watching the STOL competition was quite amazing. A few of the airplanes were able to get off the ground in under 100 feet and stopping in well under 150 feet. The shortest take off of the day was just 55 feet in a Cub Crafters Sport Cub, a stock version! The overall competition was won by Jason Gerard in his Piper L-21B Super Cub. Painted in Italian livery (it was one of the many L-21s that served in the Italian military), Jason managed a best take off of just 91 feet and a landing of 107 feet!

It was also fun watching some of the competitors in the “light touring” category. There was a 150 pilot and a 172 pilot both showing off their STOL skills in the airplanes most of us are familiar with. Results from the event can be seen here near the bottom of the page.

We have a bunch of video as well, should get those on the computer in the next few days. in the meantime enjoy a bunch of the photos below from many of the competitors.

A bit of a last minute notice, but the 2010 NW Super Cub Fly-In will be held here in Concrete this weekend. The annual event has been held down near Snohomish east of Harvey Field for the past several years, but the grass field isn’t available there this year, so the organizers have worked with the town of Concrete to hold the event at 3W5.

The highlight of the fly-in is the STOL competition which will be held Saturday afternoon. Super Cubs and other aircraft from around the region look forward to this fly-in every year to test their ultra short field take off and landing skills. In past years everything from stock PA-18s to nitrous powered Super Cubs as well as a wide range of other aircraft have competed in the STOL competition.

They will be using the grass strip which is parallel to our paved strip here. It can just be seen above, to the right of the airplanes in the picture from our fly-in from a few weeks ago.

There are  four categories for the competition to accommodate everything from small LSAs, through the bush planes and on up to the heavier touring class of airplanes. It should be a great day for anybody who enjoys flying!

On Saturday we hosted our first open hangar/fly-in day of the summer and enjoyed a great turnout. About 25 different planes flew in during the course of the day and at one point we had about 30 airplanes (including several museum airplanes) parked on the grass. It looked like a real fly-in.

Of course the amazing weather helped and there were a lot of pilots in the area who have been waiting for a Saturday like we enjoyed in the North Cascades for quite a while. We had several visitors from Canada as well as from around the northwest.

A big thanks to everybody who stopped by for hamburgers and hot dogs and make it such a fun day.

Keep an eye on our schedule for the upcoming dates for more open hangar days. In addition to the annual fly-in next month which will include Addison Pemberton’s Boeing Model 40, we plan to have another open hangar day in August and again in September. We will also have our annual Corn Roast as well this fall. We will be posting the dates in the next week.

Oh, and for those of you waiting on the Pietenpol update, sorry, it was a busy week. We’ll have the post up in the next couple of days including photos from the Pietenpol project of our guessing game winner. Turns out he’s building an Air Camper, so was quite familiar with the airplane.

With better weather on the way (it was here last week, we’re hoping it will return soon), we’re getting ready to host our first theme day of the summer. And to celebrate warmer weather, we’re going to kick things off with an open cockpit day on Saturday, June 12. If you have an open cockpit airplane, we encourage you to fly in and enjoy a relaxing day in the North Cascades. And if you don’t we encourage you to fly or drive in to have a look at some of the open cockpit airplanes that will be here at 3W5.

In preparing for open cockpit day, we realized one of our most active open cockpit airplanes wasn’t even on our website yet, so we finally added the Waco INF to the website. The Kinner powered INF is from 1930 and is flown regularly when the weather is good here in Concrete and we’ll be flying it on June 12.

Of course we will also have several of our other open cockpit airplanes out of the hangars including the PT-19, the Baby Great Lakes, the Rose Parakeet and we’re hoping to get the Baby Ace in the air.

Of course there are lots of other airplanes to look at as well. If you haven’t seen our Bulldog project, it’s sitting in the shop with its new engine, right next to the open cockpit Waco QCF-2 fuselage.

We’ll start pulling airplanes out of the hangars around 9am and will have the grill out with some hamburgers and hot dogs. We hope you’ll join us on June 12 to celebrate summer with some open cockpit flying.

With the days getting a bit longer, and a bit warmer, we are starting to see more visitors to 3W5. Earlier this month a group of pilots from the EAA chapter in Bellingham flew in (and drove in) for a visit. Chapter 404 member Kerry Sim sent in some photos from the visit, which he says was thoroughly enjoyed by all those who attended, especially the ones who got to go for a ride in the Fairchild 24.

Below are the pictures and some notes from Kerry about the visit.

Continue reading »EAA Chapter 404 Visits The Museum