Aviation Memorabilia Newsletter

Winnipeg's Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada opens doors at new location

It was a takeoff nearly four years in the making.

On Saturday May 21, 2022,  the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada opened the doors of its new location to the public for the first time.

Construction on the Wellington Avenue museum began two years ago, after it was forced to leave its previous location in a converted hangar on Ferry Road after its lease expired in 2018.

Source CBC.ca

Vickers Viscount CF-THS

Gate guard at Pitt Meadows, B.C. (YPK)

Chris Georgas is a pilot and instructor who’s been flying since he was 16 years old, clocking thousands of flight hours. Chris lives in Sechelt, British Columbia, which is 50 nautical miles from YPK, a general aviation airport about a 45 minute drive east of downtown Vancouver. He commutes to YPK almost daily in his Cessna 152, where he owns 50,000 square feet of hangar space that he rents to other pilots.

He describes himself as a supporter of General Aviation in every way imaginable. He wasn’t a Glasair fan before he bought the kit, but he’d heard about the company and their product through some of the Glasair builders at Pitt Meadows, such as Ted Bain.

Chris feels he probably could’ve sold some of the parts, but from the moment he saw the kit he knew exactly what he wanted to do with it. 

This image appeared in my inbox and I wondered how I might feel driving past it. This is a Glasair II FT that was recently mounted to serve as a “gate guardian” at Pitt Meadows (YPK) in British Columbia, Canada. I imagine I’d be ecstatic to stumble upon it. These little composite planes make my heart happy. I’d love to be welcomed by something I’ve dubbed friendly and familiar. To many, this airplane means nothing.

But for a lot of us it’s symbolic. We see the smooth cowl out of the corner of our eye and a wave of pride and familiarly washes over us.

Source: AVWeb.com 

Honeywell Boeing 757 Turns 40

Honeywell announced that its Boeing 757 test-bed aircraft is turning 40 years old. The company acquired the 757, which rolled off of the production line in June 1982 and entered service with Eastern Airlines the following year, in 2005 for use in research and development. It has been used to test technologies including Honeywell’s next-generation flight management systems (NGFMS).

“For the past 17 years, we have made so many technological modifications to our beloved 757 test aircraft that the only thing turning 40 years old is likely the fuselage itself,” said Joe Duval, Honeywell Aerospace director of flight test operations. “We’re among a select few pilots in the industry who have the responsibility to push an aircraft close to its limits. We’ve intentionally flown into nasty storms to test our radars, and we’ve flown toward more mountains than I can count to test our ground proximity warning systems.

Our 757 has been the dependable workhorse that allows us to test a whole slew of technologies, including the engines we produce for business jets and smaller aircraft.”

Honeywell’s 757 is outfitted with 25 seats and “a wide variety of flight test engineering stations.” The company reports that its 757 has conducted more than 800 flight tests and logged over 3,000 flight test hours during its service as a test bed. According to Honeywell, the aircraft has traveled to more than 30 countries across five continents.

Source: AVWeb.com