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.

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!

We recently received a bunch of pictures and a great story from one of our most active volunteers here at the museum. Kerry Sim is a veteran pilot who has been helping out here in Concrete for a while now, and last fall he started bringing his 15 year old son Cameron along.

Cameron is a great help whenever he’s here and doesn’t just sit around looking at the airplanes. Every time he is at the airport he’s hard at work helping with the basic maintenance and learning about the airplanes. He’s worked on a lot of the planes here, but he’s really getting to know the PT-19. It’s really great to see a teenager changing the oil in a World War II trainer, and even better to see him going for a flight in one!

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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.

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Just scanned in some pages from the Army Air Forces Training Command – Primary Flying Student’s Manual. The book covers the PT-17, PT-19 and PT-22. Below are just a few pages showing the PT-19 basic information, cockpit and checklist. The whole book is pretty fun to read through with much of the same type of instruction you would find in a modern training book, though with a lot more cartoon characters. There are also a couple of pages about the PT-19 from a book about World War II airplanes.