The Arlington Fly-In is in full swing and the new vintage-antique area is great! Volunteers in Arlington spent months building the barn that serves as the center point for the vintage and antique airplanes. Outside there are lots of great looking old airplanes and inside there are lots of airplane parts and memorabilia.

The barn is truly a great addition to the fly-in and a huge thanks to everybody in Arlington who came up with the idea and put it all together!

The museum has been working with the fly-in organizers and has provided many of the items on display. Inside the barn is our Pietenpol Sky Scout and Ford Model A engine. We also have several smaller items, and the speed corner with information about the Hall Bulldog project and other air racers.

Outside the barn we also brought several airplanes down for display. Our Ryan ST-A Special, Fairchild 24 and Waco INF are parked next to several other incredible looking airplanes. We even brought down one of our latest projects, a yet to be restored 1939 Stinson HW-75.

The airplane just came out of storage thanks to the help of a group of Civil Air Patrol cadets from Bellingham. The Stinson served with the Civil Air Patrol during World War II along the St. Lawrence Seaway and still has some of the original markings. After the war the airplane was put in storage and it still includes many original interior pieces.

We will be working with the CAP cadets in the area over the next several years to restore the airplane back to its original glory. There has been a huge interest in the rusty old plane, especially from the kids who want to help with the restoration!

The weather forecast continues to look like nothing but blue skies and thankfully slightly cooler temperatures for the next few days. Be sure to make the trip to Arlington this year and stop by the barn to say hello.

Arlington is less than a week away, and we’re busy getting ready for this year’s show. The exciting news is there will be a much bigger vintage/antique aircraft presence this year with the new vintage barn that has been built by volunteers over the past several months, and Friday will be vintage airplane day.

The barn is truly an amazing project. It has been built from scratch, with logs literally being milled into lumber by volunteers to make the structure. It should be a great gathering center for the vintage crowd.

We will have a few of our airplanes on display in Arlington. The Ryan STA-Special will be back this year along with our Fairchild 24G. We’re planning on bringing at least one more airplane down, but haven’t figured out if it will be the Waco INF or the Fairchild PT-19.

We’re also going to bring some of our projects down to the Vintage Barn display. The Pietenpol Sky Scout project will be on display with its air cooled Ford engine. Also on display will be our Stinson HW75 project. This airplane is a former Civil Air Patrol Airplane that served in the northeastern United States during World War II. We have a group of CAP cadets from Bellingham who will be helping get the Stinson prepared for next week.

We look forward to seeing everybody at Arlington, be sure to stop by and say hello!

The museum recently acquired a new project and has started work on the little airplane. So far the fuselage has been stripped down and some repair and finishing work is being done on it while the engine sits in the corner of the hangar.

We’ve been enjoying the interesting looks the plane and especially its engine have been getting from visitors. Only a few have guessed successfully to what either the airplane is or what kind of engine it came with. Admittedly it’s even a bit harder from just a picture, but we’ll send out a Skagit Aero t-shirt to the first person who can successfully identify both (we’re counting on your honesty that you haven’t been to the hangar lately or have been told what it is). Leave a comment below with your guess…

We have an engine! The Hall Springfield Bulldog project has passed an important milestone with the purchase of a Pratt & Whitney R-1340. With generous donations from members of the Hall family,  Eric Hall and Skip Hall, the project facilitator Griggs Irving and the person responsible for building the airplane, Jim Jenkins, our Bulldog is one step closer to taking to the skies.

Ever since the Bulldog project was pulled down from the rafters, there have been a few major components that have been glaring because of their absence. The airplane was missing both an engine and propeller. Jim had been keeping his eyes open for a Wasp motor, and earlier this year spotted one online that looked like it might work.

Continue reading »The Hall Springfield Bulldog Has Power!

In the more than 15 years that Jim has been working on and researching the Bulldog project, he’s found some great photos of the original. After posting a few of them on the Bulldog page a few weeks back, we managed to scan several more and have added them to the ‘photos’ section on the Bulldog page.

One of the best shots includes Bob Hall himself (above photo). With the engine running, Bob Hall can be seen sitting in the cockpit behind a person we think is Russell Thaw.

Another is a great shot of the Bulldog with the cowling off, giving a great view of the Pratt & Whitney engine. Also included is a picture that is a nice view of the Bulldog on what looks like a grass field either during take off or landing. It’s not a real clear image, but it really gives a great view of how the air racers of the 1930s were all about big engines and small airframes.

