Our first fly-in of the year was on Saturday and unfortunately the weather was less than cooperative. It was IMC to the east over the Cascade mountains and it was overcast with some occasional rain during the day. There were some breaks in the weather and occasionally we could see down valley to the west.

Despite the less than ideal weather we did get a handful of airplanes fly in for a visit in addition to some of our locals here at 3W5.

In addition to those who flew in, we had a visitor all the way from France who was excited to see the museum airplanes and in particular the Call Air. In fact he contacted asking us specifically about the airplane.

The schedule was tight, he had to be back at Boeing Field by 3pm for work. A representative of the European Aviation Safety Association, our new friend has been in Seattle for the past several weeks as a flight test engineer on the new Boeing 787 certification flights.

After many hours riding in the cockpit of the 787, he was excited to get his hands on the control of the Call Air.

With summer around the corner, we are busily preparing for fly-in season here in Concrete. In addition to the five fly-ins that will be happening here, we are also making plans to fly some of our airplanes to some of the other great fly-ins around the pacific northwest (and beyond).

Our big fly-in here in Concrete will be again held in late July. The newly renamed Concrete North Cascades Vintage Fly-In will be taking place July 22-24 with the main day being Saturday, the 23rd. We are expecting another fantastic fly-in and already have several interesting aircraft attending. Addison Pemberton’s Boeing Model 40 will be back, as will the Laird. Addison says as many as a dozen or so biplanes may be flying in from Felts Field.

The beautiful 1933 Stinson Model O that graced Arlington and Oshkosh in 2010 will be here this year.  And we’re hoping to have a Douglas DC-3 make the trip.

In addition to the big fly-in, we are planning several smaller ones that will be low-key get togethers for anybody who wants to enjoy a nice day in the north cascades. The first of these will be Saturday, May 21st. We’re calling it our “Taildragger Pancake Breakfast” and we encourage anybody with a tail dragger or anybody who likes tail draggers to come by for breakfast.

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All of us here at the Skagit Aero Education Museum would like to wish everybody a merry Christmas and happy holidays. We hope Santa’s own antique aircraft continues to run well and both he and you are able to get some enjoyable time in the cockpit in the new year.

It’s been several months since we did a photo shoot with our Piper J-5A, but for some reason we never managed to get them up on our website. So after a long delay, and with Christmas around the corner, we finally added some images of our red Cub Cruiser in honor of Santa Claus and his sled.

The J-5A is a great flying airplane with just enough room in the back seat for a pair of kids or adults who are on the small side (and know each other well). It’s an airplane that doesn’t get flown as much as some of the others, but we’ll see if we can fix that problem in the coming new year.

With late summer skies tempting, we managed to get up to take some new photos of our Waco INF. With some nice evening light, nice photos in these mountains are a piece of cake. Mt. Baker was looking great and we managed to make several passes as the sun was setting.

A big thanks as always to Herb Huestis, our faithful photo ship pilot who does a fantastic job of flying his Piper PA-22 smoothly so we can get these pictures. For more of the images from the flight, click here and check out the photos tab.

Hope everybody is enjoying the great late summer flying.

Sorry for the delay in getting out the list of winners from this year’s North Cascades Vintage Fly-In. We saw more than 160 airplanes during the weekend and many of them were judged in the various categories.

Unfortunately we were a little behind in the picture taking and did not manage to get images of all the winning aircraft. But below are a few of the great looking airplanes that paid a visit to Mears Field.

Thanks again to everybody who made the 2010 fly-in a great success and we look forward to seeing everybody again next year.

Best of Show – Boeing Model 40C, Addison Pemberton – Spokane, WA

Grand Champion Antique – Laird LC-1B-300, Larry Howard – Spokane, WA
Reserve Grand Champion – Fairchild 24J, George Leighton – Seattle, WA

Grand Champion Classic – Luscombe 8E, Steve Bolan – San Diego, CA
Reserve Grand Champion Classic – Piper PA-16 Clipper, John Garabedian – Southborough, MA

Grand Champion Contemporary Classic – Piper J-3 Cub, David Hendry – Bellevue, WA
Reserve Grand Champion Contemporary Classic – Bellanca 14-19-2 Cruisemaster, Russell Williams – Issaquah, WA

Grand Champion Warbird – Piper L-4, Neil Seaton – Snohomish, WA
Reserve Grand Champion – North American AT-6, Craig Nelson – Eastsound, WA

Grand Champion Experimental – Vans RV-12, Steve Rush – Marysville, WA
Reserve Grand Champion – Stolp Starlett, Bill Jensen – Arlington, WA

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.

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!

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!