Oregon Aircraft Collection

[Dinsdale]

Very cool. That's Erickson, of SkyCrane fame.

Only problem, is they moved to Madras... hope you like methed-out, drunken Injuns. Next town down from the Rez, where they all move when they get kicked out for drug/alcohol offenses.

IOW -- shithole.

Pity they moved out of Tillamook, but there just wasn't the funding. The old museum was in an old WW2 blimp hangar. The hangar that used to sit next door to it was the world's largest wooden-framed building... thing was huge... until it burned down in the early 90's. The one that housed the museum is getting pretty worn. I have a few fishing spots i frequent right by there.

But that's still the second-coolest air museum in Oregon -- http://evergreenmuseum.org/.

Fuckers built a waterpark next door with a 747 on the roof. Drive by there all the time, too.

[Rooster]

As an aside, Erickson bought out Evergreen a few years back and now owns their assets and contracts. This was a good thing from a helicopter pilot's perspective as Evergreen was being run into the ground by its' owner who was losing it due to dementia. There are a myriad of stories about how he'd walk into the office and randomly fire people for various offenses ranging from a dislike for a person's work attire to someone not moving out of his way fast enough as he cruised the halls. The guys in A-stan were without pay and an airline ticket back home for months while he circled the drain until Erickson bought him out.

[Dinsdale]

My buddy (who I'm on the road with now, matter of fact) was a department head at Evergreen years ago. Del was not known for being a nice guy.

As far as running it into the ground -- yes and no. They were just about underwater before 9/11, and in the process of selling off assets. Then, the boon came. Just the airline (it was 9 separate companies under a holding company) was clearing over a mil a day after costs (may or may not have known the CFO). When the government gravy started drying up, so did the company's viability. Smith didn't concentrate on what could make sustainable dough (the agriculture division and helicopters would have probably been fine). Not sure where the fleet of 747s ended up (or the 747 graveyard in Marana, AZ).

I believe Erickson did buy the helicopters. The other companies were bought by various outfits, some just went away and had their assets seized. The museum is the only thing left, although Del's son's old F-15 still sits in the side of the highway, in front of the old offices.

For anyone interested (sup, no one), Del Smith was an interesting story. The movie Air America is based on how he got his start. A theme that continued throughout his life -- shady government dealings. Smuggling drugs for the CIA, flying the Shah out of Iran -- anything the government didn't want their name attached to. That was his helicopter that crashed in Iran attempting to free the hostages. I knew a guy who was injured in a helicopter crash in South America while setting up a remote IT office in the jungles of South America (pilot and others were killed -- they were shot down) in some sort of Drug War operation.

When the war in Afghanistan started, Del had a pic of him and W together within a week, hanging on the wall of the main office.

In short -- he was very successful at being a shady character.

[Rooster]

^^^
This. I should have been more specific, but my default mode when discussing Evergreen is that they were a helicopter company only because that was where my interest in them was. They did have many business units which may or may not have had any dealings amongst themselves, but for example, you can still see many EG Conexs populating the yards of shipping companies around the world. I was offered a job with them while drinking beer at the Dubai airport Irish pub to go fly B214s in the Phillipines against the Muzzies stirring up trouble (where don't they stir up trouble is a better question) in some of the outlying islands. It interested me at the time, but I had already picked up employment doing something else for more money, so that was that.

Erickson, for their part, is a good company to work for from what I understand. There aren't too many operators who use the Sky Crane like them and where else can you fly a helicopter from the back facing the tail? Or fly a machine that still holds the record for the quickest altitude time in a piloted aircraft in all of recorded aviation history? Good stuff.

[Dinsdale]

At their peak, Evergreen moved more freight to the Middle East than the DoD did, by a 2:1 margin, I was told.

They used to have a pretty good racket with christmas trees. They had huge farms near the McMinnville Airport. They has a helicopter base there. Cut and wrap trees, fly them to the airport with helos, put them on trucks to PDX, stuff a 747 full of them and ship them to JFK, where they had a cargo base, and buyers paying around $50 a pop for them. Good work if you can get it.

A friend of mine's dad flies SkyCranes. He may or may not have performed a certain stunt in a certain movie involving a SkyCrane.

