The 2014 Wine and Pear Fest hosted at WAAAM by the Hood River Rotary Club had a couple of thousand attendees. Admission to the event included admission to the museum and our display hangars were busy with visitors, many who might not have come otherwise. Our volunteer corps came out in strength so the visitors were well edified during their visits.
On May 29, Addison Pemberton came to WAAAM to retrieve the Boeing 40C for the summer touring season. Since last fall the plane has been basking under the attentions of WAAAM visitors and volunteers so now it's time to go out for a bit of exercise, flying around the country for the summer. His timing was excellent because we had a visit by passengers from the American Empress riverboat who got the treat of a talk by Addison followed by a few flyovers as he departed for home in Spokane. Have fun flying, Addison and we'll see you in the fall!
Hangar Drill: On the day the Boeing 40C departed, Chief Pilot Ben Davidson drafted Founder Terry Brandt, Board of Directors member Jerry Wenger and a crew of determined volunteers to play 52-card pickup with airplanes and cars. The pushing and pulling was prodigious and, no question about it, everybody slept well Wednesday night! (We'll solicit donations of IcyHot and Bengay in advance of the next time.) There's still more to do but we're pretty sure that it'll take a month to figure out where things have gone.
Our latest aircraft restoration project is a Waco Primary Glider of the early 1930s. Jakonah Matson-Bell is heading up that effort. A primary glider is about as basic as flight can be without growing wings yourself. The "fuselage" is a truss and the pilot's seat is a platform and a pair of small (probably futile) cushions on the pipe behind his back. Don't be surprised to see photos in flight soon.
The WAAAM Board of Directors held a meeting to trim the sails and plan the future of the museum. They reported that the meeting went well and all went home happy.
The Parker Pusher did another taxi test on Friday (5/30). It's going straight as an arrow now but they didn't fly it because the engine was gunked up. Harold Nelson and a few others have spent the past few days ironing out the kinks so that we can be ready for the next time.
Everyone loved our Memorial Day fly-overs.
The tracks for the caboose have been made with a big assist from Union Pacific. Randy Acree has been heading up the project with help from Don Ferency. He's doing it old school but he's doing it correctly. The caboose should be here by the end of June at the latest probably. Don said he "learned a lot about laying rail road tracks and he also learned that he's glad he never had to do that for a living".
In restoration land we've added a few new projects:
The Detroit Electric has moved to the "memory lane" corner shop and Andy and co have been working on it.
We've managed to fix the steering column of the Velie Touring Car and are plugging away little by little on the project.
The Steam Tractor is also progressing fast enough that we are fairly certain that we'll make the Fourth of July parade deadline we set for ourselves.
The old movie theater sign has been primed and is ready for paint. It will either be black or the green that it was when we first got it (when striping the paint off we found out that it has been just about every color under the sun). We've also gotten permission to start on the foundation for the sign out front - we haven't poured the concrete yet but now the county says we can.
We've also gotten several awards/milestones in the past few weeks too.
The people voted and WAAAM won the best cultural display of the Columbia River Gorge for the Oregonian.
We hit 2007 followers on Facebook.
Last but certainly not least we won Tripadvisor's 2014 Certificate of Excellence. Only the top 10% of people on trip advisor get this award. It is all thanks to visitors rating the museum well and loving our outstanding volunteers and collection.
Next on the list:
June Model T Driving School is full! (thankyou!) There is space to schedule your "Driving School" for July or August Class.
WAAAM Camp is June 23-26
The TrafficJam Car Show and Swap Meet just a month away! on the Second Saturday of July
We are gearing up for the Annual Hood River Fly-in on September 6 and 7
heart, will be making
