Straight Scoop

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Straight Scoop STRAIGHT SCOOP Volume XXII, Number 3 March 2017 Pacific Coast Air In This Issue Museum Announces Aviation Education Sessions Aviation Education for 2017 .......................................... 1 Sessions for 2017 President’s Message ................... 2 By Art Hayssen, PCAM Educa- EAA Ford Tri-Motor Detailed tion Chair and Dave Ford, Vice Report ............................................ 3 President Getting to Know You: About With some assistance Dave Ford and PCAM Education from Allan Morgan, our Programs ...................................... 4 former Director of Educa- February Meeting Guest Speaker: tion, we’ve assembled Whit Hall Provides a Six-Year- more of the aviation edu- Old’s View of Pearl Harbor ...... 5 cation classes that the Pa- March 15 Guest Speaker: Jonna cific Coast Air Museum is Doolittle Hoppes on an Evening famous for. We’ve already with the Doolittles ...................... 7 held two Boy Scout Merit PCAM Education Chair Art Hayssen (left) and Connie Rey- Busting the Top Gun Myth, erse (top of stairs) guide a group of Boy Scouts through the Revisited ........................................ 7 Badge classes, two more Lockheed Jet Star during the January 28 Boy Scout Merit are scheduled for later in Badge class. Flight Wing Goes Italian............ 9 the year, and our annual Flight Wing Jackets ................... 10 Aviation Summer School is set for June. This is in addition to the many school groups and field trips we host throughout the year. Details of the SIAI Marchetti SM-1019 ....................................... 11 Boy Scout Merit Badge Classes Air Show Flashback .................. 12 A one-day class that earns a Merit Badge in Aviation, this approximately 6 hour March Aviation History ............. 12 course at PCAM follows the curriculum requirements established by the Boy Gift Shop March News ............ 14 Scouts of America. The Boy Scout Merit Badge Class is a great weekend activity for Scouts and is a rare opportunity to earn a Merit Badge in an environment PCAM Platinum Sponsors ...... 14 perfectly suited to it: at an institution devoted to education, taught by experi- Info, Officers, Contacts ............ 15 enced aviators, at an airport where, as the grand finale, participants can sit in a Events & Open Cockpit ...... Back real airplane and go flying. Topics include kinds of aircraft, basic physics/ aerodynamics of flight, aircraft engines and careers in aviation. Two Boy Scout Merit Badge sessions were held in January, one led by Art Hayssen and the other by Nancy & Rob Heath. Another two classes are sched- The PCAM Mission uled this year, one on May 20 and the other on October 7. “To Educate and Inspire On January 28 Art Hayssen taught 17 scouts, 16 from Sonoma Troop 16 and 1 both young and old from Windsor Troop 20. The first several hours were classroom work on aero- about our aviation heri- dynamics and meteorology. Keven Quirk gave a talk about building aircraft and tage and space technol- had some hands-on work to illustrate riveting aluminum skin to form aircraft components. ogy, to Preserve historic aircraft and artifacts, and Continued on page 13 to Honor veterans.” © Copyright 2017 Pacific Coast Air Museum www.pacificcoastairmuseum.org 707-575-7900 STRAIGHT Page 2 SCOOP March 2017 President’s Message Hey! What about our new and exciting web site? It is up and running and looks great. We have now entered the 21st Century in the marketing and promotion area. Thanks to Peter Loughlin for pursuing this complex event. We had a very successful EAA Ford Tri-motor event that is chronicled elsewhere in this newsletter. I was most impressed by our volunteers. We had a great turnout and all were willing workers. Our efforts were rewarded with a substantial sum of money that goes into our general funds. The summer PCAM events are starting to dot the calendar. As the preparations get more organized we will need the usual high number of volunteers to help out. When a chance arises please raise your hand to lighten the work- load of other members. Be sure to log and turn in the hours that you volunteer. That gives us good support for obtaining sponsors. We are planning to put on a ‘Meet our Vets” event where local students and parents will get a chance to visit and hear directly from our Sonoma County Veterans of WWII and Korea. The event is planned for the Memorial Day Holiday. Carol Lawson and Andy Werback are the contacts for this event. Volunteers needed. The Museum has taken possession of a Marchetti SM.1019, a turbine-powered single-engine float plane. It is in flyable condition but our exact plans for it are