Hellcat roars to life!

On Friday, January 25, 2013, Flying Heritage Collection fired up their restored Grumman F6F-5 for the first time, marking the beginning of a new lease on life.  According to FHC's website, this aircraft was built in 1945 and was built as an F6F-5N night fighter.  It was later converted to a 5K as a target drone.  Since late fall, the aircraft was brought back to the FHC museum floor, where visitors could watch the maintainers finish the final process of restoring this beautiful aircraft.

Since the aircraft was used as a target drone, there were modifications made to the airframe for servos etc.  In order to bring this aircraft back to WWII delivery condition, FHC had portions of the wing re-skinned, so as to give it original panel lines.  FHC is known for their attention to detail and spared no expense with the Hellcat.

In the coming weeks the aircraft will be moved yet again, but this time, to be painted!  It will receive its final unit markings, of which has not been revealed yet, in February.

As always, I was there to catch the momentous occasion with video and photographs! 

If you enjoyed the photos and video, please show your support by visiting www.gofundme.com/fight2fly as I am in the process of making a much-needed upgrade to my video camera.

Thank you for reading!

What Aviation is All About

Ever since I started learning to fly planes when I was thirteen, I had imagined how fun aviation could be with friends.  I had always hoped that once I did get my certificate, my high school friends would want to come along on various adventures across the state.  Unfortunately that never happened.  Though many offers were given, and I had prior permission from parents.  NONE of my friends ever came flying with me.

Fast forward ten years, and I finally have cool friends to flying with.  Although with a weird twist of fate, I'm no longer the pilot.  I'm the ride-along photographer, enjoying every second of the beautiful scenery that passes beneath.

Sunday, January 13th was a childhood dream come true.  It was everything I always hoped aviation would be, someday.  Five fellow pilots and their respective aircraft along with about eight photographers met up at Paine Field that noon and put together a plan for a formation flight over the beautiful snow-covered Cascade Mountains.

The plan was simple.  First of all we organized which pilot was flying what position and established safety procedures and communication frequencies.  Then the plan was to simply head east following Highway 2 up to Skykomish, and follow the canyon to the left, which creates a nice comfortable loop, easy to negotiate even with four aircraft off our wing. 

We ended up getting nearly two-hours of formation time in.  It was absolutely gorgeous, as the photos and videos will show, and was a really great experience for all involved.

This, to me, is what general aviation is all about.  Enjoy:

http://fight2fly.photoshelter.com/gallery/Cascade-Formation-Flight/G0000RiYRcUPcT3U/

Video:
http://youtu.be/I--ucgtgfC4

Greetings, fans!  I'm here to announce that in the coming weeks/months I will be making some (hopefully) regular posts, covering some of the really cool people I get to hang out with and go flying with throughout the year.  We have a really awesome community of photographers and pilots, always working together to have a great time, and share our love of aviation with those around us, and what I want to do is provide some interviews of these folks to truly show that anyone with an interest in planes can make their goals come true. 

So, here's the plan:  I'm starting a program I call "Pacific Northwest Aviation Profiles" where I will interview folks (both on "paper" and on video) having anything to do with aviation.  I want to have pilots, mechanics, engineers, air traffic controllers, photographers, and everyone else who is involved in aviation in some way.    As I mentioned, I will post the written version of the interview here first, and then at a later time I will conduct a video interview of that same person, asking similar questions to what you see in the, but with more in-depth follow ups.  I will create a new Playlist called "Aviation Profiles" on my Channel.

There you have it, that's the tentative plan.  If you have any questions you would like to see answered, please leave a comment either here or on my Facebook Page.

And as always, thank you for stopping by and visiting!  Be sure to visit my Fund Raising Page to stay up to date on my funding efforts for a new and improved video camera!

Jason

Greetings and Merry Christmas!  This post is to announce that I have some really great things planned for 2013!  I look to release some new and improved productions throughout the year, including several interviews.  One of the first things I have lined up is an in-depth look at a local restoration of an extremely rare WWII fighter/bomber.  All of the attention has been on New Zealand's Mosquito restoration that took its first flight in September.  However, very few people realize that there is an original Mosquito (bomber version!) being restored in British Columbia.  Also, I am hoping to get some interviews and a few status updates on an original A6M3-22 Zero with an original Sakai-21 engine here at Paine Field.  They've been making great strides in its progress.

In the meantime, enjoy this video I put together.  Please, share your ideas as to why you think we should (or shouldn't?) keep these warbirds flying.

http://youtu.be/2d-7eMf7uvo

Here's a fun spotting video from this summer.  This video features an IL-2 Shturmovik, B-25D Mitchell, Boeing 777, 787, and 747 LCF!  A little bit of something for everyone, all in one afternoon! :-)

http://youtu.be/QfRtsmF83n4