[Moving Sale]

As usual OR plays second fiddle to CA.
The Palm Springs AM is way better than your waterpark with wings. Hell even AZ kicks your ass with the Pima museum. Your shit try at it is, at best, the 4th best, and that's just on the west coast.
Yea we had the SG. We decided to ship it out of state.

[Dinsdale]

Yea we had the SG. We decided to ship it out of state.

After severely neglecting it. Severely.

Since I may or may not have known the guy who ran the 8 year restoration.

[Moving Sale]

Yes it was thrashed. We didn't want it anymore. We already went thru this.

[smackaholic]

Pretty cool. Love those big, multi row radial Wasp engines, [Dinsdale] Made right down the road in East Hartford [/Dinsdale]. They are one of the most amazing mechanical gizmos ever made. We have an air museum around the back side of BDL. Haven't been there, but, I hear it is pretty cool.

[Atomic Punk]

I've been to the Pima, AZ air museum when I was a kid. There was a Convair B-58 Hustler out there. Coolest jet I've ever seen. NAS Pensacola has a pretty good one on the other coast.

In Balboa Park in San Diego they have cool stuff. In the basement, you had all of the 80 and 90 y/o guys hanging out and slightly younger guys were restoring planes. I was told the wives dropped off their husbands to get them out of the house to be with their friends. Some of the old guys were watching WWII movies with dog fighting scenes. This one guy was clapping when a German shot down a USAAFA plane. The guy next to me told me he was a former Luftwaffe pilot in the M-109. Then the favor was returned when a US plane shot down a German. They all liked hanging out together and teased one another.

One thing revealed to me at Balboa is they restored the Enola Gay's 4 engines down in the shop and it was kept from the public due to possible protests. The older guys told me when they die, then all of their fabrication skills go with them since there isn't new blood coming down there to learn their trade.

I wouldn't be talking smack about air museums MS. The people that restore and take care of the birds deserve all respect.

[smackaholic]

I doubt those old boys could give half a fukk about what a sawed off public defender had to say about them. Rack those old fukks. We won't have them for much longer.

[Left Seater]

Thankfully we don't have to pick a favorite. Rack all of these places that are keeping, restoring and especially flying these old birds.

There is nothing like the sound of a radial engine at full throttle just a few feet off the deck.

[Atomic Punk]

I was with my grandpa when we went to the Pima AM after driving by the Davis-Monthan boneyard. I stood in front of the B-58 and he took a picture of me that I still have. It was surprising how relatively small the aircraft was. My grandpa was a retired USAF Col and started with B-17's, some other aircraft types, B-36's, then B-52's.

He told me those B-58's had a bad reputation for electrical fires in the electronics bay behind the pilot, and if there was an engine failure when supersonic, then I think he said they were death traps. I forget, but I did look at your link and others and they had a high accident rate. I watched the propaganda videos last night and they are hilarious. Maybe that historical nonsense is why poptart has a problem with current government aerospace and space involvement. Those old videos were flat out propaganda that the current Chinese would use.

[Rooster]

Just like the sturm und drang about the F35 is rather unsettling in light of the test pilot reports vs what Lockheed has said the aircraft is supposed to be capable of in combat. There appears to be quite a bit of propaganda surrounding this particular aircraft, unfortunately, when the three services which use high performance aircraft are making that platform their doctrinal centerpiece, we may be crippling our entire strategic advantage in the air. I have no doubt that over time and with enough money many of the problems reputed to plague the F-35 can be ironed out, there is a rather large window in which we may be completely vulnerable to the Chi-Coms and the Russians. Coupled with the utter incompetency of the Obama administration and the massive power vacuum he created across the globe, the existential threat we face with those two countries could change the global balance of power for decades to come. Yeah, yeah, sounds portentous and all, but the fact remains that despite our present overwhelming military strength, the military's intermediate horizon is cause for concern.

[Moving Sale]

I doubt those old boys could give half a fukk about what a sawed off public defender had to say about them. Rack those old fukks. We won't have them for much longer.

The old farts at the Palm Springs museum got all pissy when I asked one them to try and crash into the pentagon like the Bush conspiracy says happened. It was pretty funny.