undefined. Connie Reyerse, our Executive Director, has been undergo- ing a serious medical condition that will require him to step down as Director. He is going to work as a volunteer with our displays and also wants to help with the Jet Star. We wish him well and a swift recovery. The C-118 is in the process of being salvaged. We were able to sell enough of the aircraft that it will put some money into our budget. HELP WANTED: We are in need of an Executive Direc- tor for Museum operations. This is a less than full time Our “new to us” SIAI-Marchetti SM.1019 paid position. It is at the center of activity of all we do here at the Museum. If you are interested in this exciting position, or know of someone who might be, please con- tact me at 707-799-2878. We are starting to get more sun these days so soon the grounds will dry enough to mow the grass. In case you have not noticed, much effort has already been expended to clean up the Butler area and the Museum grounds in general. Thank you to our hard working crews. At our next general membership meeting on March 15, 2017 our guest speaker will be Jonna Doolittle Hoppes (Gen. Doolittle’s granddaughter). — C J Stephens President, Pacific Coast Air Museum © Copyright 2017 Pacific Coast Air Museum www.pacificcoastairmuseum.org 707-575-7900 STRAIGHT Page 3 SCOOP March 2017 EAA Ford Tri-Motor Makes a Historic Visit to KSTS By Andy Werback Last month’s newsletter went to print just as the Tri-Motor event was concluding. After flying the previous weekend in Sac- ramento (500 passengers), N9645 spent 4 days at Santa Rosa flying 357 passengers plus quite a few of our volunteers who flew on a space-available basis. This particular Ford Tri-Motor is one of two currently flying in revenue service, out of 199 originally built by Stout Metal Airplane Company, at that time a division of Ford Motor Company, in 1928. It seats 10 and has 3 Pratt and Whitney R985 en- gines. (If you looked closely, the instruments for the #1 and #3 engines are mounted ex- EAA Chapter 124 volunteer Mike Tovani (left) and Carol from the Pacific Coast Air Museum (right) helped put the Tri-Motor into the Sonoma Jet Center hangar one ternally on the engine struts.) The airplane evening. We’d like to salute all our valued volunteers who made this event possible, was restored by William Harrah of Reno in helping PCAM earn a tidy sum as our share of the proceeds. the late 1960s, and made its first flight with a new corrugated aluminum skin in 1971. It is watch the Tri-Motor fly overhead. presently owned by Liberty Aviation Museum in Port Clinton, Ohio, and leased to EAA. We received a very nice thank you letter from EAA for the support of the Tri-Motor on the Santa Rosa One of the more interesting bits of information given to tour stop. It was a lot of work by many volunteers, passengers is that all of today’s major US airlines can trace and PCAM President C J Stephens had this to add: their lineage back to the Ford Tri-Motor. This airplane started with Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT), which I would like to add my thanks and congratulations to soon became Transcontinental and Western Airlines this note. (T&WA) and then Trans World Airlines (TWA). And then, American Airlines, and then… well. I was truly amazed at the amount of flying that we were able to complete in this, one of the wettest Thursday and Friday were pretty marginal due to inclem- months in history. When I first learned what we were ent weather, but on Saturday we were able to launch 18 going to attempt, I figured we would be lucky to get 5 flights, and on Sunday, 17 flights, for a total of 42. Be- passengers airborne. Wow. We did nearly 400 in those tween EAA’s www.FlyTheFord.org web page and the Mu- couple of days and it was mostly due to the crew. It seum’s website, Facebook and airshow web pages, we got was a huge team effort and a great event. a really good start on pre-booking passengers. Many Thank you all. -- C J more came out to have a flight experience after seeing this very large, radial-engine airplane flying slowly over The Pacific Coast Air Museum would also like to thank their neighborhood or office. Because of the 80-85 mph our generous sponsors: Sonoma Jet Center, Kaiser cruise speed, many people commented that they had Air, and the Charles M. Schulz Museum. We couldn’t plenty of time, after hearing the engines, to go out and have done it without you! © Copyright 2017 Pacific Coast Air Museum www.pacificcoastairmuseum.org 707-575-7900 STRAIGHT Page 4 SCOOP March 2017 Getting to Know You Bill, who lives in Colorado, built his own airplane, a Lancair Legacy – he also has the flying “bug”.
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