Speaking of engines, we have found an engine for our Bulldog!! Everybody involved is very excited as the Pratt & Whitney R-1340 Wasp we found is the same type of engine used in the original Bulldog. We’ll have a new post up soon with pictures of the motor and more about the power behind the Bulldog.

The rest of the new images can be found under the ‘photos’ tab here.

We thought we should show some more pictures of the Bulldog as it waits patiently in the hangar. It’s been sharing floor space with our Waco QCF-2, but we recently moved it to the other end of the shop so it has more room to breath. We’ll be posting more info regularly during the build process including pictures of the work being done as well as historical information and pictures.

As you can see in the pictures, we have the frame together with the tail vertical tail feathers right now. This is basically how Jim left the project back in the 1990s and since then it has made several moves including one across the country. After so much time staring at the frame hanging from the rafters, the Bulldog looks much better on the ground ready for work.

We’re working on getting the next big pieces including the engine and the propeller. And of course there are a lot of smaller items we still have to track down as well to make this recreation as authentic as possible.

Everybody here at the museum is excited to have this amazing project on the floor and moving forward. The Bulldog is one of those airplanes that has generated a lot of interest over the years despite its very short time in existence. There have been numerous models of the Bulldog built over the years, including some amazing large scale R/C airplanes. We’ll have more on some of the smaller Bulldogs in the coming months.

For many people throughout the antique restoration community, our latest project is no longer a secret. When the first hints were dropped in our blog over the winter, the word spread fast that Jim’s long dormant air racer recreation was back on the workshop floor. So it is with great pleasure that we make it official and announce that work has begun on our 1932 Hall Springfield Bulldog recreation.

It’s been a while since the airplane was pulled down from the rafters, and we have handed out a few hints here and there, but work has finally started in earnest and we could not be more excited to see this one of a kind racer once again getting the attention it deserves.

An incredible amount of work has already taken place just to get the project restarted, never mind the initial work that Jim put into the Bulldog when he started building it more than 15 years ago. Today we have the generous support of museum founder Harold Hansen as well as support from the Hall family, descendants of the Bulldog’s original designer Bob Hall. It has been incredible to have the support of the Hall family, and their involvement makes the project even more special that we could have imagined. Local aviation aficionado Griggs Irving has been instrumental in helping get all of the pieces of this project together and on the same page so that work can again get started on the project. And of course Jim Jenkins original dream of recreating this historical airplane is the seed that started it all.

We are still in need of more support to help finish the Bulldog project and the many other ongoing projects here at the museum. For those interested in supporting the Bulldog or the museum’s other projects, please contact us on how to contribute to the recreation of this unique air racer and the ongoing work here at the Skagit Aero Education Museum.

We are extremely excited to have the opportunity to recreate such a beautiful airplane and we know there are many others out there who share our enthusiasm about the project. The frame is currently sitting in the shop, and we can’t wait to keep everybody up to date regarding the progress of this one of a kind airplane.

Keep checking back here for more updates including lots of images of the recreation of the Bulldog. And be sure to check out our new Bulldog page for more information and vintage photos of the original Bulldog.

Well we’ve been teasing for a while now about our new project. Judging by the phone calls we’ve received during the past several weeks, several of you already know what we have sitting in the hangar. We’re still working on putting together a new page for the plane, and for those of you who don’t know yet, here’s a picture of the view from the cockpit.

Granted, you can’t see a lot from that view, but neither could the pilot when taxiing. Here’s another view of what it might look like standing on the seat and getting ready to slide down into this one-of-a-kind airplane. More updates coming in the next month or so, including the identity of the mystery plane.

More photos after the jump.

Continue reading »The View From the Cockpit of Our New (Old) Project

Last year as we started pulling apart the SR-9, there were several layers of surprise as there often is in restoring an airplane. Overall the Stinson was in good shape, it had flown recently, but there were definite signs of old age and weather. The main cabin doors were a perfect example of something that was functional when we got the airplane, but as soon as you peel back the covers, there was plenty of work to be done, like all new doors.

More after the jump.

Continue reading »Out With the Old Door, In With a New Door

The doors have been particularly tricky as it is always challenging to make the door match the old door, but also match the door frame. You end up needing to take small steps to ensure everything fits, while constantly comparing new door to old door, new frame to old door, old frame to new door, new door to new frame, old frame to new frame…let’s just say there is a fair amount of going back and forth.

Many more photos after the jump.

Continue reading »Stinson Cabin Restoration Moving Along Nicely