By SUE RYAN
News staff writer
July 18, 2007

Biplanes from a bygone era touched down in Hood River Monday afternoon.

The Pacific Northwest pilots were on their way to the 2007 NW Biplane Fly-in in Spokane, Wash. Fred Sindlinger and his son, Lyle, were visiting Hood River for the first time.

They came in their 1944 Taylor Craft L-2. Both belong to the Puget Sound Antique Airplane Club.

“Every other year the committee decides where to go based on what there is to see and do,” Lyle said. “We wanted to come to Hood River because we heard about the museum.”

He is referring to the Western Antique Automobile and Aeroplane Museum (WAAAM) currently under construction at the airport. While the museum doesn’t open until Labor Day weekend, founder Terry Brandt gave the pilots a private tour of the collection.

“What is exciting is that this will be a flying museum with restored planes that will be used,” Lyle said.

A large number of the planes that flew in Monday were Stearmans, a type of plane used to train fighter pilots during World War II. The only completely female team, Julie Richardson and Patti Metcalf, came from Camas, Wash. in “Friskie,” a Boeing PT-17.

“It does about 100 mph unless you have two women’s luggage for a week in it,” said Richardson.

She got her start as a pilot at age 7 and went on to work as a flight instructor, air traffic controller and most recently attained an aircraft engineer certificate.

Of the 30 planes, most were people from Oregon and Washington but there were also a few from Reno, Nev. Because of the varying speeds from 100 to 180 mph, the planes don’t fly in formation but stagger their landings and take-offs.

Flight instructor Rebecca Desmon and her husband, Dave, both work in aviation. They flew their 1948 L-17 Navion plane.

She teaches high school students to fly in Everett, Wash. and he is an engineer for Boeing. Rebecca was thrilled to hear that the museum will offer classes to students. She thinks that people sometimes forget the value of a small town airport as well as the business end of flying.

“That museum will be an economic driver that people may not realize,” she said. “It will bring more people to the airport. A little active airport can do a lot economically.”

She said her favorite part of teaching students to fly is how they don’t realize all of a sudden they are using math and science skills in an enjoyable way through practical application.

“I often say, shh, don’t tell them that was just trigonometry they were doing,” she said.

Rebecca said she is an advocate of what flying can also do for a person’s sense of self-confidence no matter what size community they come from.

“Look at the current director of the Museum of Flight (in Seattle, Wash.), Bonnie Dunbar; she began as just a little ol’ farm kid from Sunnyside, Wash., who advanced through flying,” Demson said.

Dunbar became an astronaut for NASA, then worked as the assistant director for University Research and Affairs at Johnson Space Center in before retiring to head up the Seattle facility.