A few months back we got a call from John Sessions asking if we wanted a P-51 and Spitfire flyby at our fly-in here in Concrete. Of course we said yes, and we have stayed in touch and talked about working together more to help promote vintage aviation around the area. Over Labor Day weekend we were honored to be asked to bring some of our airplanes down to Sessions’ Historic Flight Foundation for the annual Vintage Aircraft Weekend at Paine Field. It was a great opportunity to support his efforts of promoting historic aircraft.

Sessions has put together an impressive collection of airplanes at this museum and over the past few years has put a lot of work into developing the vintage weekend at his facility. This year there was an impressive collection of airplanes including numerous warbirds from trainers through fighters and bombers. On the vintage/antique side it was great to see some impressive airplanes including a beautiful Staggerwing, Addison Pemberton’s Boeing Model 40 and the Mueum of Flight’s DC-2 to just name a few of the airplanes that flew in for the event.

__(‘Read the rest of this entry »’)

The annual Arlington Fly-In is underway at the Arlington airport just a short flight south of Concrete. This is the biggest fly-in of the year for our area and the museum once again has a strong presence at the vintage barn display.

Our perennially popular Ryan STA-Special is parked out front of the barn again and is joined this year by our Fairchild PT-19 and the somewhat rare Call Air A-2. Everybody at the museum has been very busy the past few weeks getting things ready for fly-in season and the Call Air in particular received plenty of work.

The airplane was restored nearly 20 years ago, but for the past several years it has been collecting a bit of dust in one of our hangars. When the decision was made to bring it down to Arlington, a lot of work was done to polish the paint and aluminum to get it looking bright and colorful again. The result is one of the best looking Call Airs anybody has seen in quite a while. Though there aren’t too many of the airplanes out there, so we admit the competition isn’t as tough as it is in some other airplane categories.

Other vintage and antique airplanes around the barn include the beautiful Stinson Model O and the Boeing Model 40 should be arriving soon.

Visitors to the barn at the Arlington Fly-In checking out the Stinson SR-9 wing.

In addition to the airplanes, we have several things on display inside of the vintage barn as well. Jim pulled off the fabric from the top of the Stinson SR-9‘s right wing to give visitors a look at the inner workings of the old gullwing. The stout construction, including a fair amount of steel, had many visitors commenting about the bridge-like construction used for the wings.

We also brought down the painted fuselage of our little Culver Dart, a selection of vintage propellers and a partly disassembled Continental A-40.

Visitors last year really enjoyed being able to see a little of what goes into a restoration and we’re looking forward to getting a steady stream of interested people again this year.

If you’re in the Puget Sound area, or even in the greater pacific northwest, be sure to visit Arlington this year and stop by the barn and say hello.

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.

One of our planes that tends to turn heads because of its somewhat unusual appearance is the Call Air A-2. The low wing plane was developed in Wyoming as a mountain ranch hand of sorts. There aren’t many of them around, and as far as we know, none of them have been cover models.

Well back in 1950, our A-2 made the cover of Flying magazine. There’s a great story about the plane as well.

And this isn’t our Call Air’s only brush with fame. The airplane is the actual plane flown by Kenneth Arnold when he reported seeing several unidentified flying objects near Mt. Rainier. Arnold’s reported sighting is the believed to be the first of a UFO in the United States and subsequent stories about him are the origination of the term ‘flying saucer.’

Personally, we prefer to fly the identifiable flying objects like the Call Air on nice summer evenings.