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.

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.

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.