Canadian Museum of Flight

It’s a good idea. Get all the pieces together in one place so you can see what you’ve got and hopefully make some sense out of it. And it’s all volunteer. Museum of Flight

It’s out there at what we used to call “Skyways” in Langley, BC. These days the dully utilitarian handle “Langley Airport” has been substituted.

But it’ll always be “Skyways” in our hearts, and in our heads. “Skyway Air Services Limited” was the official name.  Learn to fly the Skyways way. Sure.

Way up there somewhere.  We toured the retired hangar which is fairly stuffed with a few full sized planes, large-scale models hanging from the rafters, and many professionally done archival displays. Impressive, I believe, would not be an exaggeration.

Outside in the open air are half a dozen or so complete airplanes of various eras in “static” display, including an Avro CF-100 and a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter.

I remember the Starfighter.  They called it the “widowmaker”. Take offs weren’t so bad. A lot of the difficulties seemed to involve getting the plane back on the ground.  It was a high-speed dart that took a lot of experience to handle, and maybe a “I double-dog dare you to fly this plane” to get the pilot motivated. There were a lot of crashes.

This one was in one piece though, and my co-pilot sat in the cockpit but didn’t take the Starfighter for a spin.  Darn. No engine.

Lovely flight.  Bit of turbulence over New Haven but indeed splendid, splendid time, and so pleased to be back with you all and enjoying this fabulous sunshine.

Beechcraft Expeditor and Movie Stars photo courtesy SJB

Author: Steven Brown

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