Vintage Aero Flying Museum MUSEUM

FROM PAGE 6 planes in the museum are homebuilt experimental and replicas of World War I planes and there are pilots that are flying the planes we built from plans. It’s a communal effort with lot of people that come over with friends. They work with us or we help them with their plane. It’s a different style, an old school style.”

Matthew Dunning is an airframe and power plant mechanic. He’s also the museum’s head mechanic and has been working on airplanes for the museum for seven years. Dunning and his team of mechanics build the parts in-house for the vintage planes since you can’t find the parts today.

“It’s a lot of fun working here and being part of it, and we have a good time and look out for each other. We got many different people that have their specialties and pilots that fly the planes,” Dunning said.

Ryan Courreges is a pilot who volunteers to work on the planes under Matt Dunning’s supervision. He’s been working on cars his whole life and has been flying for several years.

Courreges said he started flying gliders when he was 13 years old. Not only does he work on the planes at the museum, but he also flies them. His own vintage craft is a Vans RV-4 designed in the ’80s.

“I fly mostly experimental, then the standard certified. The standard certified are not as much fun, they don’t have the character of the experimental planes,” Courreges said. “There is risk of not being maintained. It’s why we maintain them and we know what has happened to all of these airplanes.”

Their enthusiasm feels good to Parks.

SEE MUSEUM, P8