This weekend I can hear the jets powering through the skies over Alliance Airport for the Fort Worth Airshow but my mind is back in time at last weekends antique fly-in.  Radial engines, biplanes and fabric are more to my liking!  One of the highlights from last weekend was Don Pellegreno's Rearwin Cloudster.  Don did a very nice job restoring this red beauty.  A few photos featured below.

John Cournoyer had some of his airplanes out yesterday (which was a stunning fall day!) for pictures for his new website. John has a few of the airplanes for sale, so if you're interested, drop me a line.

Scott Johansson flies one of John's Waco UBF-2 at sunset.

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.

Continue reading »Vintage Aircraft Weekend At Paine Field

We’re happy to announce that our PA-15 Vagabond is flying again. The path this airplane has followed over the past several years has been a tough one as this is the second restoration in the several years. The airplane only had 1.5 hours on the last restoration before an accident totaled the airplane. We’ll have the rest of the story up here at some later date, but a hint is the airplane’s nickname, “Freeflight.”

Our Vagabond is a Deluxe model that has also been converted to a PA-17. The deluxe model included several amenities from the factory in Lock Haven not found on the budget conscious base model Vagabond. A few items include gear and strut fairings on the outside of the airplane and carpeting on the inside. And the conversion from a PA-15 to a PA-17 was accomplished with the addition of dual controls and it also has a 75 horsepower Continental.

Continue reading »Piper Vagabond Flying Again