Flying with David

If you follow all of my families blogs, you may recognize this picture as being virtually identical to David's current entry. He was there very recently, and I don't think he got enough of this awesome aircraft museum because he proposed that we visit it together on Labor Day, and we did. He flew his Cessna 150 over here to a small airstrip in Camas on Sunday, and early Monday morning we flew on down to McMinnville, Oregon where the Evergreen Air Museum is located just across the highway from the airport.
The major feature is the gigantic flying boat built by Howard Hughes which is commonly called the Spruce Goose although it is actually made of laminated birch. This fairly new facility not only houses (barely) that monster which dominates the entire cavernous building, but dozens of other famous airplanes of every sort. The trend is toward miitary aircraft - fighters and bombers mostly - but many important early airplanes are also represented. A tour of general features can take up to two hours, but a thorough look at everything would take all day if you actually read all of the comprehensive display boards which every display features. It was especially fun to identify several of the airplanes (including the FJ3, a carrier based version of the F-86 made famous during the Korea conflict) that I knew that my dad had worked on during his career at North American Aviation.

Part of the fun of the flight to and from McMinville was in the planning of route, and waypoints, and the radio frequencies we would need to monitor enroute to pass over two airports and keep ourselves clear of the Portland Airport and it's sprawling airspace. Some of the research for such a trip comes directly off of FAA published maps, but a lot of the information needed is more easily accessed on-line.

Well right here the blog site was supposed to insert a couple of map pictures to illustrate our route and show how complicated an aviation map can be. Alas, after a couple of attempts, I must be content to claim the reach but not the grasp. Should they show up later I will edit these remarks to fit. (And later they still would not upload. Sorry)

Most of the fun of such a day, of course, is in spending time with my son David, a fine young man of whom I am extremely proud, and that would be enough even without flying or museums full of exotic airplanes. This became a most memorial Labor Day holiday, and I will treasure it as long as my memory lasts. I had a great time all day long. Who could ask for more?